Dublin, Ireland – A new study suggests that living in a safer neighborhood may have a bigger impact on weight loss than how close your home is to a gym or grocery store. Factors such as inadequate street lighting, groups of children hanging around and heavy traffic are all associated with difficulty losing weight, the researchers add.
Although lifestyle interventions like diet and exercise are key to combating obesity, the influence of neighborhood on weight loss remains largely unexplored. The recent study looked at this topic by surveying 122 people with obesity, 74.6% of whom were women with an average BMI of 39. Participants took part in a lifestyle intervention involving dietary advice, exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy. Researchers analyzed the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and changes in participants’ waist circumference and weight over an 18-month period.
Prior to the program, participants completed a questionnaire assessing various aspects of their neighborhood. Five key factors were neighborhood safety, attractiveness, social cohesion, and accessibility to grocery stores and sports facilities.
Safety considered fears of crime or harassment and the comfort level of walking or cycling in high traffic areas. This category also took into account the adequacy of street lighting in the evening and at night, and any concerns about young people loitering. Attractiveness assesses the presence of trees and parks, as well as general cleanliness. Social cohesion examined feelings of loneliness in the neighborhood, the level of interaction between neighbors and their willingness to help each other.
The study authors report that a one-point increase in neighborhood safety scores was associated with 1.3% greater initial weight loss after the first 10 weeks. Long-term safety was associated with an average 3.2% decrease in weight and an average 2.6% reduction in waist circumference.
The researchers measured the participants’ height, weight and waist circumference at the start of the program, after 10 weeks and then after 18 months. The results show that people living in safer neighborhoods experienced the greatest weight loss and reduced waist circumference at both 10 weeks and 18 months.
“There are several possible reasons why neighborhood safety is important. People may be less willing to go out if they don’t feel safe, which forces them to do less physical activity,” says Boëlle Brouwer from the University Medical Center Rotterdam in a Press release. “Another explanation could be that feelings of insecurity increase stress levels, which may contribute to unhealthy eating behaviors and weight gain. We also cannot exclude that neighborhood safety is associated with d other factors, for example poverty, that may be important for the association we found.
The study also found that a one-point increase in social cohesion tended to lead to an average 1.3% decrease in waist circumference over the first 10 weeks.
“In general, it is known that social cohesion can provide social support and motivation to participants. Feeling connected and supported by the people around you can increase adherence to healthy behaviors and improve overall outcomes of lifestyle interventions,” Brouwer said.
However, the team did not find a significant association between social cohesion and long-term changes in weight and waist circumference. There was a potential correlation between neighborhood attractiveness and long-term weight loss and changes in waist circumference.
“Our results indicate that if you don’t feel safe where you live, it may reduce your chances of losing weight in response to combined lifestyle interventions. We need more research to determine how the Neighborhood safety can affect weight and waist circumference and whether feelings of safety are related to other factors such as housing, stress or poverty,” continues Brouwer.
“We often focus on individuals as part of a lifestyle intervention for obese people. In this study, we found indications that the social and physical environment they live in may play a role in the success of the intervention, although we need more research to see if this is causally linked. added study co-author Elisabeth van Rossum, a professor at the University Medical Center Rotterdam.
“If it turns out that these environmental and social factors are indeed drivers of success in guided lifestyle intervention, we need to investigate to what extent this also applies to people trying to lose weight through themselves.”
The authors of the study presented their findings to the European Obesity Congress in Dublin, Ireland.
South West News Service editor Alice Clifford contributed to this report.
