Assessment of the effectiveness of a mindset-based intervention: A new approach to obesity treatment

Over the past few decades, extensive studies have been conducted on mindsets in the field of social and personality psychology, and recently the application of this structure in the field of therapeutic interventions has been considered by researchers. However, little evidence is available for the effectiveness of mindset interventions in specific areas of health, such as obesity

The current research aimed to determine the effectiveness of the mindset-based intervention on weight loss, reduction of Body Mass Index (BMI), emotional overeating, and change of stress mindset in individuals with obesity.

The study was conducted as a clinical trial and we used random assignment to assign the participants to either the therapy or the control group. We recruited 42 obese people who visited the obesity clinic of Sina hospital based on convenience sampling. In the therapy group, participants received the mindset-based intervention for 8 sessions during the two-month period. Research materials included the Implicit Theories of Personality (ITOP), the Stress Mindset Measure (SMM) and Emotional Overeating Questionnaire (EOQ). Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the data.

Results indicated that the mindset-based intervention is effective in weight loss, both in the post-test and follow-up sections of the study. Further, we found that mindset-based intervention reduces emotional overeating and activates stress-is-enhancing mindset in the post-test phase. Therapeutic effects of these variables remained in the follow-up section.

Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the mindset-based intervention can be an independent or complementary treatment for weight loss, reducing BMI, and emotional overeating in people with obesity.