Published: 07 January 2020
Women who were overweight at the start of their pregnancy would welcome support after they have given birth in the form of commercial weight management groups, NIHR funded research has found.
The conclusions come from a feasibility study led by the Warwick Clinical Trials Unit and published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, which aimed to assess if commercial weight management groups could help women who were overweight (classed as a BMI of ≥25kg/m2) when they became pregnant to return to a more healthy weight after giving birth. This feasibility study aimed to determine whether it would be possible to recruit women to a future larger clinical trial of weight management programmes and if they were likely to see a benefit from attending.
The researchers found that women who attended weight management groups which they could start from 8 to 16 weeks after giving birth lost slightly more weight (around 3kgs) as assessed at 12 months postnatally, than those women not offered access to groups, with those who attended more of the 12 group sessions offered experiencing the greatest weight loss.
The researchers argue that this suggests that women could benefit in health terms from attending a commercially available weight management programme post pregnancy, and a larger clinical trial should now be conducted to determine the definitive health and other benefits of such a programme and the cost effectiveness to the health service.
To investigate whether a weight management programme could help women who’ve had a baby to better manage their weight, the researchers recruited 193 women with BMIs greater than 25 when they became pregnant and randomly assigned them to either a commercially available weight management group, in this case Slimming World, with a lifestyle information leaflet, or to receive standard NHS maternity care only. All women were recruited from a large inner city maternity unit in the South of England.
Lead author Professor Debra Bick, from the University of Warwick’s Clinical Trials Unit, said: “We now need to find out if commercial weight management programmes are both clinically effective and cost effective when offered to women who have given birth in the previous three to four months. While it is difficult to predict the economics in the long term, this could save money for the health service by preventing poor health in the long term. If we can confirm that commercial programmes are successful in a future clinical trial then this is an intervention that the NHS should seriously consider for women who are overweight or obese before pregnancy.”
- Previous research has shown that commercial weight management programmes have been more effective in helping individuals with higher BMIs to lose weight than health service provided ones. In this study, the researchers made no changes to the weight management programme offered and found that the participants responded positively to the flexible timings, the opportunity to mix with other group attendees and the opportunity to take their babies with them. Women were able to attend 12 weekly sessions, with the support offered incorporating dietary advice suited to breastfeeding and promoting physical activity. Researchers are now calling for a large-scale definitive clinical trial.