| This study is a qualitative inquiry into the lived experience of obesity using language of participants to create a generalized structure. Prior quantitative research into obesity is heavily focused on the medical implications of obesity, while prior quantitative research into obesity has been focused on specific consequences of obesity as limited by the research question. The research called for an inquiry into the lived experience of obesity without gender or ethnicity restrictions on the participants.;The inquiry was done with three individuals with body mass indexes equal to or greater than 40. The "protocol analysis" of the empirical-phenomenological method developed by Giorgi and Fischer at Duquesne University (Fischer, 2006) was used and included interviews with open-ended questions, delineating meaningful themes and situated structures from the participants' language. This research revealed the ontic ways each participant experience the ontological givens of coexistence, bodyhood, spatiality, temporality, historicity, mortality, and attunement. |
