Zusammenfassung

Purpose: There is an increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in both children and adults in Norway. Health authorities focus on increased knowledge about exercise and lifestyle. This is also incorporated in most of the treatment approaches available although few have shown to have a lasting effect on weight reduction. Until now our knowledge about the impact of overweight on the individual itself has been limited. This article aims to investigate the experiences of being overweigh in two women. Method: The material consists of interviews with two women. The theoretical framework in the article is the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The experiences are in the article organized into two themes: Food and exercise. Results: Experience with food and exercise are complex and meaningful. The subjects relations to other people contribute to obesity and that people remain obese. Being closely connected to others, or being distant, can be regulated through food and eating. Exercise is, for the informants, not connected to pleasure. It is talked about as something not desirable, as connected to bad conscience and duty. Food comes forward as both the problem and the solution. The meaning of both social relations and habits are changed during weight loss. Losing weight means experiencing insecurity and increased worries about self value.Conclusion: To consider weight reduction as the only counting criteria in treatment of obesity is problematic. Because of the complexity of the phenomenon, the idea that obese people should eat less and exercise more seems to have little practical relevance. Obese people have deep insights and knowledge about their own relation to food and exercise. It can not be taken for granted that obese people wants to, or can cope emotionally with losing weight.