The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

Obesity Treatment 207

• Exercise: Cycle paths could be built to encourage cycling rather than
  car use. Footpaths could be made safer and have better lighting to
  encourage walking. Car access to cities could be restricted or banned
  to encourage the use of public transportation. The use of elevators could
  be restricted to the elderly, disabled, and those with children, and stairs
  could be an available alternative.


• Schools: Schools could be subsidized to provide healthier meals and could
  place a greater emphasis on the benefits of exercise. One recent interven-
  tion involved school-based education which encouraged healthy eating
  and discouraged the consumption of carbonated drinks (James, Thomas,
  and Kerr, 2007). The intervention last one year and children were
  followed up at 1 and 3 years. The results were promising by one year
  with a reduction in BMI in the intervention group. However, this
  difference was not sustained at 3 years. Wardle et al. (2007) explored
  the association between school-based physical education (PE) and body
  fat in boys across a 5-year period and reported that those who did more
  PE over this time gained less weight, indicating that schools could
  promote greater involvement in PE as a means to prevent the onset of
  obesity. No difference was found for girls.

Individualistic approaches

Individualistic approaches to prevention could involve providing an inter-
vention for all in the form of dietary information or encouragement to
exercise. However, whereas studies show that exercise can prevent weight
gain in the longer term (Klesges, Isbell, and Klesges, 1992; French et al.,
1994), intensive interventions providing dietary and exercise information
to large populations have no significant impact on BMI (Taylor et al., 1991;
Jeffery et al., 1995). Therefore, some researchers have highlighted the need
to target those individuals at risk of obesity including pregnant women and
high-risk children. Some research has also offered prevention programs to
children in general.

Pregnancy
Weight gain in pregnancy should be sufficient to meet the growth and devel-
opment of the fetus and extra maternal tissue. Some research indicates,
however, that a substantial number of pregnant women gain much more
weight than necessary during pregnancy (Olsen and Mundt, 1986; Parham,
Astrom, and King, 1990). Such weight gain has been shown to relate to