Tag: obese

Couples who are obese may take longer to achieve pregnancy than partners who aren't as overweight, a recent U.S. study suggests.

Previous studies in women have linked obesity to difficulties getting pregnant. In the current study, neither male nor female obesity alone was linked to taking a longer time to conceive, but when both partners were obese, the couple took up to 59 percent longer to conceive than non-obese counterparts.

"If our results are confirmed, fertility specialists may want to take couples' weight status into account when counseling them about achieving pregnancy," said lead study author Rajeshwari Sundaram of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.

Obese people who feel stigmatized about their size are not only more likely to struggle with weight loss, they're also more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, a new study suggests.

In many cultures, people who are obese are viewed as stereotypically lazy, lacking in willpower, incompetent, unattractive and personally responsible for their excess weight, researchers note in the journal Obesity. These negative beliefs, known as weight bias, can cause obese people to experience discrimination, which is in turn associated with an increased risk of "internalizing disorders" like depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, previous research has found.

(REUTERS HEALTH) - Need another reason to blame weight gain on your marriage? When one spouse becomes obese, the other’s risk of obesity almost doubles, a U.S. study suggests.

"Normal weight people whose spouses went from being normal weight to obese were more likely to become obese," said Laura Cobb, who led the study as a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
"This suggests that changes in one spouse are likely to also be reflected in the other spouse, likely because of similar changes in diet, physical activity or other behaviors that impact obesity," Cobb said by e-mail.