Overweight people deny that they are fat, according to study

A recent study has demonstrated that it is not only anorexics who have a warped sense of their own body image.

Many overweight and obese people fail to see their true size, believing instead that they are a healthy weight.

Sara Bird, a British author, is documenting her experience with ‘fatorexia’ in a book that was published in March.

An example given is Ken Holmes:

Like many midlife adults, Ken Holmes noticed that the toned abs of his 20s had billowed into a fistful of flab. He blamed long drives from his Sunset District home to jobs as a program consultant in Silicon Valley and the East Bay, together with extended workdays spent deskbound tinkering with software.

In his childless days, Holmes would have offset these sedentary periods with frequent punishing workouts. But now with two elementary-school-age children, the gym was relegated to the back burner.

Still, Holmes was taken aback to discover that his weight had gone from being comfortably centered in the “normal weight” zone of the government’s weight charts to nudging the “overweight” section. “In my mind I wasn’t that fat guy,” he says.

Like the example of Holmes, Sara Bird, was shocked when she discovered she was overweight.

Without realising it, she had crept up to 238 pounds (standing at 5 ft 10), and was therefore seriously overweight.

After visiting the doctor for a routine check-up, she was weighed and pronounced ‘obese’.

It was only then that the self-denial she had placed on herself lifted.

Many people think it is only anorexics that view their bodies in a warped way, believing they are large when they look in the mirror, instead of seeing their bodies wasting away.

So much media attention has been focused on this cruel disease, but there has been barely any news on it’s sister disease, which lies at the opposite end of the scale.

Just as dangerous, ‘fatorexics’ are risking heart disease, diabetes, blocked arteries etc. by not realising that they are in fact, overweight.

The key message here is probably that everything is OK in moderation – but it’s always good to bring awareness to the diseases that are often left out of the media spotlight.

By eating a balanced diet, and leading as healthy and active a lifestyle as you can, these issues shouldn’t be a problem.