What role can health psychology play in helping to challenge obesity?

Answer 1

Health psychology can offer educational approaches to help people change eating habits, exercise more, and ultimately become thinner or not put pounds on in the first place.
If indeed genes are at cause for some obesity cases, the most health psychology can do is help people to be as thin as possible.

Answer 2

I used to work with obese persons and I had a questionaire I used with them to try to discover why they were overeating.It had over twenty different reasons on it and most everyone had several causes driving their habit."Habit" is a good word to use because overweight persons become addicted to food just as much as persons become addicted to other chemical substances.Those words,"chemical substances" apply very well to most of the food we eat because it is pumped full of so many chemicals for the economic benefit of food companies ,that they almost can be considered a form of drug.Like other drugs,most foods do have a relaxing effect on our minds so it's not surprising that the vast majority of people who overeat have anxiety problems.Those who are severely overweight,usually snack throughout the day and they accordingly experience few strong emotions.In fact they behave very much like heroin addicts.It is because of this addiction to food caused by the chemical effects it has on people that the vast majority of diets and even expensive weight reduction programs fail.In fact the weight reduction industry's success rate runs around 2%.Of course it would greatly increase if they required their customers to receive psychological help BEFORE they try to decrease their customers emotional "fix",food, so that through counseling their customers anxiety can be reduced by resolving some of their personal problems,thus making it unnecessary for them to secure the seditive effect that our over-processed food gives them.

Answer 3

Food, other than being an addiction, is comforting. I guess it helps to find out why the person needs comfort. Also, it is a form of defence, I had a friend once who told me she wanted to stay big because it made her feel safe, that men would find her un attractive and leave her alone. I guess there are loads of reasons as to why people over eat, if indeed that is what is causing their obesity, it would help if they could find the cause, then they could counteract the effect.

Answer 4

an important role in giving people the will power to loose weight.