Newsletter Archive

Weight Loss Maintenance: the key to successful weight management

This workshop will give you the opportunity to debate and analyse the Recipe for Successful Weight management. We will consider the relevance of the strategies used by successful weight loss maintainers and explore ways of getting the message of weight loss maintenance across to clients.

Maria Dow, Counterweight specialist, writes about her experiences with behaviour change training and using these skills with obese patients in general practice.  The process of behavioural change not only impacted on the patients, but Maria found that she too had to go through a process of change to adopt the behavioural change principles in practice.

It can seem overwhelming when contemplating delivering a weight management programme to a large number of persons. Getting started with weight management in primary care is an article which guides you through the process of screening for motivated patients suitable for inclusion into the Counterweight weight managment programme.

With the prevalence of obesity in children increasing, a need exists to further develop clinically effective approaches and interventions. Counterweight Families recognises the family as a unit and a major mechanism of influence in affecting health behaviour change. The Counterweight Project Team has deliberately decided to develop and test an intervention for families rather than specifically for children.

Patient Recall is a vital part of the monitoring process for any weight management intervention.  This article explores current rates of dropout in lifestyle interventions and also looks at how patients can be recalled to attend appointments.

An increasing number of patients with morbid obesity (BMI >40kg/m²) are coming into the Counterweight Programme through primary care.  The only evidence based intervention for morbid obesity is bariatric surgery, with evidence of the reversal of Type 2 diabetes with a weight loss of >15kg after laparoscopic banding.  Since February 2010 the Counterweight project team have been undertaking a study to examine the effectiveness and feasibility of delivering a Low Calorie Liquid Diet intervention across 7 Scottish Health Board areas.  To find out more about this study and interim results, click here

The Counterweight Project team need you! 

We are currently reviewing all our Counterweight resources.  If you would like to participate in this review of the manual, flipchart and patient education leaflets, then we would like to hear from you.

According to recent research findings, eating an extra 2 servings of fruit and vegetables a day has the effect of reducing the incidence of all cancers combined by 4%.  This would equate to 7000 fewer cases of cancer per year in the UK.  To find out more about these findings and their implications for your practice click here