Obesity is a chronic illness defined as the accumulation of abnormal or excessive fat that
can cause harm to people’s health. It has become necessary to fight it and intervene in
favour of its prevention, especially among children. The literature in this field indicates
that, in general, interventions only with children or caregivers, or both, show favorable
results. This study assessed the effects of instructions, verbal report training (VRT) and
self-monitoring training (ST), applied with and without the participation of the primary
caregiver, on following nutritional rules in obese or overweight children. The participants
were two children (9 and 11 years old) and their primary caregivers. The setting was an
outpatient clinic in the Psychology department of a university hospital. The patients’
medical records, an initial interview form, the Parenting Style Inventory (PSI), a second
interview form, dietary recall, an informative manual on obesity and healthy eating habits,
a knowledge test, a nutritional counseling protocol for children, a self-monitoring protocol,
a guide for analysis of the self-monitoring protocol, toys and games and a final interview
form were used. The collection procedure occurred in 10 sessions distributed in
approximately 15 weeks and consisted of medical records analysis; interview at the
outpatient clinic with the caregiver and the child for signing the Free and Informed
Consent Form, application of the initial interview form and the PSI; participants’ inclusion
in one of two conditions (Condition 1, only the child present [P1]; Condition 2, both the
child [P2] and his/her primary caregiver [C2] were present); application of the second
interview form followed by the dietary recall use (Baseline 1 [BL1]); application of the
informative manual on obesity and healthy eating habits and the knowledge test; VRT
(Baseline 2 [BL2]); ST; follow-up interview and final interview. As for the effects of
instructions, the results indicate that P1 maintained the same classification on all items,
while P2 improved his/her performance in the items knowledge and nutritional orientation
follow and C2 showed improvement in the knowledge about obesity at the end of the
study. Adherence to diet scores obtained by P2 were higher than those obtained by P1 in
all phases of the study. Comparing the mean obtained by both participants in BL1 and
BL2, an increase of 39.77 % was observed indicating clinically significant change after
intervention. The combination of variables in this study was favorable on the participants’
repertoire extension in relation to eating behavior, having the subject himself as reference
throughout the study. The results suggest that there is higher effectiveness when children
and caregivers are the target of intervention.
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