Most People Lie About Weight Gain

U.S. adults have come up with new strategy to deal with their increasing weight: deny, deny, deny. Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington have found that, while most Americans gained weight (an average of one pound) between 2008 and 2009, most also reported in a national survey that they lost weight. A University of Washington news release reports that the researchers used data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a yearly cross-sectional survey of adults for which more than 775,000 people were asked questions about their weight, including how much they weighed on the day of their interview and how much they weighed one year prior to their interview. The researchers found that while, on average, American adults gained weight over the study period – because the reported weights increased between the 2008 and 2009 surveys – the 2009 participants told surveyors that they had lost weight during the previous year. Based on the weights they reported, the prevalence of obesity in the US would have declined from 2008 to 2009. Instead, the prevalence of obesity inched upward from 26 percent to 26.5 percent, and average weight increased by about one pound per person between 2008 and 2009. Read more from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.