Obesity and Body Size Misperception

According to a recent report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, about 8% of obese individuals don’t recognize that they need to lose weight. Researchers call the phenomenon “body size misperception”. Obese individuals who misperceive their body size tend to be more satisfied with their overall health and are more likely to believe that they have a low lifetime risk of chronic diseases related to obesity, than are those who acknowledge that they are obese. Two-thirds of them actually believe that they are at low risk of developing obesity in their lifetimes, even though they already ARE obese according to the standard government definition.

But are there other possibilities for these people’s failure to acknowledge their obesity besides body size misperception? Perhaps these individuals do know that they are obese, but because they don’t think they can lose weight or don’t want to try, they are unwilling to acknowledge it even on a survey. It’s called denial. Or perhaps they just don’t accept the current definition of obesity (a Body Mass Index of 30 or above) and/or its health consequences.

How people perceive obesity and its consequences need to be explored further if we wish stem the rising tide of obesity in the U.S. and around the world.