Support and Weight loss
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HeidiMightyRawr
Posts: 3,343 Member
OK so I've finally finished my dissertation study, and I know many people on here had taken part and were wondering about the results.
The main things I was trying to find out was how does a person's support they receive impact on their weight loss, and is there any difference between online and offline support. Everyone who took part was from here, fb and actual weight watchers meetings so there was quite a range. I couldn't compare male and female though as I hardly managed to get any men to respond! (5% male / 95% female) Most of these were correlations apart from the online vs offline comparison, so you can't say one caused the other, but there were some interesting findings anyway.
Support had 2 scales, support number (how many people you can rely on) and support satisfaction (satisfaction with that support number) and weight loss success was measured as a percentage rather than just pounds as there was such a range of weights and 10lbs to an already healthy weight person is very different to somebody 300+ pounds.
Correlations:
-Support number with weight loss % = not significant
-Support satisfaction with % = not significant
This wasn't really what I was hoping to find, so I then went and put support with weight loss happiness instead, (as those who took the questionnaire, you will know it asked how happy you were with your weight loss) to see if that made a difference.
-Support number with weight loss happiness = 0.055 (significant is <0.05 so it was so close!)
-Support satisfaction with weight loss happiness = 0.000 (extremely significant)
So obviously, when taking into account how happy someone was with their weight loss over the past 6 months, that made so much more of a difference than when just comparing it to how much they lost (%) At the time I was assuming this was because some people had stated later that weight loss wasn't as important to them as other goals (muscle, dropping bf%, strength etc) I got into that later with a qualitative analysis of other health goals.
Just over 50% of all people who took part, specified having other goals besides weight loss.
During that, I found that the four most common "other health goals" were (in order of most common)
1) General fitness (22.6% of all goals) this included goals such as "exercise", "reduce resting HR", "improve cardiovascular health" etc etc
2) Reduce BF% (15%)
3) Build muscle (14%)
4) Get stronger (12.9%)
I mentioned that these sorts of goals may hinder a person's actual weight loss, and they may lose slightly slower, but that most accepted this, and that's probably why support correlated so well with happiness, but not will actual weight loss, and that support still plays an important part.
I used a few examples to display people's goals and how they weren't all so focused on their scale weight:
“Muscle building and weight lifting. I am more interested in burning fat than losing weight. If I continually look at the scales, I will get depressed.” (36 year old female)
“I am unconcerned with weight loss. I am more concerned with fat loss and improving my athletic performance.” (35 year old male)
Of all participants, 63 people said that most of their support was online, and 50 people said that most support they received was offline. There was no significant difference between the weight loss, or the weight loss happiness of those who got support from either of these sources. This supported the idea that it doesn't matter where you get your support from, as long as you have it somewhere (great for people who don't have much at home!)
I will post another topic in this group about the types of support that people received (another qualitiative analysis), and findings related to a persons mood and / or eating behaviours, as this is getting quite long now! :laugh:
Any other questions you want to know about the study, feel free to ask. I have all the raw data still and can analyse most things you would like to know. I didn't compare things such as age and BMI for my actual dissertation, but they're in the data if anyone would like to know
The main things I was trying to find out was how does a person's support they receive impact on their weight loss, and is there any difference between online and offline support. Everyone who took part was from here, fb and actual weight watchers meetings so there was quite a range. I couldn't compare male and female though as I hardly managed to get any men to respond! (5% male / 95% female) Most of these were correlations apart from the online vs offline comparison, so you can't say one caused the other, but there were some interesting findings anyway.
Support had 2 scales, support number (how many people you can rely on) and support satisfaction (satisfaction with that support number) and weight loss success was measured as a percentage rather than just pounds as there was such a range of weights and 10lbs to an already healthy weight person is very different to somebody 300+ pounds.
Correlations:
-Support number with weight loss % = not significant
-Support satisfaction with % = not significant
This wasn't really what I was hoping to find, so I then went and put support with weight loss happiness instead, (as those who took the questionnaire, you will know it asked how happy you were with your weight loss) to see if that made a difference.
-Support number with weight loss happiness = 0.055 (significant is <0.05 so it was so close!)
-Support satisfaction with weight loss happiness = 0.000 (extremely significant)
So obviously, when taking into account how happy someone was with their weight loss over the past 6 months, that made so much more of a difference than when just comparing it to how much they lost (%) At the time I was assuming this was because some people had stated later that weight loss wasn't as important to them as other goals (muscle, dropping bf%, strength etc) I got into that later with a qualitative analysis of other health goals.
Just over 50% of all people who took part, specified having other goals besides weight loss.
During that, I found that the four most common "other health goals" were (in order of most common)
1) General fitness (22.6% of all goals) this included goals such as "exercise", "reduce resting HR", "improve cardiovascular health" etc etc
2) Reduce BF% (15%)
3) Build muscle (14%)
4) Get stronger (12.9%)
I mentioned that these sorts of goals may hinder a person's actual weight loss, and they may lose slightly slower, but that most accepted this, and that's probably why support correlated so well with happiness, but not will actual weight loss, and that support still plays an important part.
I used a few examples to display people's goals and how they weren't all so focused on their scale weight:
“Muscle building and weight lifting. I am more interested in burning fat than losing weight. If I continually look at the scales, I will get depressed.” (36 year old female)
“I am unconcerned with weight loss. I am more concerned with fat loss and improving my athletic performance.” (35 year old male)
Of all participants, 63 people said that most of their support was online, and 50 people said that most support they received was offline. There was no significant difference between the weight loss, or the weight loss happiness of those who got support from either of these sources. This supported the idea that it doesn't matter where you get your support from, as long as you have it somewhere (great for people who don't have much at home!)
I will post another topic in this group about the types of support that people received (another qualitiative analysis), and findings related to a persons mood and / or eating behaviours, as this is getting quite long now! :laugh:
Any other questions you want to know about the study, feel free to ask. I have all the raw data still and can analyse most things you would like to know. I didn't compare things such as age and BMI for my actual dissertation, but they're in the data if anyone would like to know
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Interesting results. It's great when it turns out a bit different than expected.
Oh btw you rounded up wrong your 0.055 should've rounded to 5!! lol sorry AZackery was on a corker last weekend I had to stick it in :bigsmile:0
