From Posts to Progress: Associations Between Community Practices and Weight Loss Success

Abstract

Online communities play a valuable role in providing social support and shaping health behaviors. In the context of personal health, social support, accountability, and consistency are key factors for success. Prior work has examined content and engagement in online health-related communities, but less is known about how moderation and community practices translate into measurable health outcomes. In this study, we investigate how moderation practices are related to user weight loss analyzing several thousands of users, over six years, in Reddit's largest weight loss community r/loseit. We find that user posting activity in specific moderator-created threads is associated with a stable and reliable weight loss. Particularly, structured and recurring moderating practices, especially those focused on progress updates are associated with greater weight loss compared to other threads. Our results demonstrate how moderation within online communities can actively support weight loss facilitating health behavioral change. Moreover, we illustrate how large-scale social media data can aid the design of digital health interventions.