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Fear of Gaining Weight Can Make It Harder For Women To Quit Smoking
Women can have a harder time quitting smoking than men do, in part because they fear gaining extra pounds if they stop.
More and more anti-smoking programs are including dieting advice in hopes of increasing the rate of women quitting--but with little success. Results from a new study suggest that better results can be obtained by including counseling as a central element, since working with a therapist can help a woman work through and alleviate her fears about increased weight.
Drs. Kenneth A. Perkins and Marsha Marcus of the University of Pittsburgh enrolled 219 female smokers who seriously wanted to quit smoking but were worried about the potential consequence of weight gain. The women were randomly assigned to one of three smoking cessation groups: one group received standard anti-smoking therapy in which weight gain was not explicitly discussed, one group received standard therapy plus diet advice about how to prevent weight gain, and one group received standard therapy plus counseling to reduce their concerns about gaining weight. (Dieting was discouraged in the latter group.)
According to the study’s results published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, one year later, 21% of the women who’d received counseling to allay their concerns about weight gain were still not smoking, compared to 13% of the group who’d gotten diet advice and 9% of the standard treatment group.
While participants in all three groups did gain weight, women in the weight-counseling group gained an average of only about 5.5 pounds, while those in the diet-advice group gained an average of 11.9 pounds, and women in the standard treatment group gained 16.9 pounds.
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