January 2011 Summary

There were many great responses to the questions I asked. Overall, I feel there was a lot of consensus amongst the replies. People were very insightful and provided useful comments. I enjoyed getting to read the answers to my questions and getting everyone’s opinions. I believe that ultimately most were in agreement that self-monitoring is a positive thing and it can aid in weight loss and engaging in healthy behaviors.

For question one, it seems that most people believe that the results found in that systematic review were valid although they studied mostly the same population of overweight and obese white women. A few respondents thought that the results were valid but that they could not be generalized to other populations. Several people suggested that studying men more specifically, children or races like Hispanic people could be very beneficial.

Liz brought up an interesting point that women may be more likely to already record their diet and exercise, so using men as a sample might be a good comparison.

Melanie, Jamie, Stephanie and others all felt that children would make a very good population for this study to see whether self-monitoring may aid in weight loss for them.

Tiffany and Anna both thought that using populations from different socioeconomic statuses would be interesting to see if there is difference in self-monitoring due to the means to acquire the tools used for self-monitoring.

For question two, the general agreement was that there are not any other probably ways to compile data for this kind of study. The self-reported data was really the only way research on self-monitoring can be done but that there is no real way to achieve complete accuracy from all of the participants as some people may falsify their data.

I like Jordan’s suggestion of having patients record their weights daily at the same time. This might help keep on track better. Anna provided some research to back this up.

Michela brought up a very interesting point that it may not matter how accurate these self-reports are if people are actually losing weight, eating less calories, and exercising more. I agree with this. I would like to see how accurate the self-reports are, but if the practice leads to healthy results for people then I don’t think accuracy is as important.

Many people like Amanda and Bethany believe that self-reporting data is going to be the most efficient and cost-effective way to gather data especially with larger population samples.

For question three, everyone was in agreement that they would use the findings of this review when speaking to patients and clients. This made me very happy because I think that self-monitoring is so important.

Anna gave a wonderful remark that self-monitoring for people can be a very empowering tool especially if they see that all of their hard work and tracking lead to positive results like weight loss.

Sarah G. stated that self-monitoring may not work for everyone and no one should be forced to do so because they may be able to lose weight without tracking their diet, weight, exercise, etc. She totally has a point and trying to make people do something that they do not want to usually ends up with worse results.

The main reason I chose this study to discuss for our journal club is that I believe it is very relevant to all fields of dietetics. I am a huge believer in self-monitoring and I found that this systematic review reinforced my sentiment. By and large most everyone seemed to agree that self-monitoring is a useful tool in weight loss and it supports maintaining healthy behaviors. I think everyone gave great feedback to these questions and provided wonderful comments regarding the results that can be applied to practice.