‘Fat shaming’ actually increases risk of becoming or staying obese, new study says

A new study has found that trying to make obese people feel badly about their weight doesn’t actually motivate these people to lose weight, since many simply interpret these kinds of comments as discrimination. “Weight discrimination, in addition to being hurtful and demeaning, has real consequences for the individual’s physical health,” explains Angelina Sutin, lead author of the study and a psychologist and assistant professor at the Florida State University College of Medicine. Previous studies have also found that making people feel badly about their weight can lead to other problems, like depression and binge eating, which in turn contribute to weight gain. Art Caplan, a bioethicist and the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical center, says, “Obesity remains a complex problem- part choice and free will mixed in with a smidgen of genetics, sedentary lifestyles and a whole lot of promotion and advertising of fast food, sugary food, high-caloric food and junk food. It would be nice if guilt was the magic bullet to weight control. It isn’t; nothing is. It took a long time and a lot of bad habits to get the way we are in terms of size and, short of a pharmaceutical miracle, it will take public and health policy attacking a lot of variables for a long time to slim us back down.”

Today, 7/26/13