Most Americans are overweight; they are, in fact, "obese," which is to say that their body weights are 20 percent or more above height-weight chart norms. (In other words, someone whose height-weight norm is 100 pounds and who weighs 120 pounds can be characterized as medically obese).
Bresler (1988) reports that most overweight/obese individuals seeking the services of professional health care workers for the purpose of remediating conditions of overweight and obesity are females who fall into one of three groups:
(1) women whose body size is relatively normal but who desire to become very thin; (2) women who are overweight by cultural standards but not by health standards; and (3) women who are dangerously overweight, and who have been identified as an imminent health risk.
Overeating, overweight, and obesity are believed to have a psychological component despite the fact that the conditions are not formally classified in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Mitchell, Pyle, Hatsukami & Eckert, 1986).
Hooker and Convisser (1983) have reported that in many cases of eating disorder, the predominate psychological component is obsessive-compulsive disorder in which individuals feel driven to eat. Somehow food issues eclipse, overpower, and overshadow other issues in their lives.
For such individuals, there can be a preoccupation with thoughts and fantasies about food. The authors also report that even in cases where the obsessive-compulsive aspect of the disorder is not predominate, the excessive poundage can be used to serve several neurotic coping functions. These include:
(1) Use of fat as a protection against psychological and emotional intimacy.
(2) Use of fat to provide self with a sense of "power" (power being associated with largeness and smallness being associated with weakness).
(3) Use of fat as a form of communicating feelings of pain and an...