at home weight loss

Stop using your treadmill as a clothes hanger. If you can see your exercise equipment, you're more likely to use it.

Keep your exercise gear in plain sight, and you'll be more likely to use it.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—"Home, Sweet Home," takes on new meaning when considered in the context of a study of at home weight loss just published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. The research found that your home and what's in it can influence your ability (or inability) to lose weight and keep it off.

THE DETAILS: Researchers under the direction of Suzanne Phelan, PhD, assistant professor of kinesiology at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, set out to determine the factors that distinguish those who've lost weight and kept it off from people who can’t seem to lose weight. To examine at home weight loss, they compared 167 people who had lost at least 10 percent of their body weight and kept it off for at least five years with two groups of overweight men and women who had a history of dieting with no success.

What they found, among other variables, was that the weight-loss maintainers tended to have more low-fat foods, including more fruit and veggies, in their homes than the yo-yo dieters, and fewer high-fat foods, such as high-fat snacks and spreads. Weight-loss maintainers also had fewer TVs in the home and more home exercise equipment. In other words, the homes of the weight-loss maintainers were better equipped to inspire and support weight loss and maintenance than those of the yo-yo dieters.