there is a big problem in the United Kingdom of under recognition of obesity

A new research project which looked at the problem of obesity in the United Kingdom says that while the number of people in the UK who suffer from obesity has increased over the last ten years, fewer people actually think that they are overweight or obese.

For example in 1999 just over ten percent of UK adults had a BMI of 30+ making them obese. By 2007 this figure had risen to almost twenty percent. The researchers however say that the number of people who actually think they are overweight or obese has actually declined.

Professor Jane Wardle who was one of the researchers for this project said that there is a big problem in the United Kingdom of “under recognition” of obesity. The problem stems from the fact that if many people are overweight around you and you put on a little bit of weight you do not notice it as much as if everybody else around you was very thin.

In some parts of the United States for example it is commonly known that overweight people feel extremely comfortable because everybody around them is also very fat. Because the United Kingdom is now getting more overweight, more and more overweight people are beginning to feel comfortable with their size.

There is a lot of psychology involved in the perception of people’s weight. While many adults feel that they are of a normal weight when in fact they are not, many teenagers on the other hand feel that they are overweight when in fact their weight is completely normal. Young people feel that they are under a lot of pressure to conform to social norms and media images of very healthy thin bodies.  In some extreme cases this can make them paranoid and lead to eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.

You must always be extremely objective and honest about your weight if you want to make sure that you have a healthy body size and you must not compare your weight to people around you.