Obesity-Stigma As a Multifaceted Constraint to Leisure (Report‪)‬

Introduction Almost half a billion people around the globe are classified as overweight or obese (Rossner, 2002). One arrives at these nominal representations of weight groups by calculation of the body mass index (BMI) of a person, defined as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. The label of overweight is typically assigned to those with a BMI ranging from 25-30, while obesity is marked by any BMI greater than 30. Since the BMI range for overweight is so close to the marker for obesity, one might even consider the overweight range to signify a status of at-risk of becoming obese. Due to the significant impact on international healthcare systems, obesity is now classified as a global epidemic (Astrup, 2004; Wadden, Brownell, & Foster, 2002; Wang & Lobstein, 2006). In the United States alone, obesity has quickly developed into our country's number one health crisis (Wyatt, Winters, & Dubbert, 2006).