One in Four Overweight Women Denies Having a Problem

Some women obsess over their weight and believe they could always stand to lose a few more, even if they’re rail thin. Others, on the contrary, are overweight but they’re in denial, believing they’re just about right, a new study reveals.

US researchers have learned that one woman in 4 with weight issues is in complete denial about her body, believing either that she’s normal or, even worse, that she’s underweight, the Daily Mail reveals.

According to the latest study, young mothers are most at risk of gaining weight and then not knowing it’s time to make a change, and start eating healthier and working out in order to lose the excess weight.

At the same time, the fact that the average weight of individuals is increasing because of the obesity epidemic distorts the standards by which we judge what’s normal, which means overweight becomes norm.

“However, this encourages denial of health-related problems caused by obesity such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, [researchers] claim,” the Mail notes.

For this recent study, over 2,000 young women, aged between 18 and 25, were questioned about their weight and whether they perceived as normal or too heavy for their body type.

Ironically enough, “half of them were considered overweight or obese based on their body mass Index, a scoring system which compares weight to height,” but they failed to see themselves as such.

About 25 percent of these women believed they were of normal size or even underweight, with all of them being more unlikely to act healthily, the aforementioned publication says of the findings.

“As obesity numbers climb, many women identify overweight as normal,” Dr. Mahbubur Rahman, one of the researchers involved in the study, says about its findings.

“Everyone is getting bigger together. But this doesn’t mean you are a healthy weight,” Dr. David Haslam, chairman of the UK’s National Obesity Forum, also explains for the Mail.

At the opposite pole, the findings of the study also reveal that one in six normal weight women believes she’s overweight and needs to lose weight, which, again, is not normal (or healthy) behavior.