Research
Adherence
A brief, opportunistic physician intervention (30 seconds) that includes referral to a behavioral weight loss program, ensuring an appointment is made, and offering follow-up, results in significantly greater weight loss compared to advice alone in obese primary care patients.
If you are obese, ask your doctor for a referral to a free, NHS-funded behavioral weight loss program. If they don't offer it, request one. Ensure you get an appointment booked. This structured support leads to significantly more weight loss than just being told to lose weight.
WeakSupportsHIGH confidence
In the entire study population, mean weight change at 12 months was 2.43 kg with the support intervention and 1.04 kg with the advice intervention, giving an adjusted difference of 1.43 kg (95% CI 0.89–1.97).
Why this rating
Parallel, two-arm, randomised trial with intention-to-treat analysis.
Source
Screening and brief intervention for obesity in primary care: a parallel, two-arm, randomised trial
Paul Aveyard et al. · The Lancet · 2016
DOI 10.1016/s0140-6736(16)31893-1
rct · n=1882Cited 303×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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