Effectiveness of Counselling on Diet Quality and Physical Activity with Cognitive Counselling for Overweight and Obese Women-A Randomized Clinical Trial

Various treatments for obesity exist that actually work, however, a great deal of them face the issue of weight regain. Hence, there is this desire to focus on health measures that can be predictors of weight maintenance. This study explores whether four sessions of group-based cognitive counselling can lead to superior results compared to counselling on diet and physical activity only, in terms of eating behavior, calorie intake, diet quality, weight, and physical activity. We conducted a randomized trial for this purpose. Our findings suggest that a short intervention of cognitive counselling can lead to improved emotional eating and uncontrolled eating. Both conditions showed significant improvement in diet quality, cognitive restraint on eating, weight, BMI, calorie intake, and physical activity, while between group differences remained non-significant. Further studies are needed to assess the impact of brief cognitive counselling on measures of weight maintenance in long term.