Adherence
Existing patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures inadequately capture the full spectrum of emotional impacts of obesity and weight loss, specifically missing concepts such as feeling happy, energetic, proud, or joyful, as well as negative emotions like grief, disappointment, or skepticism.
If you are tracking the success of your weight loss journey, standard health surveys might not reflect how you truly feel. This research suggests that specific emotional changes—like feeling more energetic, confident, or joyful—are real and significant benefits of treatment, but they are often missed by standard medical questionnaires. To get a complete picture of your progress, use or advocate for tools specifically designed to measure emotional well-being in the context of weight, such as the Weight and Emotions Scale (WES).
most emotional impact concepts identified in the exit interviews were less frequently or not at all included in existing disease- and weight-specific PRO measures. Items describing feeling 'happy' and 'energetic' were included in the general health PROs but were not specific to weight. Other emotion-related concepts reported in the exit interviews that were not included in the PRO measures included feeling disappointed, stressed, skeptical, or grief due to weight as well as feeling proud, joyful, or excited due to weight reduction.
Why this rating
Based on qualitative concept elicitation with 40 patients and targeted literature review of 8 existing PROs, providing strong qualitative evidence for the gap, though no quantitative validation of the new scale is presented in this text.
Source
Development of the Weight and Emotions Scale (WES)
Chisom Kanu et al. · Obesity Science & Practice · 2026
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