• Military medicine · Jan 2025

    Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Weight Loss in Male and Female Active-duty Service Members: A Weight Management Study.

    • Jessica L Morse, Joel N Fishbein, Jennalee S Wooldridge, Matthew S Herbert, and Niloofar Afari.
    • Mental Health Care Line, VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA 92161, USA.
    • Mil Med. 2025 Jan 11.

    BackgroundOverweight and obesity are critical public health concerns with relevance to U.S. military personnel, as active duty service members must meet physical fitness and body composition standards. Biological sex and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis may affect service members' weight management efforts, but it is unclear what contribution each of these factors independently or in combination have on weight loss.MethodAddressing this gap in knowledge, the current study used multilevel models to examine the effects of sex and self-reported PTSD diagnosis on change in weight of active duty Navy service members (n = 178, 61% female, 24% PTSD) over the course of and after a behavioral weight management intervention.ResultsOn average, participants' weights decreased significantly during the intervention (P < .001), and there was a significant sex-by-PTSD interaction effect such that male participants without a self-reported PTSD diagnosis and female participants with a self-reported PTSD diagnosis lost significantly more weight during the intervention than their counterparts (P = .015). The main effects of sex and self-reported PTSD diagnosis on weight change during the intervention were nonsignificant (P's ≥ .24). While weight remained stable on average during the follow-up period (P = .28), female sex marginally predicted weight loss during the follow-up period (P = .07), whereas self-reported PTSD diagnosis and the sex-by-PTSD interaction were not significant (P's ≥ .16).ConclusionsThese results highlight the importance of considering both sex and PTSD diagnosis as factors that together may influence the efficacy of behavioral weight management programs for active duty service members.Clinical Trial RegistrationNCT01757847.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2025. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.

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