Skinny People Make Fat People Sad

You don’t have to be sad if you’re overweight. I feel like it should be motivating. You should be able to use it to lose weight, or at least diet to get healthier and avoid things like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, but not everyone does. In fact, a lot of people end up eating more, exercising less, and gaining weight, drowning their sorrows in more food. Interestingly though, a recent study has shown that it’s actually being around skinny people that makes fat people more sad. Fat individuals are not necessarily more likely to lose weight or gain weight when they live in more overweight or obese communities, but there is less depression.

Published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, a new study from the University of Colorado-Boulder tracked the three way connection between obesity, life satisfaction, and your location.Obese men and women in the US who live in areas with more obese and overweight people are significantly happier than those in thinner areas. That said, those who are not categorically overweight or obese do not actually see any significant difference in different areas of the country as far as how they feel.

As co-author Philip Pendergast puts it, This illustrates the importance of looking like the people around you when it comes to satisfaction with life. You may have noticed this when it comes to race as well. The first ideas of this came from Leon Festinger, who first brought up the idea of social comparison theory in 1954.

Researchers did this by gathering 1.3 million adults across the country. They rated their happiness levels, and then they were put over an obeso-meter by county. Researchers write, Where obesity is more common, there is less difference among obese, severely obese, and non-obese individuals’ life satisfaction, but where obesity is less common, the difference in life satisfaction between the obese (including the severely obese) and non-obese is greater. In that light, obesity in and of itself does not appear to be the main reason obese individuals tend to be less satisfied with their lives than their non-obese peers. Instead, it appears to be society’s response to or stigmatization of those that are different from what is seen as normal that drives this relationship.

In short, the fat cells are not releasing depression chemicals into your bloodstream. If you are sad and overweight or obese, it has more to do with your neighbors, where you live. It has more to do with keeping up with the Joneses. It’s due to feelings of inadequacy brought on by constantly comparing yourself to others. According to the studies, women seem to suffer more of this problem than men as well, which really isn’t all that surprising.