Empowering Healthy Lifestyle Behavior to Prevent and Control Obesity in Young Adults

This human study will be a pilot trial that will precede a planned more long-term intervention trial. It will focus on young adults (age 18 to 25 y). The main purpose is to study whether the healthy lifestyle recommender solution, reflecting a multi-portfolio intervention and developed within this project, is well accepted by the participants, has a decent adherence (i.e. user time of the app), and whether the overall design is well suited to the participants, in order that they will improve dietary habits. This study will be of longitudinal design without a control group.

At present, numbers of persons with overweight and obesity continue to grow in most countries worldwide. Young adults are at risk since in in this period of life most people start to be independent from their families, with the consequent decisions about their food and lifestyle choices. It is frequent that at this time an increase in irregularity of meals and unhealthy food choices, occurs, together with changes in physical activity habits and social or individual pressures. Because of this, it is essential to give tools to these individuals that will allow them to make healthy choices and to have healthy habits, since they will be the future adult population that will raise and inspire the next generation. As solutions to combat the trend toward increasing overweight and obesity are much in need, the present study aims to intervene with the developed healthy lifestyle recommender solution to address various factors known to constitute a risk for developing obesity, including socio-demographic aspects, psychological/behavioural ones, physical activity, dietary patterns, among other. Such a multi-dimensional portfolio approach is believed to be very much needed for the prevention of obesity and co-morbidities, and the personalization of the solution, as well as the nudging/gamification.