Table 2 Participant experience of the WTW intervention

Reason for taking part

‘I thought it would be a good idea in helping me to look at health and fitness, I was worried about my health’ (F/45yo)

‘Well I got two main reasons. One was because I wanted to lose weight and another was because I wanted to be active and healthy’ (F/36yo)

‘main reason to hopefully lose weight and get healthier’ (M/20yo)

Education session

‘I found out that walking helps you lose weight. Being more active, like being inactive causes a lot of diseases, so you need to be more active. Just even walking.’ (F/36yo)

‘That any exercise is good, it doesn’t have to be you know some great big long like a run or something, just little things like walking to the shops and back.’ (F/45yo)

Coaching sessions

‘I felt it was good because it was about what I wanted to do and having support around that because it’s very easy to say I want to do this, and I want to do that but you need that sort of support to get yourself going so it sort of got me in the mind set to want to do some activities’ (F/45yo)

‘The biggest positive was … meeting with (coach), setting up goals and having someone to, to erm check up to see if your achieving your goals and give you advice, yeah that was the biggest positive’ (F/32yo)

‘The coaching helped me stay motivated, helped make myself more confident in the group.’ (M/20yo)

‘when I’m not hitting my targets I know that I could be doing more. Sometimes, I might, instead of going to the shop local I might go the shop further’ (M/39yo)

Walking group

‘You get the chance to go out and meet people, go to different parks … You learn new things, you learn new places to go, things I want to do with my son.’ (F/36yo)

‘Yes I still attend. Its very fun, get to meet people, talk to people, walk around in the parks- it’s very therapeutic.’ (M/20yo)

‘I like meeting new people and I like going to new places’ (M/39yo)

Overall

‘It was good, just to be educated about walking and the benefits you can get from it and keeping yourself active.’ (F/36yo)

‘it was really good because every day I wanted to, and also the weather was really good, I always wanted to go out, I didn’t want to be bored at home, you know, for some reason my sleeping improved as well, because I was more active and more tired’ (F/32yo)

‘I try to use the advice. Walk mum up and down the road which wouldn’t have done before WTW- wouldn’t have done it before as be too drowsy but now I fight through it.’ (M/20yo)