Purpose: Sodegaura City (Chiba, Japan) and the University of Tsukuba (Ibaraki, Japan) have jointly established a community-based weight loss program named the Sodegaura SMART Diet (SSD). The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the SSD on weight loss and metabolic syndrome (MS) components.
Methods: The study period spanned 2004 to 2008 with 192 women who satisfied the following two study criteria: (1) age from 40 to 64 years; and (2) BMI > or =25 kg/m2 or abdominal circumference (AC) > or =90 cm. A total of 184 (95.8%) women completed the entire study program of 12 lectures in 14 weeks regarding an appropriate diet and physical activity. We measured and analyzed changes in body weight and MS components before and after the SSD. Furthermore, we compared changes in body weight and MS componenfs between an intervention group (32 participants in 2008) and a control group (16 women who participated in a one-time lecture on MS and pre- and post-measurement sessions). Between 2004 and 2006, 122 women participated in the SSD, 96 of which (78.7%) consented to a 2 year follow-up measurement session.
Results: Analysis of the 184 subjects who completed the study program showed significant decreases in body weight (66.9 +/- 8.2 kg to 59.4 +/- 7.5 kg), BMJ (27.7 +/- 2.7 kg/m2 to 24.6 +/- 2.6kg/m2), AC (95.2 +/- 7.4 cm to 87.8 +/- 7.6 cm), and the number of MS components (2.1 +/- 1.1 to 1.1 +/- 1.0). At baseline, the prevalence of MS and pre-MS as determined by the Japanese MS definitions was 33.2 00 (61 subjects) and 27.700 (51 subjects), respectively. After the intervention, the prevalence decreased significantly to 6.0% (11 subjects) and 15.2% (28 subjects), respectively. We observed significant group differences between the SSD and control groups in changes for several variables, i.e., body weight, BMI, percent fat mass, AC, triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose, and number of MS components. After the 2 year follow-up, body weight (-6.2 +/- 3.7 kg) and AC (-5.9 +/- 5.0 cm) were still significantly decreased compared to pre-intervention measurements.
Conclusions: Our study showed that the SSD may affect weight loss and improve MS components among middle-aged Sodegaura citizens. The local government will use these data to plan a city-wide promotion of the program to improve the health of its citizens.