Rethinking Eating and FITness for Men

Obesity is one of the greatest threats to modern public health. It is associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes as well as increased healthcare expenditures. Throughout the time period that the prevalence of overweight and obesity have been monitored in the United States, men have consistently been more likely than women to be overweight and; conversely, women have been more likely to be obese. Recent trends suggest that this situation may be changing. Over the past decade, the prevalence of obesity has increased among men while it has stabilized among women. For the first time, men and women have near equal rates of obesity where approximately 35.7% of American adults are classified as obese; meanwhile, men continue to be more overweight than women.

The epidemiological trends have lead to a focus on creating weight loss programs that can aid overweight and obese adults in losing excess weight. Behavioral interventions for obesity have demonstrated the ability to produce weight losses of approximately 5-10% of initial body weight. These weight losses have been associated with decreased risk for type II diabetes, reduced blood pressure, and improvement in mental health outcomes. Unfortunately, men typically do not take advantage of such programs. Across multiple literature reviews, men consistently make up approximately 27% of study samples. This has lead to a situation where researchers have little information about how to enroll men in weight loss programs and what kind of programs are of interest to men. In order to combat the increased obesity in men and help them to avoid the negative consequences of obesity, it is important to help overweight and obese men change their eating and physical activity habits within the context of organized weight loss programs.

The REFIT (Rethinking Eating and FITness) intervention is an intervention developed to address men's needs for weight loss while balancing their need to perform behaviors which are seen as masculine. Men typically eat a diet that is associated with weight gain rather than weight loss. The REFIT intervention will focus on changing eating and exercise behaviors within a structured weight loss program that will allow men to maintain their autonomy. Autonomy is a central characteristic of enacted masculinity and has been described in qualitative research as a necessary aspect of a weight loss program for men. The intervention will focus on encouraging changes in eating and activity through increasing self-efficacy, autonomous motivation, outcome expectancies, and self-regulation for weight loss behaviors. The development of this intervention has been guided by qualitative research focused on what men want and need from weight loss programs as well as previous research focused on weight loss among both men and women. The approach to be used in the REFIT intervention is innovative as a combination of the "small changes" approach that has been used in weight gain prevention as well as the client centered deficit approaches used by Lutes and colleagues and Sbrocco and colleagues in weight loss programs.