If you are overweight, you are not necessarily destined to be sad, says a new study from the University of ColoradoâBoulder. The paper comes out today in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and it tracks the three-way relationship between obesity, life satisfaction, and where you live. It finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that obese men and women who live in U.S. counties with high levels of obesity are much happier than obese men and women who live in slenderer areas....
âWhere obesity is more common, there is less difference among obese, severely obese, and non-obese individualsâ life satisfaction,â the researchers write, âbut 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 societyâs response to or stigmatization of those that are different from what is seen as ânormalâ that drives this relationship.â
Knock it off, skinny people.