Obesophobia is a form of anxiety disorder, just like all other phobias.
An extreme and unreasonable fear of a particular thing, place, or circumstance characterises phobias. The dread of growing weight is called obesityphobia, also known as pocrescophobia. Men can also have it, however adolescent females are most likely to have it.
While you have obesophobia, you have heightened anxiety when discussing or thinking about weight growth. Additionally, you could feel paralysing dread in environments that are connected to weight increase, such as when you’re next to a scale. You could go to great measures to prevent gaining weight if that is something you are frightened of. This could be a symptom of an eating disorder you already have or it could raise your risk of acquiring one.
Obesophobia is characterised by unpleasant feelings when contemplating or discussing weight growth. They may consist of a great, overpowering fear, stress, panic attacks, high blood pressure, and lightheadedness. These emotions may also arise when you gain weight or are in circumstances that you associate with weight gain, such as gatherings with food during social gatherings. You might act in the following ways to prevent gaining weight as a result of obesityphobia fasting, excessive calorie counting, excessive exercise, and frequent diets.
What leads individuals to develop obesophobia? There are varied factors.
The act of judging somebody based on their weight is known as weight stigma. It has a vital role in contemporary Western culture, which frequently values thinness. Other environmental variables, such as parental expectations or peer pressure, may also contribute to certain people’s experiences of weight stigma. People who are overweight or obese typically face discrimination due to the weight stigma. It may consequently lead to some people developing a dread of gaining weight. Gaining weight is perceived as a defect in a culture that values thinness.
Obesophobia may result from this, especially in people who have a high need for perfectionism. Similar to weight sigma, perfectionism may be influenced by peer and family pressure. Perfectionism may also be a genetic predisposition in some people.
Obesophobia may result from other anxiety conditions. For instance, social anxiety disorder, which entails a fear of social rejection, may be the root cause of obesophobia. Because of how society views weight increase, you could be afraid of gaining weight.
Your personal experiences could be the cause of your obesityphobia. You can relate weight increase with being judged negatively if you’ve experienced bullying because of your weight or appearance. This may cause you to fear putting on weight.
Obesityphobia’s main drawback is an unhealthy concern with food and body image. This raises the possibility of developing an eating disorder, a hazardous condition marked by risky eating habits.
Obesophobia is a factor in several eating disorders. Among them is anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and purging disorder. Anorexics fear gaining weight more than anything else. Even if they are exceptionally underweight, they might believe that they are overweight. Common symptoms of obesophobia include fixation with body weight and shape, extreme dietary restriction, distorted body image, excessive exercise, extreme criticism about one’s body weight, shape, intense mood changes, hiding food for bingeing, use of laxatives or diuretics, and forced vomiting.
Obesophobia causes people to pursue unhealthy methods of preventing weight growth. Excessive exercise, dietary restrictions, or frequent diets are a few examples of this. If you believe you may have an eating disorder, it’s critical to get medical attention. Obesophobia is directly linked to eating disorders.
Parvathy Sukumaran 
