Evidence-based Tools for Weight Loss Maintenance

Weight Loss Maintenance

Weight loss programmes help people lose weight but don’t help them keep it off.

Changing behaviour

Evidence-based research on what works and what does not work.

NoHoW Toolkit

Mobile apps, web-based tools and inputs from other technologies, such as smart scales and activity trackers.

Evidence it Works

The NoHoW Toolkit has been tested in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Denmark.

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The best way to help people lose weight and keep it off is to develop programmes based on solid evidence of what works and what doesn’t work. NoHoW's aim was to deliver evidence-based tools for weight loss maintenance.

About NoHoW

research in weight loss maintenance
Weight loss maintenance is difficult. We studied how to help people do it.

Health problems associated with obesity are a major healthcare challenge. Effective interventions and successful commercial weight loss programmes to help people lose weight already exist. However, most people re-gain the weight they lose – weight loss maintenance is really difficult.

Researchers already knew that weight loss maintenance (WLM) depends on changing behaviours. There are many techniques available to help people change their behaviour in the long term but we still don’t know which of these techniques work best for WLM or why. We also don’t know how different social and healthcare contexts influence the effectiveness of different techniques. To better tackle obesity and being overweight, we need to learn more about how different people change their behaviour to maintain their weight loss - this was the main research aim of NoHoW.

During the project, we learned about behaviour change to develop tools to help people maintain their weight loss, and looked at how technology can be put to work to help people make lasting changes. We assembled a Toolkit for WLM - the NoHoW Toolkit - that we tested with the help of participants in the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Denmark.

  • Weight Loss Maintenance (WLM)

    Which techniques work best for WLM? The NoHoW team investigated strategies and predictors for WLM.

  • Changing behaviour

    We need to learn more about how different people change their behavior to maintain their weight loss. At the moment, we don’t know enough about how people maintain their weight loss, or why they regain weight, to develop really effective programmes for weight loss maintenance (WLM).

  • NoHoW Toolkit for Weight Loss Maintenance

    The Toolkit included a set of mobile apps, web-based tools and inputs from other technologies, such as smart scales and activity trackers. We asked users what they would like to see included and how they would like to interact with the Toolkit.

Once we put the NoHoW Toolkit together, we tested it through a research study carried out in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Denmark.

Learn more about our results...

Meet the team

The NoHoW team was composed of behavioural scientists, psychologists, weight loss maintenance experts, tracking technology and ICT experts, intervention trialists and biostatisticians from across Europe, supported by an experienced project management team. The team also had dissemination and communication networks to ensure that the project delivers the intended impact, in both commercial and academic spheres.
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Related Projects

We are lucky to work in an exciting new domain where other projects are designing and developing many awesome lifestyle interventions. Just take a look.
SWEET
SWEET
Long term benefits and potential risks of sweeteners & sweetness enhancers
SWEET, a European Commission Horizon 2020 funded project, is supported by a consortium of 29 pan-European research, consumer and industry partners, who will develop and review evidence on long term benefits and potential risks involved in switching over to sweeteners and sweetness enhancers (S&SEs) in the context of public health and safety, obesity, and sustainability.
PROTEIN
PROTEIN
Providing personalised nutrition and physical activity support to EU citizens
PROTEIN is a research initiative led by a consortium of European public- and private-sector organizations working to promote health and wellbeing. By bringing together experts from across Europe, PROTEIN will develop tools using the latest communications technologies and machine learning strategies to provide personalized nutrition and physical activity support to EU citizens.
EuroFIT
EuroFIT
Social innovation to improve physical activity and sedentary behaviour through elite European football
EuroFIT aims to harness the ‘love of the game’ to engage football fans in health-promoting lifestyle changes through their loyalty and attachment to their clubs. The project will develop an evidence-based intervention to enable men to make sustainable improvements in their diet, activity, and physical fitness, and assess the intervention through am international randomized controlled trial. NoHoW partners Universidade Lisboa and Pintail Limited are also partners in EuroFIT.
SPOTLIGHT
SPOTLIGHT
Sustainable prevention of obesity through integrated strategies
SPOTLIGHT will systematically define the factors necessary for establishing effective health promotion approaches, taking into account individual, family, organisational, and environments that can change behaviour, lifestyles, and life skills to sustainably reduce obesogenic behaviours in an innovative way. NoHoW partners Universidade Lisboa and EASO are also partners in SPOTLIGHT.
NULevel
NULevel
NULevel project
NULevel is a research project into weight loss maintenance run by NoHoW partner Newcastle University. NULevel has created a new, scientific programme to help people avoid weight regain that is being tested with people who live or work in the North East of England.
MoodFood
MoodFood
An EU-funded project looking at how food intake, nutrient status, food‐related behaviour and obesity are linked to the development of depression.
MoodFOOD is an EU-funded project looking at how food intake, nutrient status, food‐related behaviour and obesity are linked to the development of depression. The project is combining existing high quality data from longitudinal prospective European cohort studies with new data from surveys, short-term experiments and a long-term preventative intervention study. NoHoW partners Aarhus University and EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF OBESITY (UK) are partners in MoodFOOD

Get in touch

NoHoW can be contacted via the project coordinator, Prof. Berit Heitmann:

Research Unit for Dietary Studies The Parker Institute Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospitals, The Capital Region Nordre Fasanvej 57, Hovedvejen, Entrance 5, Ground floor 2000 Frederiksberg – Denmark

Berit.Lilienthal.Heitmann@regionh.dk
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 643309. The material presented and views expressed here are the responsibility of the author(s) only. The EU Commission takes no responsibility for any use made of the information set out.