Facilitating and Impeding Factors in Successful Weight Loss among the Adolescents with Overweight and Obesity: A Qualitative Study

As overweight and obesity in children and adolescents continue to increase, this study was designed to explore the factors that facilitate or hinder weight control in obese and overweight adolescents.

This qualitative study was conducted as a personal interview with 12 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years who succeeded in losing weight and those who did not, from the clinic at the Pediatric Cardiovascular Research Center at the Isfahan Cardiovascular Research Institute, in 2019. We used a purposeful sampling method and a qualitative analysis method to analyze the data.

Seven categories consisting of willpower and perseverance, support and encouragement of others, tendencies to beauty, lack of a rush to achieve results, adequate physical activity, understanding the disadvantages of obesity, and understanding the benefits of weight loss were identified as facilitating factors in this study. Seven other factors were reported as obstacles of weight loss, including misconceptions,  lack of family cooperation in lifestyle modification, lack of awareness about the effects of obesity, concern about dietary restrictions, lack of management and supervision of school cafeterias, parental misbehavior in handling adolescents with overweight or obesity, and their psychological damages.

The results of the present study show that in order to bring adolescents to the ideal weight, individual, environmental and familial factors and the interaction between them should be considered. The findings of this study could be used by health officials and policymakers to develop programs to prevent and control overweight and overcome obesity.