Changing health behaviors is hard. What is it that makes some of us take the plunge into lifestyle change, while the rest of us watch from the shoreline? And can our doctors help motivate us to take steps towards making these changes?
offering different programs with different features, or personalizing our programs, may help us meet the needs and wants of more people. This could help more of them take that first step of starting a weight loss program.
我们在一项在2017年3月翻译行为医学上发表的研究. We compared people who started a weight loss program to people who never took the first step of joining. This study was conducted in the Veteran’s Affairs Health Care system, where a free behavioral weight loss program is available for eligible patients, and all of our study participants were offered entry into this program during a medical visit.
We found a few key characteristics that differed between those who initiated the weight loss program and those who did not. Those who started the program were more likely to be single, and reported more anxiety. Interestingly, those who joined the weight loss program and those who did not reported different experiences with the medical visit in which they were offered the weight loss program.
继续加入该计划的参与者报告说，他们认为他们的医疗保健提供者对他们对体重和体重减轻的看法有了更多的了解，并更加支持他们对自己想要解决体重的决定做出自己的决定。换句话说，一位告诉患者“您应该去参加这项减肥计划”的医生在激励患者方面可能比医生不太成功，他问：“您认为这种减肥计划可能对您有用？”
对于许多医生而言，这种以患者为中心的温柔，以患者为中心的方法自然而然。对于其他人来说，让患者领先可能是一个挑战。幸运的是，有一些策略可以帮助医疗保健提供者更熟练地尊重患者的自主权，并帮助他们自己选择如何解决自己的健康。促进这种交流的最佳建立方法之一就是激励访谈。
We asked ourselves why single and more anxious individuals were more likely to join a weight loss program. Our thought is that those who are single may be more driven to lose weight because they feel it will help their romantic prospects. Or maybe they just have more time on their hands than married individuals, who might also be more likely to have children. Those who reported higher anxiety might have been more worried about how their weight was affecting their health, and thus more motivated to join a program. Future studies should more carefully measure these different factors to test these hypotheses.
there are strategies that can help health care providers become more skilled at respecting patients’ autonomy and helping them make their own choices about how they want to address their health. One of the best established approaches to facilitate this kind of communication is motivational interviewing.
We also asked our study participants to tell us what features they preferred in a weight loss program. After all, it may not be enough to offer a weight loss program that we think will work. It may be that we need to offer people the programs they really want in order to get them motivated to get started.
在我们的研究参与者中，大多数人（69％）报告了想要面对面的会议（不是基于电话或网络），并且大多数想要的治疗都具有情绪管理部分（70％）。但是，当涉及该计划的其他功能时，意见更加分歧。有些人想要组格式（42％），而有些则首选一对一的联系（58％）；有些人更喜欢专注于逐渐变化的计划（59％），有些人希望专注于大型，即时更改（41％）。
What this tells us is that offering different programs with different features, or personalizing our programs, may help us meet the needs and wants of more people. This could help more of them take that first step of starting a weight loss program.
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