# Using mental imagination to prevent excessive gestational weight gain in overweight and obese pregnant women

> **NIH NIH R21** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $195,000

## Abstract

Excessive gestational weight gain (EGWG) is disproportionally prevalent in overweight or obese pregnant
women (65-85%). EGWG has detrimental effects on maternal and birth outcomes, e.g., gestational diabetes,
gestational hypertension, cesarean delivery, and fetal macrosomia. EGWG is preventable through healthy
eating and physical activity (healthy lifestyle behaviors). Current effective lifestyle behavior intervention studies
aimed to prevent EGWG in overweight or obese pregnant women have limited practicality, scalability, and
sustainability because of high participant burden and excessive cost for clinical practice. Also, prior studies
paid little or no attention to motivation, emotion and cognition, all of which are critical to motivate and enable
individuals to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors and achieve positive health outcomes. A promising
approach to prevent EGWG in overweight or obese pregnant women is through goal-oriented episodic future
thinking (GOEFT). The proposed R21, a pilot randomized controlled trial, aims to prevent EGWG in overweight
or obese pregnant women. The proposed self-directed, web-based GOEFT intervention will focus on
increasing motivation (autonomous motivation and self-efficacy) and improving emotion (emotion control and
stress) and cognition (executive function, ExF), thus promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors leading to prevention
of EGWG (primary outcome) and a reduced rate of gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, cesarean
delivery and fetal macrosomia (secondary outcomes). Our intervention will last 20 weeks (starting ≤15 week-
gestation). Via a self-directed, web-based GOEFT intervention, participants will engage in weekly intervention
activity (35-40 min/week). Participants (N = 90; 50% White, 50% minority) will be recruited and enrolled from
prenatal care clinics at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and be randomly assigned to our
GOEFT intervention (n = 45) or usual care (n = 45). All participants will be assessed at baseline (≤15 week-
gestation, T1), 24-27 week-gestation (T2) and 35-37 week-gestation (T3). Specific aims are (1) to determine
feasibility of the GOEFT intervention: recruitment, randomization, retention and intervention implementation,
(2) to investigate the potential efficacy of the intervention on gestational weight gain and maternal and birth
outcomes, (3) to investigate the potential impact of the intervention on lifestyle behaviors and (4) to investigate
the potential impact of the intervention on motivation, emotion and cognition. Innovation. This is the first
lifestyle behavior intervention aimed to prevent EGWG that applies GOEFT to increase motivation, emotion,
ExF and healthy lifestyle behaviors. Significance. The study findings will provide important implications for
designing a lifestyle behavior intervention to prevent EGWG in overweight or obese pregnant women. If
successful, the GOEFT intervention could be tested in a large scale randomized control...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10170400
- **Project number:** 5R21HD099380-02
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** MEI-WEI CHANG
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $195,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-05-22 → 2023-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10170400

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10170400, Using mental imagination to prevent excessive gestational weight gain in overweight and obese pregnant women (5R21HD099380-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10170400. Licensed CC0.

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