Understanding the lived experience of obesity

A gap between clinical models and real lives

Weight management services frequently experience low engagement and high drop-off. The instinctive response is to treat this as a motivation problem - to design better incentives, clearer targets, more structured programmes.

But this framing starts from the wrong place. Clinical pathways that emphasise weight loss targets and behaviour change interventions often overlook the wider social and emotional context shaping how people live. Stigma in healthcare encounters. Workplace pressures that make sustained change difficult. Mental health factors that interact with physical health in ways that services rarely account for.

Understanding these nuances isn't a nice-to-have. It is essential when designing services that people can realistically engage with - and sustain.

Three-stage lived experience research

Participation Studio designed and facilitated a three-stage research programme structured around in-person workshops with individuals living with obesity. Participants were recruited from diverse communities to ensure a wide range of lived experiences, rather than the self-selecting populations who typically engage with clinical services.

Each workshop explored a different dimension of lived experience: healthcare journeys and service interactions; social environments and community context; and workplace experiences. This structure allowed us to build a layered picture of how obesity is experienced across the different contexts of daily life - rather than treating it as a single-domain clinical question.

Sessions were facilitated in person, structured around moderated discussion and narrative exploration. The aim was to uncover subtle but important insights that structured questionnaires or survey data wouldn't surface - the hesitations, the workarounds, the things people have stopped trying.

What the research involved

What the research found

The research revealed important tensions between clinical models of obesity management and the realities of lived experience. These were not simply gaps in service provision - they were structural mismatches between how services were designed and how people's lives actually worked.

Stigma emerged as a consistent and significant factor - not just in public spaces, but within healthcare encounters themselves. Participants described interactions where shame was an implicit part of the dynamic, and where this had eroded their willingness to engage with services.

Workplace pressure and mental health factors shaped engagement with healthcare in ways that services rarely acknowledged. For many participants, the periods when sustained behaviour change was hardest were precisely the periods when life was making the most demands - a finding that has direct implications for how services are timed, structured, and delivered.

Where the insight went

The study was delivered in collaboration with the Huddersfield Health Innovation Partnership and the Leeds Beckett Institute of Obesity, reflecting a partnership model that connects academic rigour with system-level application. The work contributed to an emerging evidence base about the gap between clinical obesity management models and the social determinants that shape real engagement.