Fatter than expected! Women tend to underestimate their weight

Everyone has a definition of fat or thin in their mind, but does everyone really know their actual weight? The UK found from a weight check test of more than 10,000 people that more than 90% of people generally misunderstood their weight. Their expected weight was nearly 2.5 kilograms less than their actual measured weight, which was more obvious among women.

Don’t trust your intuition too much. More than 90% of people are actually heavier than they think!

According to the British "Mirror" report, in the UK's annual national health survey, 8,600 adults and 2,000 children were asked to record their estimated weight before measuring their weight, and then stand on the scale to measure the actual number. The results showed that more than 90% of the data showed that men would be 1.3 to 2 kilograms heavier than they estimated, while women would be 2.5 kilograms heavier. According to self-assessed data, the obesity rates for men and women are 17% and 20% respectively, but the actual situation is even worse, with 24% and 26% of men and women respectively being overweight.

This result is called "misguided optimism" in psychology. People tend to convince themselves that they are not fat. This situation is especially obvious in modern society where the aesthetic concept of "thinness is beauty" has emerged. For example, a 68 kg woman may wishfully believe that she has really lost weight after being modified by her clothes or praised by others, and her self-assessed weight will be around 65 kg. This is even more true for mature women over 30 years old, whose actual weight is generally 3.6 kg more than their self-estimated weight.

Psychologists also point out that this psychological state will be reflected in parents' definition of whether their children are fat or thin. According to statistics, even if a child's BMI value exceeds the normal value, more than half of parents still feel that their child's weight is within the normal range; this effect can easily cause people to gradually fall into the abyss of obesity without knowing it. It is recommended to develop the habit of measuring weight regularly every day to eliminate weight myths.