Eating-Related and Psychological Outcomes of Health at Every Size Intervention in Health and Social Services Centers Across the Province of Québec

Purpose: To report the outcomes of a Health at Every Size (HAES) intervention in a real-world setting.Design: Quasi-experimental design evaluating eating behaviors and psychological factors.Setting: The HAES intervention is offered in Health and Social Services Centers in Québec (Canada).Participants: For this study, 216 women (body mass index [BMI]: 35.76 [6.80] kg/m2) who participated to the HAES intervention were compared to 110 women (BMI: 34.56 [7.30] kg/m2) from a comparison group.Intervention: The HAES intervention is composed of 14 weekly meetings provided by health professionals. It focuses on healthy lifestyle, self-acceptance, and intuitive eating.Measures: Eating behaviors (ie, flexible restraint, rigid restraint, disinhibition, susceptibility to hunger, intuitive eating, and obsessive-compulsive eating) and psychological correlates (ie, body esteem, self-esteem, and depression) were assessed using validated questionnaires at baseline, postintervention, and 1-year follow-up.Analysis: Group, time, and interaction effects analyzed with mixed models.Results: Significant group by time interactions were found for flexible restraint (P= .0400), disinhibition (P< .0001), susceptibility to hunger (P< .0001), intuitive eating (P< .0001), obsessive–compulsive eating (P< .0001), body-esteem (P< .0001), depression (P= .0057), and self-esteem (P< .0001), where women in the HAES group showed greater improvements than women in the comparison group at short and/or long term.Conclusion: The evaluation of this HAES intervention in a real-life context showed its effectiveness in improving eating-, weight-, and psychological-related variables among women struggling with weight and body image.