Research

Limits to Clinical Guidelines

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Content

Few clinical guidelines for obesity offer suggestions for counseling overweight persons with mobility impairments.

While obesity screening guidelines have been developed, few suggestions exist for counseling overweight persons with disabilities. The current established recommendations for weight loss include reduced-calorie diets, increased physical activity, and behavioral therapy or weight management programs. However, these recommendations rarely take into account reduced metabolism, difficulty in obtaining informed recommendations for diet and exercise appropriate for disabling conditions, physical inability to engage in aerobic activity, limited access to fitness facilities that can accommodate people with severe mobility impairments, and psychosocial issues that may accompany mobility limitation.