The attached article just appeared in the scientific journal, Health Psychology. UK researchers examined 26 behavior change techniques for the potency of their impact within 122 evaluations of treatments designed to increase “physical activity and healthy eating.” They found that “prompting self-monitoring” accounted for more behavior change than anything + that adding other self-regulatory techniques to self-monitoring significantly increased its effectiveness (“prompted intention formation; prompted specific goal setting; provided feedback on performance; prompted review of behavioral goals”). In contrast, as you can see by reviewing a list of the 26 techniques that they studied (p.692, final paragraph), providing information per se did not produce significant effects, but other widely used CBT techniques did not fare so well either (e.g., relapse prevention training).
This study used complex statistical analyses to examine contributors to change and some could argue with their classifications of techniques and with the inclusion criteria they used for their studies. Nonetheless, the results support the primacy of self-monitoring and indirectly support the importance of techniques that nurture healthy obsessions.
Self-monitoring – powerful in meta regression Michie HP 2009
Tags: Weight Loss