If the anti-fat bias is increasing - then how do people cope? Rebecca M. Puhl and Kelly D. Brownell have published new research investigating this - entitled Confronting and Coping with Weight Stigma: An Investigation of Overweight and Obese Adults (see abstract).

The research included two samples: 2449 adult women, and a group of 222 adult men and women (average BMI was around 37, average age around 50).

The most common stigmatizing situations were:

• others making negative assumptions (e.g., others having low expectations of you because of your weight).
• receiving nasty comments from children.
• encountering physical barriers and obstacles (e.g., public accommodations being too small).
• encountering inappropriate comments from doctors.
• receiving negative comments from family members.

There are some intriguing correlations (albeit statistically small). One that stood out is this:

Individuals who began dieting earlier in life reported more stigmatizing situations than people who started dieting later.

Read the entire original article here.