PhD defence: Volition and motivation's influence on weight loss maintenance in the period following an intensive lifestyle intervention

Peter Elsborg

PhD thesis

The prevalence of overweight and obesity in the world is growing. Because obesity is associated with a number of serious lifestyle diseases such as hearth disease, a vast amount of research has been devoted to investigate how to assist lasting weight loss.

An example of this is the so-called intensive lifestyle interventions where participants live with like-minded for a short period of time and intensly work on changing their lifestyle e.g. exercise more, eat healthier ect. Even though such interventions are effective on short term, many experience relapse after end of the intervention.

The aim of the thesis was to investigate how motivation and volition influence the difficult task of weight loss maintenance for individuals battling obesity in the period that follows an intensive lifestyle intervention.

The thesis show that in order to ensure sustained weight loss, it is important to actively facilitate exercise participation in the period that follows the end of an intervention, and here it is especially important for interventions to develop upon participants’ exercise-specific self-determined motivation and volitional skills.

2017, 148 pages,
ISBN 978 87 7209 041 2.

Time

4 September 2017, 13:00

Place

Benzon auditoriet, Universitetsparken 2, 2100 Copenhagen.

Opponents 

Associate professor Charlotte Svendler Nielsen (chair), Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Professor Jürgen Beckmann, Technische Universität München, Germany.

Associate Professor Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis, University of Thessaly, Greece.

Supervisor

Associate Professor Anne-Marie Elbe, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Co-supervisor

Professor Gertrud Pfister, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.