Gaining an extra 650g of weight is no big deal, that is unless it’s an annual event that continues for 15 years. When it adds up to nearly 10 extra kilos that’s hard to shift.

According to  Melbourne researchers Dr Cate Lombard and Professor Helena Teede of the Jean Hailes Foundation for Women’s Health, this kind of sneaky weight gain – an average of 650g each year – now affects many young women in their 20s and 30s. They are the group that is gaining weight more rapidly than any other in Australia.

The new study published in this week’s British Medical Journal has come up with a simple way to combat  kilo creep. Instead of focusing on how to lose weight once it is on, this research takes a different tack by preventing weight gain in the first place. Researchers recruited 250 women aged between 25 and 49 from 12 Melbourne primary schools, and split them into two groups. The control group got a one-off 30 minute lecture at their school on the benefits of healthy eating and physical activity. The second group had four brief support sessions where they brainstormed ways for changing their behaviour to stay at a healthy weight. As well as the sessions they also got regular text messages of support from the research team.

“There was no specific diet or exercise program. We just got them to develop a plan for their own lives and work out simple changes that would suit them best  to help control their weight – often they were just small changes like cutting out biscuits, changing to low fat milk and going for a walk,” says Professor Teede, Monash University’s Chair of Women’s Health. “Some women cut junk food out of their diet and most of them increased the amount of exercise they did.”

But it was their own plan for long term change that evolved from the sessions, she stresses – not a one size fits all program imposed on them.

After four months, the researchers left both groups of women to go it alone – getting back in contact with them  after 12 months. For the women in the control group, an average of 800g of weight had crept on  and their cholesterol levels increased slightly. But those who were involved in the interactive sessions had resisted weight gain, lost an average of 200g and had not increased their cholesterol levels.

“This simple program stopped women putting on weight – otherwise in another decade or two these women could be 15 kilos heavier. Because the weight just creeps on a bit at a time, you modify the way you dress and it doesn’t become a major focus at first. Yet preventing this weight gain is really important – besides increasing the risk of heart disease and cancer as  women get older, gaining weight can have a profound effect on younger women’s fertility,” says Teede.

Why did  the interactive sessions work? Professor Teede thinks there were two main reasons – the women were making their own decisions about what strategies to use and because they were part of the same school community, they could give each other support.

Teede believes busy lives are one reason why younger woman are gaining weight faster than in previous generations.

“Women of this generation are more likely to be working longer hours and have less time to focus on their health or cook healthy meals. Many women with young families have also moved into low cost housing that’s further out and with limited public transport so there’s less opportunity for incidental exercise.  Then there’s the availability of high kilojoule food and the fact that we’re now normalising being overweight – if everyone around you is overweight, carrying extra kilos seems normal.”

I have always believed that information is power, when you give people information and support to create strategies that work for them, they feel empowered and able to confidently make good choices for themselves and their family.