Antenatal Dietary and Lifestyle Interventions for Women Who are Overweight or Obese: Outcomes from the LIMIT Randomized Trial

Maternal obesity is associated with a well-documented increase in risk of adverse health outcomes for both women and their infants. However, robust evidence about the effect of interventions for pregnant women to limit gestational weight gain on such health outcomes has been lacking. The LIMIT randomized trial recruited 2,212 pregnant women with a BMI ≥25 kg/m² from public maternity hospitals in South Australia. Providing an antenatal intervention significantly improved maternal diet and physical activity and significantly reduced the risk of infants being born with high birth weight. The findings of the LIMIT trial provide the first evidence that changes in maternal diet and physical activity during pregnancy can reduce the risk of high infant birth weight among women who are overweight or obese. Importantly, the latter was achieved in the absence of changes in maternal gestational weight gain and may represent a significant strategy to tackle obesity from a population health perspective.