Background
To prevent people from relapsing into unhealthy habits, insight into predictors of relapse in physical activity and dietary behavior is needed. Therefore, we aimed to explore predictors of relapse in physical activity and dietary behavior from the perspectives of health practitioners and the key population (i.e. adults who recently lost weight and experienced relapse).
Methods
We used concept mapping to collect data among five groups of health practitioners (N = 39) and three key population groups (N = 21). First participants’ ideas on potential predictors were collected. Subsequently, these ideas were individually sorted by relatedness and rated on importance. Concept maps were created for each group using principal component analysis and cluster analysis.
Results
In total 43 predictors were identified, of which the majority belonged to the individual domain compared to the environmental domain. Although the majority of perceived predictors were mentioned by both stakeholder groups, both groups had different opinions regarding the importance of predictors. Also, few predictors were mentioned by all practitioner groups, but not by the key population, and vice versa. Practitioners indicated change in daily structure, stress, lack of effective coping skills, habitual behavior, and lack of self-efficacy regarding losing weight as most important recurrent (i.e. mentioned in all practitioner groups) predictors. The key population indicated lifestyle imbalance or experiencing a life event, lack of perseverance, negative emotional state, abstinence violation effect, decrease in motivation and indulgence as most important recurrent predictors.
Conclusions
Both stakeholder groups predominantly rated individual factors as most important perceived predictors of relapse. The finding that both groups differed in opinion regarding importance of predictors or identified different predictors, may provide an opportunity to enhance lifestyle coaching by ensuring it is patient-centered and tailored.