Women Want to be Skinny, Men Enjoy Being Fat

The Western world is experiencing a pandemic of obesity. Over 60 % of the American adults are overweight or obese and this is a growing tendency. How does this influence people's minds?

A new Cornell research published in the journal Eating Behaviors revealed that 90 % of the 310 college female subjects would like to be thinner. Moreover, 50 % of underweight women want to be even skinnier or to remain in the unhealthy skinny 'state', while the majority of the overweight women don't want to lose weight in order to turn more healthy.

"The majority of underweight females, closer in body size to the thin cultural ideal, consider their body weight 'about right, even though experts have deemed these body weights unhealthful," said Jeffery Sobal, Cornell professor of nutritional sociology in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

78 % of the overweight male subjects also expressed the will to lose weight, but only 46 % down to a healthy value, so in fact many appreciate their overweight.

"Because they don't meet the societal ideals propagated by the media and advertising for body weight, they are often targets of discrimination within educational, workplace and health-care settings and are stigmatized as lazy, lacking self-discipline and unmotivated. These factors have led many people to be dissatisfied with their bodies," said co-author Dr. Lori Neighbors, assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Men and women alike were not satisfied with their weight by an average of 8 pounds (3.6 kg). Men have more varied wishes, as many in fact would like to gain weight.

90 % of the normal-weight women would lose weight still within the healthy weight values, but 10 % would like turning underweight. About half of the overweight women would lose weight to a value that would be still at risk for their health.

"The idealized body weight and shape, especially among underweight females and overweight individuals of both genders, are not in accordance with population-based standards defining healthy body weight. In a society in which excess weight is the norm, it's vital to better understand body dissatisfaction and how this dissatisfaction impacts weight-management efforts." wrote the authors.

"While both men and women express some degree of body dissatisfaction, a surprising proportion of people with less healthy body weights, underweight females and overweight individuals of both genders , do not idealize a body weight that would move them to a more healthy state," said Neighbors.


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