Do Habit-Based Interventions Work for Weight Loss?

Check out this answer from Consensus:

Habit-based interventions are effective in promoting weight loss and maintaining it over time. They work by enhancing self-regulatory skills and making healthy behaviors automatic. Participants find these interventions practical and beneficial, and they are cost-effective and easy to implement in various settings. While digital habit-based interventions show promise, maintaining long-term engagement remains a challenge. Overall, habit-based strategies offer a valuable approach to weight management.

Habit-based interventions are an emerging strategy for weight loss, focusing on forming new healthy habits or breaking old unhealthy ones. This synthesis examines the efficacy of such interventions in promoting weight loss and maintaining it over time.

Key Insights

• Efficacy of Habit-Based Interventions:
  • Habit-based interventions result in modest but statistically significant weight loss compared to control groups. Participants in these interventions are more likely to achieve clinically beneficial weight loss (≥5% weight reduction)1 4 7.
  • Long-term studies show that habit-based interventions can lead to sustained weight loss over 12 months, with a significant portion of participants maintaining clinically important weight loss2 4.
• Mechanisms of Habit-Based Interventions:
  • These interventions enhance self-regulatory skills and automaticity, which mediate their effectiveness in promoting weight loss. Participants report greater increases in self-regulatory skills and automaticity for target behaviors3 9.
  • Habit-based interventions are designed to make healthy behaviors automatic, reducing the cognitive load required to maintain these behaviors over time3 9.
• Participant Experience and Acceptability:
  • Participants generally have positive experiences with habit-based interventions, appreciating the practical and everyday focus of these programs. They report indirect health benefits such as increased energy levels, confidence, and self-awareness5.
  • The simplicity and low cost of these interventions make them accessible and easy to implement in various settings, including primary care4 6 7.
• Comparison with Other Interventions:
  • Web-based habit interventions show greater short-term weight loss compared to offline interventions, although long-term differences are not significant. Engagement and adherence remain challenges in digital formats8.
  • Habit-based interventions are more effective than conventional lifestyle programs in achieving and maintaining weight loss, highlighting the importance of habit formation in long-term behavior change9.

Do habit-based interventions work for weight loss?

Gina Cleo has answered Near Certain

An expert from Habit Change Institute in Habits, Behavioural Science, Health

Habit-based interventions are a novel and emerging strategy to help reduce excess weight in individuals with overweight or obesity. Several studies have implemented non-diet-or-exercise-focused, habit-based strategies to help participants lose weight and overall, show favourable outcomes. We meta-analysed these studies in our recent systematic review, published in the Journal of Behavioural Medicine (2019). Results showed that habit-based interventions were 2.4 times more likely to achieve clinically beneficial weight loss (≥ 5% weight reduction), compared with control groups. 

There are currently not enough long-term studies to determine if this weight loss is maintained longer than 12-months, however, preliminary results are promising. Our randomised controlled trial (Int J Obes, 2019) showed that participants continued to lose weight 12-months after the habit-based interventions had finished. This is a noteworthy outcome as weight regain commonly occurs directly after an intervention stops. 

We also conducted qualitative interviews with participants in habit-based weight loss programs to explore their experiences; they reported that they particularly enjoyed the novelty of the interventions as they shifted the focus from diet and exercise, to practical everyday habit changes. Participants preferred habit-based interventions compared with conventional lifestyle programs for weight control.