Guess what? A Single Visit to the Office Encourages people to burden themselves more often and exercise does not prevent weight loss

From Journal of Duh! (in fact, PLOS Medicine was in fact) Behavioral intervention to maintain weight loss over usual weight advice in obese adults: A randomized controlled trial in the UK (NULevel Trial). The study included 288 subjects who had lost ≥ 5% of their weight in the previous 12 months and were randomized to two groups. One of them received periodic newsletters and the other one had a unique face-to-face visit where they discussed goal setting and self-monitoring (including daily weighing) followed by automated text messages every day. The hope was that single visit and text messaging would help avoid weight gain in the team that received them. So did that minimal intervention assistance?

No, both teams regained the same weight during the study.

What surprised most about this study was not that minimal interventions did not help to prevent weight but rather that one thought they could. Because if the minimal interference prevented the restoration of body weight, do you really think that weight recovery would be so common?

So, if you were looking for proof that single-office visits and text messages are not enough to prevent weight gain, you've guessed it.