How Changes in Diet and Physical Activity Affect Weight Loss and Glycemic Control?

Objectives: Diet and physical activity are two modifiable factors in improving risk factors of chronic diseases such as body weight and glycemic level. Features of educational prevention programs are controllable via their design. We examined how these factors were related to success in achieving weight loss and glycemic control in Alliance for a Healthy Border, a chronic disease prevention program with pre-post-post evaluations through 12 federally qualified community health centers serving primarily Hispanics in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Methods: Logistic regressions were employed for dependent variables, weight loss and glycemic control success, at two time points: program-end and post-six-month. Socio-demographic and baseline health condition factors were also included in the model.

Results: Factors affecting weight loss success were gender, age, employment status, income, insurance, diabetes, baseline BMI, smoking status, family history of diabetes, session type, program duration and physical activity changes. Factors affecting achievement of glycemic success included gender, age, employment status, diabetes, baseline BMI, family history of diabetes, program duration and physical activity changes.

Conclusions: Out of four features of different programs, session type and program duration were associated with success. Within a relative short period, physical activity improvements had a stronger effect on weight reduction and glycemic success than dietary habits improvements for border Hispanic population. In addition to socio-demographic factors, participants with better baseline health conditions, including participants without diabetes, normal BMI, former smokers, and without a family history of diabetes, were more likely to achieve success after the interventions.