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Show Notes
In this episode, we take a look at the scientific evidence that links being overweight to earning less and being less employable.
I also explore some reasons why this might be the case and what you could do about it.
Some of the studies and articles mentioned in the podcast:
The other podcast episodes that are related to the topics discussed:
Episode #1: Love your body now before losing weight
Episode #2: Keep your weight and health in check when under stress
Transcript
This episode is so dear to my heart because it brings together two of my favorite topics: nutrition and the success of women.
Is there a hidden financial and career cost of being overweight?
I was inspired to look into this because one day one my clients told me « I want to lose weight because I want to be promoted »
I asked her why she thinks these two things are connected. And she said « I have never seen somebody in a senior position who is overweight, even by
just a bit. Maybe they are just more capable of holding their life together. »
It was the first time I thought about this.
What do YOU think? Have you seen somebody professionally successful, in a senior position who is overweight? How many such examples can you think of?
I couldn’t come up with any example. And more than half of the European adults are either overweight or obese. I don’t think more than half of the top-paying jobs are overweight people. Just as half of them are not women.
Why do you think this is?
Are employers biased and discriminate against overweight or obese individuals? Or are these individuals really less competent?
A number of studies showed the perception hiring managers have of candidates differ based on their looks, even when their level of skills and achievements are equal.
Skills, knowledge and abilities are only partially responsible for our success at a job interview. Our appearance, particularly whether hiring managers find us attractive, also plays an important part. Especially for client-facing positions.
Fairygodboss, a career community for women, released a report on the grim reality of being a female job seeker. The survey of 500 hiring professionals revealed biases that could prevent women from getting hired.
One of the most notable findings? That weight can affect your hiring potential. In one of the studies, hiring professionals were shown pictures of a range of body types and were asked questions based on these images.
Twenty-one percent of them described the heaviest-looking woman as “lazy.” That description was selected less frequently for every other woman pictured.
Only 18 percent said she had leadership potential, while 21 percent of respondents described her as “unprofessional.”
Scientists at the University of Exeter in the UK have found evidence that simply being a more overweight woman leads to lower opportunities in life, including lower income. They studied 70 genetic variants associated with body mass index, using data from 120,000 participants in the UK Biobank who were between 40 and 70 years old.
What they found was that if a woman was 6 kg heavier for no other reason than her genetics, she would have an income €1,800 less per year than a thinner woman of the same height. “Genetic variation that makes a woman a bit fatter also makes her a bit poorer”.
There is definitely a bias against extra weight. And it affects more women than men, probably because of society ‘s expectation of what a woman should look like.
There is a commonly mentioned reason why people think one becomes overweight: the lack of willpower. This presumed trait might then be transferred to other areas, such as work, learning or overcoming difficulties in the professional world.
So, I asked myself: do my clients lack willpower? They have soldiered through countless diets that prohibited most foods they used to enjoy, weighed every dish they ate and counted calories at every meal for a loooong time. I wonder how many of the normal weight people would have the willpower to go through that?
On top of this, they are also very resilient because even if they didn’t succeed, despite all the effort and restriction, they are still looking for solutions and are willing to try something else to reach their goal of losing weight.
Then I thought maybe being overweight is linked to lower self esteem, which would normally show up in an interview and thus decrease the chances of being offered the job.
Does being overweight cause low self-esteem or does low self-esteem cause being overweight?
I found there was quite a bit of research done in this area and a particularly interesting longitudinal study on Australian adults published in the Oxford Open Economics in 2022. I will put the link to the study in the show notes.
This type of study involves repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time. In this case, scientists looked at weight changes following external shocks to self esteem, such as the unexpected death of friends and family members. They wanted to determine if low self-esteem alone can cause weight gain.
They found that negative shocks adversely affect self-esteem, in turn leading to large increases in weight via increased food consumption and reduced exercise. The effects of the negative shocks were found to be larger for the lower educated and for females.
Using a 7-point scale in rating self-esteem, a 1-point decrease in self esteem results in an excess BMI of approximately 1.4 points. For your reference, if your BMI is between 25 and 30 you are considered overweight and if it’s above 30, then you are considered obese.
Low self esteem may cause a fatalistic or deterministic worldview, resulting in less effort to control weight.
It is true that we have to care about our future self in order to forgo the pleasure of eating sugary, fatty foods that would delight our senses on the spot. It involves delaying gratification.
So right here, we might have an answer to the question of why a high BMI is associated with lower income. I think we can safely say that self esteem is a factor in our professional success, especially in high-paying jobs. If this same factor can impact our weight, then it explains partly why being overweight and a lower income are linked.
Now – how about losing weight without increasing your self-esteem? Will you suddenly become more successful in getting jobs, promotions and a higher salary?
Let’s imagine you have a bad tooth ache and you can only eat soups for 1 month. You might lose some weight on account of this unfortunate episode.
I would imagine you might see an improvement in your self image because you are thinner and maybe act with more confidence. The ability to keep this going long enough so that you can get promoted at your job or get a raise is very slim.
First, because you will end up putting the weight back on if there is no nutritional and lifestyle long-term change.
Secondly, because your self esteem hasn’t fundamentally improved. You haven’t changed your opinion of yourself and you will keep producing the same results in your professional life. In the micro-moments where you have to make a decision, speak up in a meeting or follow your intuition – you won’t act with self confidence.
So, I don’t think losing weight without increasing your self-esteem can get you the income and career you would like.
That’s why I work with my clients on the relationship they have with themselves and the perception they have of their own potential and ability to do hard things.
Because losing weight is hard. Changing the way you eat is hard. It looks easy, but how many times have you set up to eat more healthily or exercise and you gave up?
Especially if you did diets before – it takes time to increase your metabolic rate which was decreased by dieting. You will need to overcome obstacles and this requires a willingness to work now for your future.
In the first episode of the podcast, Love your body now, before losing weight, I talk about why and how it’s important to improve the relationship you have with your body before starting your weight loss journey. Which is contrary to what most of you set out to do: I will first have a thin body and then I will love it.
The same is true about self-esteem, I would work to bring it up before or, at least, while you improve your nutrition. I think it’s important to care about your future self so that you make the best decisions for her right now.
Lastly, I find it ironic that chronic stress – and most of it comes from your work – directly impacts your metabolism and makes you gain weight. I talk about this at length in Episode 2 of the podcast.
So work stress makes you fat and being fat determines you earn less and are less likely to get promotions or the jobs you might want.
Finally, what are the pieces of advice I can offer in order to get out of this vicious cycle?
One: work on your self esteem because if it’s low, you will put on more weight and you will have a harder time convincing people that you deserve a job, promotion or salary raise.
Two: work with a professional that has a holistic approach to nutrition and weight loss, such as myself. I take into consideration not only the foods you should eat and adapt them to your particular needs, but also your stress, rest and how you can successfully form new habits and change the perception you have about your body and your ability to succeed.
