Lifestyle Changes Through Exercise and Nutrition

The LEAN Project is a community-based weight loss program that is delivered through churches serving lower-income, obese, African American adults. The intervention will involve training community health coaches to deliver the intervention. These community health coaches will be individuals who are members of the church and who are willing to be trained on how to deliver behaviorally-based, empirically proven, lifestyle change interventions. These community health coaches will be trained by the staff at Pennington Biomedical, who have experience training and delivering these types of interventions. The community health coaches will deliver the intervention through their respective church after being trained. Weekly text messages will be sent to participants in order to supplement the intervention sessions and provide support. The primary aim is to determine if the trained community health coach church-based intervention will result in significant weight loss. Secondary aims will assess blood glucose, cholesterol, physical activity, food intake, and weight related quality of life.