Research paper
Kitsantas A. The role of self-regulation strategies and self-efficacy perceptions in successful weight loss maintenance. Psychology & Health. 2000;15(6):811-820. doi:10.1080/08870440008405583
Why we cite it
Applies Zimmerman’s social cognitive self-regulation framework to weight maintenance, identifying the specific self-regulation strategies that distinguish successful weight maintainers from regainers. It records an association — people who maintained weight reported using more of these strategies, and reported higher confidence in implementing them, than people who tried and failed: goal-setting, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, environmental structuring, time management, social assistance, information seeking.
The design is cross-sectional: a structured questionnaire administered once, analysed by one-way ANOVA and correlation, so it cannot separate strategies that produce maintenance from strategies maintainers happen to report, and nothing in it tested teaching anyone the strategies. It shows that maintainers use more strategies, not that the strategies work or can be taught.
About the author
Anastasia Kitsantas, PhD, is Professor of Educational Psychology in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. She holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from the City University of New York (CUNY), where she studied under Barry J. Zimmerman. She is a Fellow of the APA (Division 15), the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Educational Research Association. She received the APA Division 15 Outstanding Dissertation Award (1997), the Barry J. Zimmerman Award for Outstanding Contributions to Studying and Self-Regulated Learning Research (AERA, 2019), and an Honoris Causa Doctoral Degree from the University of Ioannina, Greece (2024). At the time of this study she was at Florida State University.