The effect of barrier underestimation on weight management and exercise change

Over 60% of all Americans are classified as overweight or obese. This represents a major public health concern, as obesity is a risk factor for many other health ailments. While many people intend to lose weight, they often have difficulty changing their current behavioral patterns (as evidenced by modest correlations between intention and behavior). Therefore, one of the major challenges for obesity research is to address the gap between intentions to lose weight and actual behavior. The current study hypothesized that one reason for the intention-behavior discrepancy is that people mis-estimate the barriers that they will encounter as they follow through with their intentions. Specifically, we hypothesized that people underestimate barriers to exercise and diet, and because of these underestimations, there is a discrepancy between their intentions and behavior. To test these hypotheses, we surveyed faculty and staff at Rutgers University (N = 422) at two time points, 1 year apart. The results indicate that barriers to dieting behaviors are significantly underestimated and this underestimation partially explained the discrepancy between intentions and behavior. The results for barriers to exercise behavior were less consistent, however. As a whole, these results suggest a possible point of behavioral intervention for weight loss.