Healthy Life Centre participants' perceptions of living with overweight or obesity and seeking help for a perceived "wrong" lifestyle - a qualitative interview study.

Changing dietary and activity habits is difficult as the emotional alternation between shame, guilt and pride influences the ability to assume personal responsibility. A deeper understanding of each participant's perceptions and experiences is important for the ability to tailor and provide a high quality health service. Addressing participants' emotional distress and search for dignity is necessary for enabling dietary and activity change. This should be considered in the future development of HLCs and health promotion interventions in order to educate service users about emotions and the role they play in food consumption and inactivity. Weight stigma at individual and system level as well as responsibility related to dilemmas about "right" or "wrong" lifestyle should be addressed.