Social distancing and isolation measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic included closure of many weight management services. People living with obesity were vulnerable to weight gain and negative impacts on physical and mental health. Patient organisations, such as ECPO and Obesity UK, told us they needed remotely delivered interventions to support their members, emphasising the need for psychological support. We worked with them to adapt our guided self-help intervention to support weight management (SWiM) to specifically help people manage their weight during the COVID-19 pandemic (SWiM-C). We then evaluated the impact of the SWIM-C intervention on weight, eating behaviour, physical activity and mental wellbeing over 12 months.

The Supporting Weight Management during COVID-19 (SWiM-C) intervention is a 12-week guided self-help programme. It is based on acceptance and commitment therapy, targets known psychological determinants of weight management and is delivered via an online platform with remote support (one phone call, one email) from a coach.

We recruited 388 adults with overweight and obesity. Half of them were offered the SWiM-C programme.  The other half were offered standard written advice materials on diet, physical activity and mental health.

We asked participants to complete online questionnaires at the beginning of the study, 4 months (end of intervention) and 12 months, so that we could compare changes in weight, health behaviours and wellbeing between the two groups. At the end of the study, the difference between groups in weight was small and uncertain. However, SWiM-C had a protective effect on wellbeing during the height of the pandemic and led to greater improvements in uncontrolled eating, emotional eating, experiential avoidance, and physical activity. You can read more about the 4 month outcomes here, and about the 12 month outcomes here

We  also interviewed a small sample of participants over the telephone to find out about their experiences of the SWiM-C programme and the study. We found that participants were exposed to multiple factors that negatively impact their mental health during the trial and aspects of the SWiM-C intervention appeared to support some participants to manage these. You can read more about this qualitative study here.

While the SWiM-C intervention was specifically tailored to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be generalizable to other situations involving high levels of stress, reduced access to resources, and/or low levels of mobility. The core components of SWiM-C were taken from the SWiM programme, which was developed for broader use within the NHS to support weight loss maintenance. We are currently developing this programme further to enhance effectiveness.