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Although obese people can gain health benefits by losing just five percent to ten percent of their weight, many of them set higher goals for their weight loss. In doing so, they may be setting themselves up for a big disappointment if they are unsuccessful in their weight loss.

To investigate, the studys lead author, Foster and his colleagues studied nearly 400 obese individuals who desired to lose weight, including 50 who sought surgical treatment. On average, study participants were about 43 years old and weighed about 109 kilograms (240 pounds).

Study participants reported an average dream weight of about 64 kilograms (141 pounds) and said they would be disappointed if they weighed, on average, 90 kilograms (198 pounds) at the end of their weight loss treatment.

In fact, they said that losing 16 percent of their body weight would be ``disappointing,'' something they could ``not view as successful in any way,'' and losing 25 percent would be only ''acceptable''--but they ``would not be particularly happy.''

The participants' initial weight most strongly predicted whether they would be happy with their weight at the end of the treatment or if they would find it just ``acceptable'' or ''disappointing,'' the report indicates. Thus, heavier individuals tended to be more disappointed with the results of their weight loss than their lighter peers.

The heavier participants realistically chose higher values for their desired weights than did lighter individuals. However these desired weights still required more weight loss in comparison to that required for the lighter individuals to reach their dream weights, the researchers explain.

For example, participants who weighed about 90 kilograms (198 pounds) said that losing 18 percent of their weight would be acceptable, but those who weighed about 135 kilograms (298 pounds) needed to lose almost double that amount (33 percent) to consider their weight loss acceptable.

Patients who were screened for surgical treatment chose significantly lower dream weights than did their peers. In general, patients undergoing surgery as an obesity treatment could expect to lose 27 percent of their body weight, but these study participants considered a 38 percent weight reduction as only ''acceptable,'' according to the Archives of Internal Medicine (2001;161:2133-2139).