Will weighing yourself every day help you lose weight? Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham received a $2.7 million R01 grant to study middle-aged adults to see if daily self-weighing will help them lose or manage their weight.
Kevin Fontaine, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Health Behavior in the School of Public Health, and Gareth Dutton, Ph.D., professor in the Division of Preventive Medicine, received the five-year grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“Many, if not most, middle-aged people with obesity continue to gain weight as they age. This increases their risk of developing several diseases, like diabetes, cancer and heart disease, which compromise health and quality of life,” Fontaine said. “A simple intervention, shown to be effective in college students, is to provide a digital scale and ask them to weigh themselves every day.”