Weight and Self-Esteem
The psychological effects of carrying excess weight – and obesity – can often be disastrous. Larger people are commonly ridiculed by others whose weight is considered ‘normal’. Making fun of overweight people is widespread in this society. They are forced to suffer a whole slew of abuse and pyschological barbs in addition to not so subtle social discriminations. As a consequence, the can suffer from poor self-esteem, can feel inadequate and are frequently considered as the source of their own problems.
Social situations are potentially humiliating for people with excess weight. Having a day at the beach or at public pools, where they have to wear clothes which are more revealing, becomes an embarrassing occasion. If an overweight person wants to play competitive sports she will often suffer the humiliation of being the last ones chosen for teams. Quite often, in school, obese or overweight children perform worse academically than their normal weight peers – they also have lower grade point averages. As young adults, many times there is more difficulty gaining acceptance into college and securing jobs and future promotions. Is it any wonder that such life experiences tend to lead to poor self esteem and self-confidence. That begins a cycle of social isolation, emotional withdrawal, more overeating, caused by depression, inactivity, and quite often further weight gain.
The body image distortion and general body discontent among obese and overweight people are sometimes implicated in the development of negative self-worth, and can act as risk factors for the development ofdepression and/or unhealthy eating patterns. Your body image can be affected and partly determined by such things as your cultural beliefs and values to do with beauty and attractiveness.
A lot of obese people tend blame their overweight on medical problems like thyroid disease. The simple fact is that , fewer than 1% of the overweight or obese have a genuine hormonal imbalance, or other medicalcondition. While there isn’t a single reason that 100 gets to the cause of the phenomenon, likely causes are poor nutrition, bad eating habits, lack of exercise.
Of course there are many things an obese or overweight person might do to improve their self-esteem. First, they could seek consultation with a physician to determine how serious the problem is, or if there really is a problem at all. Everyone is built differently and some of those who appear overweight compared to family and friends are really just within a normal range for themselves.
They should reduce the amount of TV watching. Not surprisingly, there’s a link between television viewing and being overweight. Most of us watch an average of 3 hours of television every day, – do you know what is the item most regularly featured purchase item on TV? It’s food! What’s the most likely thing people do when watching television? Eat – that’s what they do. Watching television would probably be better limited to a reasonable time, say a couple of hours, every day, as a maximum. In fact, television viewing could sometimes be done while using home exercise equipment like treadmills and stationary bikes.
Those who are overweight shoulder the responsibility to guard themselves from the harm, pyschological and physical caused by being overweight. Establishing healthy eating and exercise patterns, they can conquer the challenge of overweight, so that they can live and enjoy life without the burden of being weighted down by being bigger than the normal size.