Weight is such a crucial issue these days. And it affects almost everyone. After all, do you know anyone who is the right weight these day (whether that’s in their own mind, society’s mind or the medical profession’s mind)?
It seems most of us are in denial over our weight right now. At least that may be true for Americans, says a survey by Harris Interactive for HealthDay. So scrambled are Americans’ brains, they don’t know which way is up as far as their weight is concerned. Apparently. Fat is the new norm, the survey suggests, with 30 percent of people thinking they are of normal size (similarly 70 percent of obese people believe they are merely overweight and 39 percent of mobidly obese think they’re overweight too, never mind just plain, simple obese.
The problem, say experts, is that if we tend to think we’re not as fat as we actually are, then we’re less likely to do anything about it – and that, as all riskfactorphobes know, can lead to all manner of health problems.
So where weight is concerned, are we simply in denial? Or is it some kind of reverse body dysmorphic disorder thing that’s going on?
Talking of BDD, which is something that normally affects underweight people (so they look in the mirror and see a fat person – the opposite of when a fat person looks in a mirror and thinks they look of normal weight), a new survey by Girlguiding UK shows what’s happening at the other end of the weight scale, so to speak.
A massive 75 percent of the 1,200 girls and young women, aged between seven and 21, said they had been on strict diets in order to be attractive to others, while 66 percent believed they had dieted because of the way the media portrays women. Incase you’ve forgotten, the highly-publicised predecessor to this report proclaimed that 42 percent of girls had been on such diets last year.
So whatever your weight, it seems there’s no doing the right thing. You’re either obsessed with dieting and looking like a skinny model, or you’re a tub of lard who thinks they’re just right where weight is concerned. With all these mixed messages out there, it’s no wonder people are confused…