Focused on Weight Gain Prevention

Let me take a moment to stop, take a deep breath, and thank heavens that October is over!  My life has been crazed, but in a good way.

I've spent long hours developing content for a weight gain prevention program (using work by Evan Forman,  Jennifer Taitz, Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel, Rick Kausman, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch for inspiration) and testing it in focus groups (17 focus groups x 1-2 hours each!).  On top of thesis work I've been juggling my research assistant duties for three (!) separate projects - Motivational Interviewing and Treatment (MInT), Baby-Lead Introduction to Solids Study (BLISS), and a qualitative study of community capacity in Mataura, New Zealand.  Phwew!

The chaos was kicked off after a local paper ran this little article to help us recruit women for focus groups:

The Star, October 2013

To participate in focus groups, women had to be between the ages of 40-50 (inclusive), have issues with non-hungry/emotional eating (we used Tracy Tylka's  Intuitive Eating Scale - 2013 version), and have a BMI greater than 27.

Our goal was to have feedback from eight women for each of the 11 modules.  I had no problem filling in our focus group schedule (basically, Monday-Friday at 5pm).  Nearly 40 women contacted me to participate in focus groups - one woman said that she was almost in tears because she was so happy that someone was addressing the emotional side of eating behavior!

Overall, they really enjoyed the content that we presented - just minor tweaks here and there when I wasn't "kiwi enough" with my descriptions and instructions (meaning, I needed to use gentler/friendlier language).  At first, women were caught off guard by our mindfulness exercises, but we all worked together to get the language in guided activities acceptable by the majority of participants.

Intervention teaser: mindfully eating a raisin (an adapted Jon Kabat Zinn activity) was an absolute hit as was letting negative thoughts float away on leaves on a stream (an adapted Russ Harris activity)!

I still need to test our paper-based mockups of the website with Māori and Pacific Islander women and then I'll send our materials off to three experts for review (one is an expert in women's health and has a background in Māori health, another researches intuitive eating and the other applies Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to weight loss interventions).  Once that's all done I will send the content to a web developer to get everything on a prototype that I can test in December/January.  A beta version of the website will hopefully be up about five months post-prototype and then I'll have a website to test in a feasibility study (late 2014).  I'm sooooo excited that this is coming together!