(P15-018-24) Lifestyle Wellness: A Novel and Comprehensive Wellness Assessment for Lifestyle-Based Interventions

Objectives: While weight status and clinical laboratory measures are important in assessing obesity-related disease severity and chronic disease risk, including a broader range of emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral factors would provide greater context of an individual’s overall state of wellness and could be used to better guide treatment decisions. The purpose of this research was to develop a comprehensive Lifestyle Wellness assessment for use in lifestyle-based wellness interventions and programs.

Methods: An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted using baseline data from N=138 adults who were participating in behavioral weight loss trials. An unweighted least squares extraction method with oblique rotation was used. Twenty-four putative measures spanning constructs related to metabolic health, emotional health/wellbeing, body weight and composition, diet quality, and fitness were analyzed for retention in the Lifestyle Wellness assessment.

Results: Mean BMI was 38.0 ± 6.6 kg/m², mean age was 57.3 years, and 77.5% of participants were female. The EFA produced a five-factor model with 13 items that explained 80.3% of the variance. The retained factors included: 1) Emotional Health: mindfulness, resilience, quality of life, and happiness; 2) Metabolic Health – Blood Pressure: systolic and diastolic blood pressure, 3) Metabolic Health – Lipids: total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol, 4) Body State: BMI and waist circumference, and 5) Fitness State: grip strength, jump height, and percent body fat.

Conclusions: These findings show that anthropometric assessments of “body state” are distinguishable from metabolic health and body fat clustered with fitness-related measures in adults with obesity. Thus, Lifestyle Wellness is a more comprehensive assessment that enables innovative wellness-related research such as metabolically health obesity and weight-neutral interventions, and should be investigated in additional populations with greater age, sex/gender, and body size diversity.

Funding Sources: NIDDK (K01DK124244 and P30DK056336) and General Mills, Inc.