Obstacles in Weight Loss

Phoebe Chan

June 2019

Dr. Ruth Agwuna

Mrs. Mary Jane Sasser

 A survey was created to discover the different obstacles people face during their weight

loss process. The survey’s questions were from the study called “Perceived Barriers to Weight

loss Programs for Overweight or Obese Women,” conducted by ​Nasrin Sharifi, Reza Mahdavi,

and Mehrangiz Ebrahimi-Mameghani in 2013. In total, the survey consisted of eighteen

questions. The first three questions asked for the participant’s age, gender, and body mass index.

The next three questions asked if the participant was in the process of losing weight, tried to lose

weight, and tried to lose weight within the past year. All three of these questions were answered

with a simple yes or no. For the last twelve questions, participants were given the option of

responding with strongly agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree.

Questions ranged to family eating patterns, peer pressure, eating habits, and exercise routine.

The survey was first created to be distributed to overweight and obese patients ranging

fro, ages ten to eighteen at Dr. Ruth Agwuna’s Pediatric Office. However to gain a larger sample

size, the survey was released to the Clarksville Happenings Facebook Group for sixteen days.

The survey were taken online, and resources such as Body Mass Index Calculators were

provided online. In total, there were sixty-five participants, 91% were female and 9% were male.

The age range of the participants was from age ten to age 76, with the majority of the responders

coming from the ages thirty-six to fifty, 45% of participants. 9% of responses came from the age

range of ten to eighteen, 26% from nineteen to thirty-five age range, 20% from the fifty-one to

eighty age range. From the sixty-five people, 1% was underweight, 40% were in the normal

weight range, 26% were overweight, 28% were obese, and 5% was unknown. 78.5 % of the

people have tried to lose weight in the past.

 From the results, there were two common obstacles. 45.3% of patients somewhat agreed

that it was hard for them to follow a diet when their diet plan is different from the rest of their

families. 32.3% of participants also somewhat agreed that they are unable to exercise because

they are too tired. In both of these questions, “somewhat agree” was the largest percentage of

responses. Another obstacle that participants faced was junk food. “33.8% of the participants

responded that they disagree with the statement, “I like junk food and whenever it is available, I

can’t resist eating it.” However, 30.8% of participants responded that they somewhat agree with

the statement. Another obstacle that participants agreed on was the price of diet food, 27.7% of

participants agreed that diet food is expensive, but 24.6% responded that they were neutral. In

these cases, there were two responses that had similar number of responses.