Behavior Therapy for Obesity

Behavior therapy for obesity aims to make lifestyle modification necessary for weight loss in areas such as diet and exercise. It had been found that behavior therapy promotes weight loss and its maintenance by increasing treatment compliance. Lifestyle modification is regarded as essential for any treatment of obesity such as medication, dieting, surgery etc. Physicians often tend to be unwilling to use behavior therapy in clinical practice considering it timeconsuming and skill-intensive. However, behavior therapy for obesity can be standardized and used more readily. Furthermore non-face-to-face therapy and computer-assisted therapy have also been developed. We can use these materials conveniently. To achieve the goals of behavior therapy, that is, to change habits and to maintain these changes, it is necessary to promote patient’s self-care and to maximize the patient’s own ability to undertake this. Above all behavioral techniques, the theory and the principle of operant conditioning that voluntary behavior is reinforced by the contingency of the behavior is the most fundamental and therefore also an indispensable principle in general clinical practice. It is also necessary to ascertain the patient’s readiness to lose weight and to adjust guidance targets accordingly. Patients who demonstrated sufficient readiness were able to achieve an average weight loss of about BMI 0.9kg/m2 by correspondence intervention with target setting and one month’s self-monitoring followed by six-months of regular observations only. Therefore if health professionals utilize these readymade educational materials and programs, they could save their limited time in creating an effective environment in which to motivate patients and manage their progress.