Me Fat? No Way!
Contributed by Dr. Meghan Haggarty
Most people who are obese do not think they need to lose weight, according to a recent study from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The researchers had people look at a series of nine figures in a row, from very lean to very obese, and asked the participants first to choose their ideal figure and then to choose the figure that most closely resembled them. People who chose ideal body figures that were the same or bigger than themselves were classified as "misperceiving their body size."
Of the 2,056 obese men and women surveyed, 86% of African Americans, 89% of Hispanics, and 98% of Whites said they did not think they needed to lose weight. These delusional folks were also more likely to be oblivious to their health risks, including their potentially high risk for hypertension, heart attack, and diabetes. In fact, two out of every three obese people interviewed who were mistaken about their weight also thought they were at low risk of becoming obese! Half thought they were healthier than other people their age, yet 44% of them had not seen a physician in the past year.
It is difficult to understand how so many people could be in such denial, however, the researchers suspect that self-perceptions are changing because so many people, almost seven out of ten Americans, are overweight. "There is this tendency that if everyone around you looks a certain way, you either want to look that way or you are comfortable with the way you are," says Dr. Tiffany M. Powell, lead researcher on the study.
Powell T, deLemos J, Banks K, et al: Body size misperception: A novel determinant in the obesity epidemic. Archives of Internal Medicine 2010;170:1695-1697.
