Beliefs of healthy overweight and obese individuals on weight loss facilitators

Background: Motivating clinically healthy overweight and obese individuals to bring lifestyle behavioural changes prior to an apparent disease is still a challenge in primary care. Additional tests to reveal metabolically unhealthy individuals, who would most benefit from weight loss, are often supported by both physicians and patients in primary health care in Latvia. Metabolically healthy obesity often turns into metabolically unhealthy obesity with time. Tests are, however, related to additional costs, probable overdiagnosis and anxiety. Objective: To find out opinion of clinically healthy overweight/obese individuals, if abnormal tests, visual/physical discomfort and/or encouragement by health care providers/friends and relatives would promote weight reduction Methods: We performed a survey of 123 clinically healthy overweight and obese individuals at age 30 to 45 involved in an RCT prior to tests and intervention. We used a questionnaire with answers in Likert scale (1=definitely not, 5=definitely yes). We offered several options on what could motivate participants to reduce weight: visual self-discomfort, physical self-discomfort, abnormal test results, a diagnosed diabetes (D) or cardiovascular disease (CVD), information on negative aspects of overweight/obesity provided by health care professional, encouragement from friends and relatives. We used Wilcoxon signed-rank test to compare mean scores between the questions, and Mann-Whitney U test to compare results by gender (men n=58 and women n=65), age and BMI groups (overweight n=46 and obese n=77). Results Answers to all questions varied from 1 (definitely not) and (definitely yes). The highest scores were attributed to supposedly abnormal tests related to both D (4.0±1.0) and CVDs risk (4.3±0.9), slightly favoring CVDs (Z=-2.855, p=0.004). Scores for supposedly established disease were similar for both D (3.9±1.5) and CVDs (3.9±1.5), and slightly lower when compared to abnormal tests in case of CVDs (Z=-2.675, p=0.007). Physical self-discomfort (3.9±1.3) seemed to be more important than visual self-discomfort (3.1±1.5), (Z=-4.672, p