London - You’ve spent months counting calories and pounding the treadmill to finally get into that size 12 dress.
But perhaps you shouldn’t have bothered -no matter how much weight you’ve lost, your friends still think of you as fat.
Scientists have found when a woman slims down, her family and colleagues remember her as being overweight -and continue to label her as being lazy and greedy.
The study, by Manchester University, the University of Hawaii in Manoa and Monash University in Melbourne, looked at 273 volunteers. All were shown pictures of five 31-year-old women and told to read notes about them.
One woman had been slim all her life while another had been overweight. The other three had previously been fat but had lost around five stone (about 32kg) and were a normal size.
The volunteers were then asked to rate each woman’s attractiveness and state whether or not they liked them.
The study found most regarded the women who had lost weight as being less attractive than the one who had always been slim. They also made negative comments about the women and had certain “fat prejudices”.
Researcher Dr Janet Latner, from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said: “Obesity stigma is so powerful and enduring that it may even outlast the obesity itself.”
Dr Kerry O’Brien, from Manchester University’s School of Psychological Sciences, said: “Many people who are perceived as ‘fat’ are struggling in vain to lose weight in order to escape this painful social stigma.
“We need to rethink our approaches to and views of weight and obesity. Given the great number of people who may be negatively affected by this prejudice, obesity discrimination needs to be reduced.” - Daily Mail