Perfect Love or Perfect Weight? Among People Looking to Lose Weight, the Answer Is Clear

Key Takeaways

• Results from a new Everyday Health survey of more than 850 adults seeking weight loss suggest that health is a priority for patients.

• Most would choose a guaranteed cure for obesity over financial benefits.

• Healthcare providers who treat patients with obesity say their patients have similar sentiments.

If you could wake up tomorrow either at your ideal weight or debt-free, which would you choose?

A recent Everyday Health survey of 858 adults who are overweight or have obesity posed that question – along with several others – to understand how living with obesity or extra weight shapes a person’s values and the choices they would make to influence their future if given the opportunity.

In most cases, having a healthy weight or good health outranked love and money.

Among the survey participants, waking up at the ideal weight beat waking up debt-free by 57 percent to 43 percent. Having perfect health for the rest of their life won over having a perfect relationship by 64 percent to 36 percent. So did having a guaranteed cure for weight or obesity concerns versus a debt-free college education for a child by 68 percent to 32 percent.

These sentiments appear to get stronger with time: Patients who have been living with an obesity diagnosis for years were significantly more likely than those who were newly diagnosed to prioritize never having to think about their weight again over relief from stress eating.

What Health Experts Think of the Results

The results weren’t surprising to healthcare professionals who work with people seeking weight loss.

“It impacts everything when patients are overweight, especially if they are significantly overweight,” says Mir Ali, MD, the medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California. “It’s not just about health.”

Because weight can have such a large impact on multiple areas of life, Angela Fitch, MD, an obesity medicine physician and the co-founder and chief medical officer of Knownwell, says it “makes sense” that people would prioritize a solution over what many think of as life’s biggest stressors, like debt. “The survey is really capturing how heavy the day-to-day burden of this disease is,” Dr. Fitch says. “And it is even more burdensome because it has not been treated for centuries with adequate therapy.”

While effective treatments like GLP-1 medications are now available to patients, they’re not always covered by health insurance. “That makes a marginalized, untreated group of people desperate for help,” Fitch says.

Fitch is not shocked that people would choose the ability to wake up at an ideal weight over being debt-free. “Debt is stressful, but it’s often something people feel they have some control over or a plan to manage,” she says. “Carrying excess weight, by contrast, can feel like a problem that won’t respond to willpower or effort alone, and that lack of control is exhausting.”

Fitch regularly hears patients say that they’d “trade almost anything” for their weight to not define their health, wardrobe, stamina, or the world’s perception of them. “It’s also worth noting that obesity is tied to real, tangible health risks – cardiometabolic disease, joint problems, sleep apnea – so the desire for ideal weight isn’t vanity; it’s patients equating it with getting their health and their future back,” Fitch says.

What to Do if You Have Untreated or Undertreated Obesity

If you have obesity and have a desire to change your weight, Dr. Ali recommends talking to your primary care physician to start. “It may be necessary to run some tests and to make sure that things are in order from a hormonal perspective,” he says.

From there, Fitch suggests finding a clinician who treats obesity as a chronic disease versus something that can be controlled with diet and exercise alone. “Comprehensive care today can include nutrition counseling, behavioral support, movement tailored to the individual, and when appropriate, U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved obesity management medications, or other medical tools, all personalized to that person’s biology and goals,” she says.

A registered dietitian may also be helpful to create a personalized nutrition and lifestyle plan for the future, says Maya Feller, RD, a certified dietitian nutritionist and the founder and lead dietitian at Maya Feller Nutrition and author of Eating From Our Roots.

But Fitch stresses the importance of trying to change your mindset around excess weight, too. “Ditch the idea that this is a willpower problem,” she says. “Obesity has strong genetic, hormonal, and environmental drivers, and understanding that can be a relief, not an excuse.”

Sources: Everyday Health Obesity/Weight Loss GLP-1 Patient Survey, N= 858, Aug. 5-15, 2026.

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Sean Hashmi, MD, is an experienced nephrologist and obesity medicine specialist based in Southern California. As the regional director for clinical nutrition and weight management …

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