The AMPLIFY Diet intervention helps older survivors of obesity-related cancers achieve meaningful weight loss and improvements in key health outcomes without in‑person visits, coaching calls or live counseling.A fully automated, web-based weight-loss program developed by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has produced the highest weight loss ever reported for an automated intervention among cancer survivors, according to results from a large national randomized clinical trial published in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network .
The AMPLIFY Diet (AiM, PLan and act on LIFestYles) intervention helped older survivors of obesity-related cancers achieve meaningful weight loss and improvements in key health outcomes without in‑person visits, coaching calls or live counseling.
More than 43 percent of participants using the AMPLIFY Diet program achieved clinically significant weight loss of at least 3 percent of body weight, compared with just 13 percent of those receiving usual survivorship information. Nearly one in three participants lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, a benchmark associated with reduced cardiovascular disease risk and improved cancer outcomes.
“This is a game changer for cancer survivorship care,” said Wendy Demark‑Wahnefried, Ph.D., R.D., senior author and professor at UAB’s School of Health Professions and O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We showed that a completely automated online program grounded in decades of behavioral and nutrition science can safely and effectively help cancer survivors lose weight and improve their health at scale.”
Roughly 70 percent of cancer survivors in the United States are overweight or obese, placing them at increased risk for heart disease, diabetes, functional decline, cancer recurrence and second cancers. Yet access to dietitians trained in oncology nutrition remains limited.
The AMPLIFY Diet program was designed to overcome these barriers by delivering personalized, evidence-based nutrition guidance entirely online, with weekly interactive sessions, goal‑setting tools, progress tracking and automated personalized feedback.
Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D., RDN.Between 2020 and 2024, researchers enrolled 349 cancer survivors ages 50 to 82 from 31 states. Participants represented survivors of nine obesity‑related cancers, including breast, colorectal, prostate, endometrial, ovarian, thyroid, renal and hematologic cancers.
After six months, participants in the AMPLIFY Diet program experienced:
- An average weight loss nearly five times greater than the control group
- Significant reductions in waist circumference and caloric intake
- Marked improvements in diet quality
- Lower circulating leptin levels, a hormone linked to cancer progression and cardiometabolic disease
- Improvements in blood pressure, physical functioning, depression, social roles and cognitive function
Demark-Wahnefried says, importantly, engagement remained high: Participants completed an average of 60 percent of weekly sessions, far exceeding engagement rates typically seen in other online lifestyle programs.
Unlike many weight‑loss interventions, AMPLIFY Diet requires no live staff support, making it well‑suited for widespread dissemination through health systems, cancer centers and community organizations.
The researchers note the program may serve as an important resource in a patient population in which weight‑loss medications are still considered experimental.
“Behavioral and nutritional interventions are essential,” Demark‑Wahnefried said. “Diet quality, muscle preservation, cognition, and long‑term sustainability of a healthful lifestyle and body weight are critical for cancer survivors, and even if weight loss medications eventually receive broadscale endorsement, they alone do not address all of these needs.”
Demark-Wahnefried and her research team are now focusing on broader implementation and dissemination of the AMPLIFY Diet intervention across clinical and non‑clinical settings, with the goal of improving survivorship care as well as cancer prevention nationwide.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.