What advice do general practitioners give to people living with obesity to lose weight? A qualitative content analysis of recorded interactions.

Current guidelines strongly encourage general practitioners (GPs) to talk to people living with obesity about weight loss. Evidence has shown that conversations with a doctor about weight management can be highly effective, as even very brief advice has been associated with weight loss. In order to understand what GPs actually say when offering weight-loss advice to patients with obesity, we analysed 159 audio recordings of conversations between GPs and patients. We found that GPs gave mainly generic diet and exercise messages for example "reduce your carbohydrates" and "move more." Furthermore, weight-loss advice was often not tailored to patients' existing knowledge and behaviours. Obesity is a chronic and relapsing condition, but patients were not given specific or evidence-based advice to support them to manage this. The findings suggest that the brief weight-loss advice from GPs could be more effective if they were given clearer guidance on which methods of weight-loss evidence has shown actually works.