Lose Weight, Gain Income

[matawguro]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=97&ncid=97&e=7&u=/hsn/20050708/hl_hsn/loseweightgainincome

Lose Weight, Gain Income

FRIDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) -- Losing weight may help fatten wallets, a new study finds.

"The typical person who loses or gains a few pounds had almost no change in wealth, but those who lost or gained large amounts of weight had a more dramatic change," study author Jay Zagorsky, research scientist at Ohio State University's Center for Human Resource Research, said in a prepared statement.

...

One possible explanation is that overweight and obese people face discrimination in the workplace and don't earn as much money as normal weight people.

There was a time when I worked for this big foreign company, I was hired as part of a new software development team. Around two weeks into the job, our supervisor's boss came to visit us to get a first look at the new team. I learned later that acording to the visiting manager's first impressions, two of the team members seemed out of place and didn't seem to belong in the team. Those two were me and another obese team member. We were the only obese/overweight people on the team.

Coincidence?

I also read another study a couple of years ago (which I've been trying to find) where it was shown that people not only discriminate against obese people, but also discriminate against people associated with obese people.

In the study, a group subjects were shown a picture of a normal teenage couple attending a prom. The subjects were asked what their first impressions of the male teenager were.

Another group of subjects was shown the same picture, except the female teenager was replaced with an obese female teenager. The subjects were also asked their first impressions on the male teenager.

I don't remember the exact results, but generally, the study showed that the second group of subjects gave unflattering evaluations of the male teenager compared to the first group.

If anyone knows where I could find that study, I'd like to know.

[determined2succeed]

Re: Lose Weight, Gain Income

things like this have always been the case... i am not surprised... it's the way society works and how people are perceived. fat people are perceived as lazy and unattractive. that's just the way it is in our society. in the olden days, being fat was a sign of wealth and status, because it meant that you could afford lots of food, adn therefor put on pounds to show it... very interesting how that has changed to be the opposite... i've also heard that taller people are more successful than shorter people...