Comment On “The Hockey Fans in Training Intervention for Men with Overweight or Obesity: A Pragmatic Cluster Randomised Trial”

Abstract

We have thoroughly reviewed the article titled “The Hockey Fans in Training Intervention for Men with Overweight or Obesity: a Pragmatic Cluster Randomised Trial” authored by Patrella.¹ We applaud the author's efforts to address the rising obesity pandemic and their awareness of the potentially fatal conditions that people who are overweight confront. It's an innovative idea to leverage sports fandom to encourage healthy living and fight this issue. Improvements in secondary outcomes, such as decreased waist circumference and systolic blood pressure, as well as improved dietary practices and cardiorespiratory fitness, further enhanced the program's efficacy. The deliberate steps used to reduce bias, such as the intent-to-treat analysis, which guarantees that the results take into consideration every participant, and the blinded outcome assessment utilizing the digital scale photos, provide credibility to the study's methodology and conclusions. However, there are a few elements that may have improved the program's results even further.

Firstly, at the end of a 12-month period, the intervention group in the Hockey Fans in Training program had lost an average of 2.02 kg of weight. On the other hand, as the same study mentioned, individuals who took part in the Football Fans in Training program lost 4.9 kg on average during the same time period.² This implies that the framework of the FFIT program might have been more rigorous and interesting. Furthermore, fewer sessions attended during the Hockey FIT program due to COVID-19 disruptions may have contributed to the program's lower weight reduction and impacted its overall efficacy.