Don't like the stigmatizing language.......
In SHAPE is a 12-month health promotion program consisting of a gym membership and a health promotion coach for people with serious mental illness. Participants have weekly individual meetings with their coach who is trained as a personal fitness trainer and who has received instruction in healthy eating and nutrition.
The health promotion coach is a key component of the In SHAPE program. The instructors receive one-week training where they receive instruction in motivational interviewing, fitness goal setting, healthy nutrition, strategies for health behavior change, and tracking eating and physical activity behaviors.
One of the main surprises of the study was the finding of maintenance of clinically significant reductions in cardiovascular risk six months after the intervention was removed. (Cardiovascular risk is defined as clinically meaningful weight loss of 5 percent or more or clinically significant improved fitness.) Another surprise was that the findings replicated and exceeded the positive findings of a prior randomized controlled trial of this same intervention.