Effectiveness of telenutrition in a women's weight loss program

Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain
School of Medicine, Miguel Hernández University, Alicante, Sapin
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.595v1
Subject Areas
Global Health, Nutrition, Public Health, Science and Medical Education
Keywords
telenutrition, e-health, obesity, overweight
Copyright
© 2014 Kuzmar et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Kuzmar IE, Cortés-Castell E, Rizo M. 2014. Effectiveness of telenutrition in a women's weight loss program. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e595v1

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of telenutrition versus traditional nutritional consultation for obese patients. Methods: A comparative clinical study was conducted among 233 (including 20 dropouts and 60 failures) obese or overweight women who consulted a nutrition clinic in Barranquilla (Colombia) for nutritional assessment by telenutrition or traditional attention that includes a weekly follow-up consultation over 16 weeks, food consumption patterns, Body Mass Index (BMI, kg/m2) register, waist and hip circumference register. Treatment response and difference between telenutrition and traditional consultation were made according to BMI, waist, hip and initial-waist/height ratio. Data´s nonparametric statistical comparison was made. Results: In 68 (29.2%) women who chose traditional attention, 9 (37.5%) dropped out, 24 (40%) failed and 35 (23.5%) were successful, showing 1.4%(1.0 SD) BMI loss, 5.8% (3.4 SD) in waist circumference, 4.5% (2.8 SD) in hip circumference and 0.04% (0.02 SD) in iwaist/height ratio. In 165 (70.8%) women who chose telenutrition, 15 (62.5%) dropped out, 36 (60%) failed and 114 (76.5%) were successful, showing 1.1% (1.0 SD) BMI loss, 5.0% (3.2 SD) in waist circumference, 3.5% (3.1 SD) in hip circumference and 0.03% (0.02 SD) in iwaist/height ratio. A significance level of p<0.05 is considered. Conclusion: Telenutrition has a failure or dropout risk factor about half values of traditional consultation with slightly statistically significant differences. This study concludes that telenutrition can support or sometimes replace the traditional consultation when developing weight loss programs in obese women.

Author Comment

This will be a submission to PeerJ for review.