Table 1.

Perceived Benefits and Barriers to Physical Activity among Obese Women

Construct	Common Themes and Frequencies	Illustrative Quotes
Perceived Barriers to Physical Activity (General)*	Weight-related (10)†; Injury or surgery (9); Time (5); Life gets in the way (i.e. other priorities) (4); Chronic condition (3); Environment/safety issues (2);	“Well, I’m a diabetic, have been, like I said, for seventeen years. And I have three degenerative diseases of the spine that’s all in the same area, and before I got this, I used to walk fifteen minutes twice a day and I lost, um, forty-six pounds, one time; another time, thirty-five. And I can’t do it anymore, because I can’t walk like that anymore ‘cause my blood pressure spikes.“
Perceived Barriers to Physical Activity (Weight-related)	Weight, general (3); Physically uncomfortable while exercising (3); Uncomfortable with appearance while exercising/don’t want to exercise in front of others (3); Short of breath (1);	“…the weight goes down and then I feel better about exercising, because who wants to be, you know, big, fat, tight clothes, that kind of thing, getting out of breather earlier or something like that, although my breath really is pretty good.” “I think the reason I don’t exercise is… I want to exercise by myself, but the only reason I don’t want to join a club, or anything like that is because everybody in there is like a size 2!”
Perceived Benefits of Physical Activity	White: Improve Mental Health/Quality of life (7); Weight management (6); Disease prevention (6); Improve fitness (5); Treat conditions/ Avoid medication (4); Social/ Fun (2);	“My physical activity drops off as I gain weight. And then it increases as I lose weight. And so, losing weight, seeing the numbers go down on the scale, feeling as though my clothes are fitting better or I get into, you know my smaller size clothes and that sort of thing that motivates me to work out, to be more purposeful in doing physical activity. I also don’t want to hurt I don’t want to have heart disease and so, when I’m doing what I need to be doing, those also help reinforce being active.” “Walking to me is therapeutic, as well as the exercise. I’ve solved a lot of problems walking. I can really tell the difference in everything - my skin, my weight, my temperament and that works for me.”

^*Due to high numbers of perceived barriers, only those which were cited 2 or more times are included in the chart.

^†Specific weight-related barriers are listed in the second row.