Engaging Motivation for the Prevention of Weight Regain

This mindfulness-meditation based intervention is designed to increase awareness of the factors that affect weight loss maintenance after successful weight loss. Mindfulness meditation is a technique for training awareness. The program will train subjects to increase awareness of the somatic, cognitive, affective, interpersonal and environmental factors that mediate eating and physical activity by incorporating empirically-supported and theoretically-synergized components, including: general mindfulness meditation skills, mindful and intuitive eating, appetite-satiety awareness, mindful movement and yoga, a mindful approach to exercise engagement, and training in enhancing emotion regulation and stress management skills. In addition, the MBWLM group will be supported by Maintenance Partners who are trained as Integrative Health Coaches.

Attention/Education/Support Control group, designed to control for educational content as well as nonspecific treatment factors \[e.g., natural history (time), amount of time and energy spent in the intervention, attention by group leaders, social support, as well as information \& education\]. Like the experimental group(MBWLM), this group meet once a week for 2 hours during the 12-week intervention, and then at 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks post the 12 week intervention. Participants also receive the same amount of telephonic support through Maintenance Partners as the experimental group, but their Maintenance Partners employed empathic listening only rather than myriad coaching techniques.