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Binge Eating Disorder Patients Tend to Have Exaggerated Weight Loss Expectations
05/17/2002
By Mark Moran
Patients with binge eating disorders tend to have expectations for personal weight loss that far exceed recommendations.
These expectations may be based on patients' own recollections of their lowest adult weight, say Robin M. Masheb, MD, and a colleague at Yale University School of Medicine.
A survey of 130 patients with binge eating disorder was undertaken determine what they would consider their "dream weight," "happy weight," "acceptable weight," and "disappointed weight." The patients reported weight loss expectations that far exceed expert and government recommendations. For example, dream weight, happy weight and acceptable weights were an average of 36 percent, 29 percent, and 23 percent of current body weight, respectively.
Even the "disappointed" weight was an average 14 percent reduction in current weight, and was 1.5 to three times greater than the expert recommendation of 5 to 10 percent of current weight. Desired weights were significantly different between women and men, but percent reductions from current weight were not.
In a structured interview, participants were asked whether their primary motivation for seeking weight reduction was appearance or health, and were also asked to recollect their lowest adult weight. Although weight goal expectations were significantly lower for those motivated by appearance compared with those motivated by health, percent reductions from current weight were not.
Desired dream weight correlated with patients' recollections of their lowest adult weight, and the mean difference between these weights was not significant, the researchers say.
Obesity Research 10:309-314 (2002)
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