Background: Medical visits are initiated by patients in search of symptom relief. The extent to which obesity independently increases the risk of common symptoms is unknown. Objectives: To assess how obesity affects symptom burden among family medicine patients, after adjustment for severity of...

Background: Since confidence is an important predictor of ability to lose weight, methods for increasing weight-control confidence are important. The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between short-term behavior changes (`behavioral bootstrapping') and change in weight-control...

Background: Controlling the number of medical visits consumed by primary care patients is essential to cost containment; therefore, identification of patients likely to be frequent users of medical visits is required. Obesity has not often been used as a marker for selecting patients for disease...