A new survey conducted by Aviva (in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic) establishes a strong connection between dramatic weight gain and financial stress. The survey shows that the major cause of stress in US males is their financial situation.
Here are some of the things the survey discovered:
- 1 in 4 men never exercise.
- 1 in 3 claim their stress is the consequence of their financial situation.
- 2 out of 3 stressed men would like more money.
- The men who are most stressed are 3 times more likely to have a significant weight gain.
- The men who are most stressed are more likely to be fatter than men who aren’t worried.
- Men don’t go to their doctors enough.
Now let’s have another look at this.
Excess weight causes premature death through a variety of health problems. Aviva sells life insurance. The younger you die the more it costs them – because you haven’t paid your premiums for long enough. Therefore they have a vested interest in encouraging people to visit their doctors.
The Mayo Clinic sells health. The more convinced you are that you have a problem that needs medical attention – the more money the medics make. Being overweight is a health problem. It is not a medical problem. Severe obesity might be considered a medical problem. Being overweight cannot be ‘cured’ by visiting a doctor. The only ‘cure’ is to decide to do something about it and then to act on that decision – forever. If you make being overweight a medical problem then you are opening the door to more of your money being sucked into the pockets of medics, surgeons, and already bloated pharmaceutical companies. And you are already overweight because of your difficult financial circumstances (according to this report, at least).
In my reading of the report the connection they make between weight and financial stress seems a little tenuous.
A survey that I reference in my book How to Lose Weight Easily – and Free Yourself from Diets Forever suggests that 1 in 3 Americans are obese. Another 1 in 3 are overweight. So two out of every three Americans has a weight problem. That’s a lot. That’s so many it must be unusual to find someone who is a normal weight.
We are also in a recession. In a recession it is no surprise to find that a lot of people have financial problems. Because of the high numbers of overweight people and the high numbers of people with financial difficulties there are bound to be a lot of people in both categories.
To imply, therefore, that one is connected to the other, is a misuse of the statistics.
However, it was an internet based survey so the cost of the survey was presumably quite low. The number of responses was around 2000. And for that Aviva gets its name in lots of headlines.
Here are some of the other article titles based on this report that I discovered with a quick Google search:
Aviva USA Survey Finds Financial Situation is Top Stressor for Men and Links Stress Levels to Weight Gain
Aviva: finances top stressor for US men and linked to weight gain
Aviva Survey Identifies Strong Link Between High Stress Levels and Weight Gain
All of them emphasise the link to weight gain.
This means that Aviva’s name will be subconsciously registered, i.e. programmed, when people search for help with weight loss and come across internet references to this survey. That means Aviva becomes more familiar. Familiar = trusted. Trusted = I’ll buy from you.
It seems to me more of an exercise in advertising than a valuable contribution to the state of world’s knowledge regarding stress and weight gain.
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Michael