ATTLEBORO - Sturdy Memorial Hospital and its member physicians, who have long encouraged patients to take a more active role in maintaining a healthy weight, may have found a way to convince more of us to take them seriously.

About 1,000 patients voluntarily wore pedometers and tracked their level of daily activity last spring as doctors attempted to focus attention on exercise and diet as part of proper weight-maintenance. Patients whose weight or health issues made them prime candidates for lifestyle changes were offered the pedometers to wear on a daily basis and asked to fill out a questionnaire on how their lives were affected.

The project was supported by Harvard-Pilgrim Health Care.

Patients wore the pedometers from a few weeks to as long as three months. A majority responded enthusiastically and said that tracking their level of activity - or inactivity - made them think more seriously about exercising more and setting health goals for themselves, Sturdy's Dr. Peter Johnson said.

Sturdy Memorial Hospital and its doctors are pleased with the program's potential for changing patients' attitudes and combatting obesity and related conditions, and are discussing how such a program might be extended or expanded in the future, Johnson said. Pedometers have already been used effectively to promote exercise and focus attention on healthy weight issues among the city's grade school children, who participate in an annual "Step Challenge" as part of the Activate Attleboro health promotion campaign, Attleboro YMCA Executive Director Duane German said.

The Y-led coalition, which is also backed by the hospital and the city, the school department and numerous public and private partners, also sponsors other initiatives to encourage children and their parents to eat smart and exercise more.

While physicians have long counseled proper diet and exercise as a path to good health, Johnson said the pedometer use may have made a more concrete impression by focusing users' attention on the problem in a unique way by measuring how much daily exercise patients actually get in, contrast to their perceptions.

Some people may have an exaggerated idea of how much activity they perform as part of their normal daily routine, Johnson said, while they are actually getting comparatively little exercise.

Armed with a more accurate measurement, patients were able to re-think their diet and exercise routines and set goals for the future.

America On The Move, a nationwide effort to combat the growing problem of overweight and inactivity, urges people to take even small steps that can improve their daily health by eating smart and moving more.

Adding 2,000 steps a day, about a mile, to one's normal activity and eating 100 fewer calories can be effective for many people in stabilizing their current weight and minimizing future weight gains.

Obesity and lack of exercise has been linked to a growing incidence of complications, ranging from heart disease to diabetes in the United States, as well as the early onset of such "adult" diseases in children.

Public health authorities say the cost of treating obesity related diseases now exceeds $100 billion a year.