LETTER TO EDITOR

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

Alina Amer.1 Rana Sajawal Joiya.1 Muhammad Umar Ahsan.2 Muhammad Saeed.2 

• .1CMH Lahore Medical College & Institute of Dentistry 
• .2D.G. Khan Medical College, Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan
•  
• Corresponding Author: Muhamad Umar Ahsan, D.G.Khan Medical College, Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab Pakistan. E-mail: [email protected]
•  

Received: April 12, 2025                                            Published: May 21, 2025

Citation: MU Ahsan. Comment On “The Hockey Fans in Training Intervention for Men with Overweight or Obesity: A Pragmatic Cluster Randomised Trial”. Int J Complement Intern Med. 2025;6(2): 331–333. DOI: 10. 58349/IJCIM. 2. 6. 2025. 00148

Copyright: ©2025 MU Ahsan. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.

Keywords: HFIT:PA: Weight loss: Exercise guidelines 

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.

References 

1. Petrella RJ, Gill DP, Silva NC, et al. The hockey fans in training intervention for men with overweight or obesity: a pragmatic cluster randomised trial. EClinicalMedicine. 2024;1:77. 

2. Gray CM, Hunt K, Mutrie N, et al. Football Fans in Training: the development and optimization of an intervention delivered through professional sports clubs to help men lose weight, become more active and adopt healthier eating habits. BMC public health. 2013;13;1-7. 

3. Hunt K, Wyke S, Bunn C, et al. Scale-up and scale-out of a gender-sensitized weight management and healthy living program delivered to overweight men via professional sports clubs: the wider implementation of Football Fans in Training (FFIT). International journal of Environmental research and public health. 2020;17(2):584. 

4. Soe PP, Hnin ZL, Hlaing T, et al. Changes in physical activity, dietary and sleeping pattern among the general population in COVID-19: A systematic review protocol. Plos one. 2022;17(6):e0269202. 

5. Prince SA, Adamo KB, Hamel ME, et al. A comparison of direct versus self-report measures for assessing physical activity in adults: a systematic review. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2008;5:56. 

6. George ES, El Masri A, Kwasnicka D, et al. Effectiveness of Adult Health Promotion Interventions Delivered Through Professional Sport: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2022;52(11):2637-2655.