It was well documented that food intake could induce weight gain. If body weight is un-proportional compared to the ideal weight and height, the phrase of obesity or overweight is used. Obesity may increase individual own risk for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, stroke, fatty liver diseases and other chronic health conditions, which have also a large economic burden on healthcare systems. Instead of traditional belief, the exciting question: Is there relationship between Obesity and Personality?
Social Image of Obesity
Two in three American adults are overweight. Surprisingly, childhood-related obesity is an increasing at alarming rate. Medical costs refer to treatments of obesity relate diseases are about to increase by $48–66 billion/year in the US until 2030. In addition to health urgency and economic concern; the significant mortality, morbidity mortality and cost that arise from these diseases; there is considerable social stigmatization and discrimination associated with fatness.
Overweight individuals are at greater risk for poor body image, depressive symptoms, and discrimination. Discrimination based on characteristics of the person including body weight and appearance tends to increase recently. It is fact that negative bias, prejudice and discrimination occurred in different places, they are including in public facilities, the workplace and educational institutions.
Disparity treatments of people because of their weight are found in Northern America, and exist in daily life. Qualified persons may not be hired due to of their weight. Other examples of the victims of weight discrimination may include being denied a promotion to higher position, terminated from a job, got inferior medical care, denied a bank loan, and even prevented from renting a house.
Personality and Overweight
Early investigations are shown that there is connection between personality and obesity. Based on observation of thousand participants over 50 years, personality is linked to variation in weight over time. Then, researches are concentrating on details to which traits of personality most strongly associated with obesity, which components of personality are less relevant to the weight, and to see whether the personality traits could be used to maximize weight loss.
Four of “Big-Five” personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) are believed by many authors to linkage to obesity. Four traits that have impact on body weight are Neuroticism, Openness to experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.
The neuroticism (nervous) is likely to influence on body mass, but other 3 traits of personality are not. In respect to conscientious (playing safe), individuals who have greater of this trait inclined to be healthier. Higher degree in conscientiousness caused to reduce about twenty percent of obesity risk. Observations have been done to see which components of conscientiousness were most strongly associated with body mass and which facets were less relevant for weight.
Multidiscipline scientists come to suggestions, in which top scores on the health awareness of diet dimension are connected to greater agreeableness and conscientiousness traits. Then, heavy body mass was comparable to high points on the propitiousness diet dimension and less conscientiousness.
Of note, across studies, the order and self-discipline facets of conscientiousness had the strongest relationship with obesity and abdominal adiposity. Abdominal obesity is often referred to as "belly fat." Also known as central obesity, central adiposity and intra-abdominal fat.