Obese women have exercise 'phobia' - Telegraph

Researchers have discovered -- surprise! -- that obese women are self conscious (and/or fear injury) and those emotions prevent successful exercise:

Obese women may have a 'phobia' of exercise which stops them being active because they feel self-conscious and are afraid of injury, researchers argue.

Far from being excuses to be lazy, these 'mental barriers' are real problems which must be overcome to encourage overweight women to exercise more, a conference was told.

[snip]

[Participants] were asked what factors stopped them from exercising at the start of the programme, three months into it and at the end.

The women who were obese gave more reasons why they didn't exercise than the normal weight women and the more barriers they had, the less exercise they actually did.

Overweight or obese women were more likely to report feeling self-conscious about their looks while exercising, feeling a lack of self-discipline, hating to fail so not even trying, fearing injury, thinking of activity as hard work, having minor aches and pains, and feeling too overweight to exercise.

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