Research

Adherence

A 12-month individualized nutritional counseling intervention in primary care significantly reduces body weight, BMI, and abdominal adiposity in overweight women, with greater anthropometric improvements observed in participants attending more than 9 consultations.

For overweight women, a structured, long-term (12-month) nutritional counseling program integrated with regular physical exercise in primary care leads to modest but significant weight loss (approx. 3%) and reduced abdominal fat. Success is strongly linked to adherence; attending more than 9 sessions yields significantly better results. The approach focuses on small, sustainable behavioral changes (e.g., increasing meal frequency, reducing liquid intake during meals, increasing fruit/vegetable consumption) rather than drastic restrictions, making it viable for low-income populations.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
A decrease in body weight (p<0.001) was observed, which corresponded to a median reduction of 2.9% when compared to the initial weight, as well as a decrease in BMI (p<0.001)... When comparing the development of the participants according to the frequency of the sessions, it was observed that women who attended more consultations (>9) presented higher reduction of BMI and measurements of abdominal adiposity
Nathália Luíza Ferreira et al. · Revista de Nutrição · 2014

Why this rating

Single-center, uncontrolled intervention study with a relatively small sample size (n=71) and high attrition (57.5% loss), though the duration is long (12 months).

Source

Effectiveness of nutritional intervention in overweight women in Primary Health Care

Nathália Luíza Ferreira et al. · Revista de Nutrição · 2014

DOI 10.1590/1415-52732014000600003

clinical_trial · n=71Cited 20×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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