The purpose of this study is to scientifically validate Nutrition Thinking®, a novel nutritional approach based on the values and methodologies of Design Thinking.

The concept of nutrition has changed exponentially in recent decades to include a range of challenges that were not foreseen. The strength of this movement is based on the understanding of (1) the complexity with which people face their nutritional challenges; and (2) the interconnection between food systems and overlapping health risks associated with malnutrition, obesity, and climate change.

Maintaining an adequate weight, a healthy and sustainable diet pattern are complex well-established challenges. However, current nutritional approaches to lose weight, based on functional experiences, often fail to promote long-term adherence to dietary recommendations and maintaining lost weight.

The ambiguity and complexity that involves an interactional nutrition, based on the experiences involved in how people act at the individual level and their relationships with the environment and dynamic systems, brings up the challenge of designing meaningful learning experiences to promote a change of culture and positive impact.

Current social changes demand the search for novel nutritional approaches based on methodologies that result in meaningful experiences. We need new ways to build diets that balance the needs of individuals and society as a whole, new ideas that address global challenges, new strategies that result in differences that matter, and a sense of purpose that includes everyone involved.

With that in mind, Nutrition Thinking® arises as a nutritional approach based on the values and methodologies of Design Thinking, an abstraction of a mental model for addressing complex problems and conducting projects based on empathy, collaboration, and experimentation. Therefore, Nutrition Thinking® represents a new nutrition learning matrix based on experience for the co-creation of authentic and sustainable diets.

Inclusion Criteria:

• age between 25 and 35 years old of both sexes;
• nutritional diagnosis of overweight (BMI between 25-29.9 kg/m2);
• available to participate in the sessions proposed by the protocol (every 15 days for a period of 3 months).

Exclusion Criteria:

• presence of characteristics that make nutritional assessment impossible (eg. presence of metallic prostheses or amputated limbs);
• previous involvement in any clinical trial, nutritional or medical intervention for weight loss in the 6 months prior to recruitment;
• previous history of eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating);
• presence of congenital diseases;
• presence of thyroid disease, hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes, defined through medical diagnosis associated with drug treatment and / or previous or current cardiovascular disease;
• pregnant or lactating women.

The randomization sequence will be generated by computer in the data center using alphanumeric codes and implemented through the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap®) software. The professionals who will carry out the interventions during the protocol will be trained for one of the two interventions, without knowledge of the outcomes (except, bioimpedance results), evaluations performed during the study or comparison intervention. After the assignment to one of the groups, the participants, and those who will evaluate all the outcomes, will remain blind until the end of the study and results analysis.