2.5. Patient Allocation and Blinding
±2
Different factors, primarily the distance from the hospital, as well as other personal reasons related to time availability (work and/or domestic responsibilities), prevented a significant number of participants from regularly attending the intervention over the 12-week period. Therefore, in order to maximize sample size, randomization was not finally possible. To minimize selection bias, the groups were matched by age (±2 years), BMI (±1 kg/m