Wednesday, February 20, 2008

It's not the cakes it's the worry ...

A study of more than 150,000 adults in the U.S. found that wanting to lose weight was as important in predicting the amount of days people were ill as their weight itself. People who wanted to weigh less were more likely to be mentally or physically unhealthy than people of the same weight who were content with their body image. After controlling for actual BMI and age the researchers found that men who wished to lose 1, 10 and 20% of their body weight respectively reported 0.1, 0.9 and 2.7 more unhealthy days per month than those who were happy with their weight. Among women the corresponding increase in numbers of reported unhealthy days was 0.1, 1.6 and 4.3. People who were happy with their weight experienced fewer physically unhealthy days and fewer mentally unhealthy days than those unhappy with their weight.

You can read more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/02/14/body-image-predicts-health/1915.html

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