INTRODUCTION:

Overweight has reached epidemic proportions worldwide, and other chronic non-communicable diseases emerge. In this context, there is an increase in the demand for dietary therapy for weight loss, which is not always successful due to low adherence and consequent abandonment of these therapies.

OBJECTIVES:

To investigate the probability of abandoning dietary therapy for weight loss according to psychosocial, socioeconomic, demographic, anthropometric and clinical aspects.

METHODOLOGY:

Retrospective quantitative cross-sectional study. Developed in two health institutions and one teaching institution. Including adults from 20 to 60 years who had already undergone dietary therapy for weight loss. Questionnaires were applied to collect psychosocial, socioeconomic, demographic, anthropometric and clinical data. Based on the collected data, a model was estimated using the Probit method of multiple regression to investigate which variables influence the probability of abandoning dietary therapy for weight loss.

RESULTS:

The sample consisted of 86 individuals, 57% of whom had abandoned dietary treatment for weight loss. The estimation of the model showed that the educational variable increases the abandonment of dietary therapy for weight loss by 18.9 percentage points. In relation to psychosocial factors, the increase of a degree in satisfaction with therapy and in social support reduces the probability of dropping out by 7.8 percentage points and 5.7 percentage points, respectively. And the variables of a clinical, economic, demographic and anthropometric character were not statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS:

It was found that a high level of education favors the abandonment of dietary therapy for weight loss and satisfaction and social support work in the opposite way to reduce abandonment, in this sense the success of dietary therapy for weight loss depends to some extent of such factors.

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