Homeostasis and failure of mitochondria on the single-cell level.

Merleau-Ponty in his phenomenological theory describes how we are present in the world and experience everything through our bodies (). Living with a higher weight would in this perspective include experiencing all aspects of life through a larger body. In qualitative research exploring narratives about body size, the body becomes both an object and a subject—we both are and have bodies (). Narrating could alternate between experiencing the body as an object and not an integrated part of the self and the body being a reflexive tool to access important knowledge about the body itself, weight changes, and identity. In this view, how we relate to our bodies would influence both how we experience the world and have access to our own feelings and our experienced sense of self. The individual narratives about the causality of weight gain and body size in the life stories of people with larger bodies are formed by these experiences of being in the world, as a part of society, in relationships and in meetings with health care workers and us as researchers (), all representing a variety of different understandings and narratives of body size and the causality of weight gain (; ). Employing a narrative phenomenological–hermeneutical framework, our main aim in this qualitative study was to explore how people with larger bodies seeking treatment for ‘obesity’ understand and experience their weight development in a life-course perspective. How do they narrate about their weight history in the context of recent participation in a behavioral lifestyle intervention aimed at weight loss, and were there challenges in narrating about their weight development?