The Lived Experience of Resilience in Excessive Weight Women

Excessive weight gain is one of the problems of today`s society and a worldwide health threatening condition similar to diabetes, cancer, and other chronic diseases. The prevalence of overweight and excessive weight gain is increasing worldwide. Despite advances in managing the excessive weight gain phenomena, its prevalence is still high, and there is little knowledge about what excessive weight gained people really experience in their daily life. The current study aimed at providing an understanding of the lived experience in females with excessive weight gain.
The current qualitative study, using interpretive phenomenological approach, was conducted on 12 females with excessive weight gain purposefully selected. Data were collected during individual, semi-structured, and deep interviews. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analyzed with Van Manen (2006) approach.
Lived experiences of excessive weight in females were summarized by the main theme: “the resilience” and subthemes: “desire of change”, “hopeful struggle”, and “troubles of resilience”.
The results of the current study revealed that the lived experience of resilience in females was an important factor to interact with the social world. In fact, resilience strategies such as weight loss, diet, and effective communication with others were used by females to cope with unsuitable situations. Nurses can better improve health status in people with excessive weight by knowing the resilience concept.