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Weight can affect a person's self-esteem. Excess weight is highly visible and evokes some powerful reactions, however unfairly, from other people and from the people who carry the excess weight.
The amount of weight loss needed to improve your health may be much less than you wish to lose when you consider how you evaluate your weight. Research has shown that your health can be greatly improved by a loss of 5–10 % of your starting weight.
That doesn't mean you have to stop there, but it does mean that an initial goal of losing 5–10 % of your starting weight is both realistic and valuable.