"The technique, motivational interviewing, involves asking open-ended questions (for example, "could you tell me how you feel about your weight"), listening and repeating the interviewee's answers, and encouraging them to recognize what is holding them back from making changes, Dr. Robert P. Schwartz of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. "

""What you want to do is get the patient to take responsibility for their behaviors," Schwartz said in an interview. "What motivational interviewing does is help people get unstuck from their ambivalence.""

"Motivational interviewing has been used successfully to help people with substance abuse problems, but employing the approach to address physical activity and nutrition is something new, he added."

"Schwartz and his team conducted a pilot study of the approach with 91 children aged 3 to 7 and their parents. The children were either overweight or normal weight but had an obese parent. They were randomized to a control group, given safety handouts lee; a minimal intervention group, which had one motivational interviewing session with the pediatrician; or an intensive group, made up of two sessions with either a pediatrician or nutritionist."

"Six months later, the researchers found, there were drops in body mass index percentile for children in each group, but these reductions weren't statistically significant. One third of patients dropped out of the program overall, and dropout rates were particularly high in the intensive group, half of whom left the program."

"Parents of children in the minimal intervention group said their children cut down on eating snacks after the
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