Rural women who get phone calls to follow-up on weight loss education do a better job dropping pounds, according to a new study.

And getting a call seems to work just as well as face-to-face counseling.

A team from the University of Florida studied 234 obese women from rural areas for six months. They were put into three groups: one got telephone counseling, one had to go to in-person meetings and one received newsletters.

At the start, the average weight was 212.5 pounds, and the average woman in the study lost 22 pounds. But a year after the study ended, the women who had done the phone or in-person counseling had gained back an average of 2.6 pounds. Those who got newsletters put 8.2 pounds back on their bodies.

Researchers said that not only did the programs help with weight, they were less expensive than face-to-face meetings.

The study appears in the Nov. 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.