Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer among Canadian women. Fortunately women living with CVD who participate in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) are able to significantly improve their functional capacity, CVD risk profile, and health-related quality of life. The benefits of CR, however, may not be fully experienced by all participants, particularly cardiac patients who are overweight or obese upon program entry, and who experience little to no weight loss upon program completion.
Background: To address this issue, --has developed the Healthy Weight for Healthy Living Program (HW). HW is a 14-week focused dietary counseling program designed for women living with or at risk of developing CVD, and who are overweight or obese and interested in learning about healthy eating and exercise practices that may assist them in losing weight and improving their cardiometabolic profile. The program involves weekly group meetings where participants receive dietetic counseling from a dietitian. Participants receive information and group counseling on how to increase daily physical activity from an exercise specialist. In order to better manage stress, participants are also taught cognitive behavioral therapy techniques by a social worker.
Purpose: To determine the influence of the HW program on participants' healthy lifestyle choices by directly assessing the impact of the program in terms of participant weight loss and changes in anthropometric measurements.
Method: A retrospective chart review was conducted to compare baseline and final anthropometric measurements of all HW participants from January 2004 to December 2007.
Results: Significant weight loss was observed from pre- to post-program (M = -2.90kg, SEM = 0.39), t(28) = 7.46, P < 001. Participation in the HW program also resulted in a significant reduction in participants' waist circumference ((M = -1.46 in, SEM = 0.17), t(28) = 8.79, P < .001) and body mass index [(M = -1.1kg/m2, SEM = 0.15), t(28) = 7.29, P < .001] from baseline to program completion. Changes in waist-to-hip ratio ((M = -0.006, SEM = 0.004), t(28) = 1.54, P = .14) were not significant.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates the effectiveness of focused dietary group counseling for women involved in cardiac rehabilitation, contributing to the scarce intervention literature on dietetic counseling for women living with or at risk of CVD. Moreover, HW provides a viable program model that can be further developed for clinical use in a cardiac rehabilitation setting.