Body Image Changes Associated with Participation in an Intensive Lifestyle Weight Loss Intervention

The primary aim of this study was to test for changes in body image in men and women enrolled in the Look AHEAD trial. Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) is a multicenter, randomized controlled trial designed to test whether intentional weight loss reduces cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in overweight individuals with type 2 diabetes. Participants included 157 adults at one site (Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC), Baton Rouge, LA) of the Look AHEAD study. At baseline, the mean BMI of the female participants was 36.4, and the mean BMI for males was 33.5. Following baseline assessment, participants were randomly assigned to the intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI, n = 81) or diabetes support and education (DSE, n = 76). The body morph assessment version 2.0 (BMA 2.0) was used to assess estimates of perceived current body size, ideal body size, acceptable body size, and body image dissatisfaction at baseline and 1 year. Over the 1 year, participants in the ILI group had significantly greater reductions in weight (10.1% for men and 8.9% for women) than those in the DSE group (+ 0.8% for men and -0.2%, for women). Perceived current body size was reduced significantly more in both men and women in the ILI group, relative to DSE. There were also significantly greater reductions in body image dissatisfaction in the ILI group, relative to the DSE group for men and women. The results of this study indicate that body image dissatisfaction improved following participation in an intensive behavioral weight loss program.