Body acceptance and social support

Women's acceptance of their bodies could have more to do with how other people see them than their actual weight. Researchers from Ohio State University studied 801 women between the ages of 18 and 65. They found that the most important influence on how women saw their bodies was how they thought important people in their life saw them and that the more women focused on how their bodies functioned and felt the more they appreciated them. In turn, the more women appreciated their bodies the more likely they were to eat intuitively, i.e. in response to hunger rather than emotions or the presence of food. The study also found that women who thought they had strong levels of social support were more likely to accept their bodies. For women aged between 26 and 65 those who weighed more were less likely to eat intuitively and more likely to think that others didn't accept their bodies if they weighed more. Women aged between 26 and 39 were most likely to achieve body appreciation by focusing more on how their bodies functioned.

Bodybuilders, body dissatisfaction and bulimia

Body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating practices are common in sports and activities that require low body fat or a low weight for improved performance. Competitive bodybuilding requires its participants to be exceptionally lean and bodybuilders often have unhealthy eating patterns and use anabolic steroids. A Canadian study of 45 women compared competitive bodybuilders with recreational weight trainers. The study found high rates of weight and shape preoccupation, body dissatisfaction, bulimic practices and anabolic steroid use among the bodybuilders and similar problems (albeit to a lesser degree) in the weight trainers. The competitive bodybuilders shared many of the eating patterns of the women with bulimia but few psychological traits.

Goldfield, Gary S. - Body image, disordered eating and anabolic steroid use in female bodybuilders Eating Disorders May-June 2009, 17(3), 200-210

Slimness and gymnasts

Despite studies showing a link between disordered eating and involvement in appearance-related sports few studies have examined the effectiveness of interventions designed to reduce disordered eating among female athletes. Canadian researchers looked at the effectiveness of a programme called Body Sense in 62 female gymnasts between the ages of 11 and 18. The Body Sense programme addresses: eating attitudes and beliefs, accurate information about body health, unique body size and shape, resisting pressures to diet, physical activity for enjoyment, helping an athlete feel good about herself, assertiveness, stress management, role models and promoting a balance between sport participation and life outside sport. Participation in the programme resulted in athletes perceiving a reduction in pressure from their sports clubs to be thin although no changes were found in body esteem, the girls' perceptions of society's attitude to thinness or the girls' parents' ideas about thinness and dieting.

Buchholz, Annick ... [et al] - Bodysense: an evaluation of a positive body image intervention on sport climate for female athletes Eating Disorders July-September 2008, 16(4), 308-321

Weight, perception and happiness in teenagers

A study of 7,000 German teenagers looked into their perceptions of their weight, their actual weight and their quality of life. Only about 18% of the sample were actually overweight, with 7-8% of them actually being underweight. However 55% of the girls and 36% of the boys thought that they were too fat. The children's quality of life was linked to their perception of their weight rather than their actual weight and this was particularly marked with the girls. Normal-weight girls who thought they were too fat had a reduced quality of life whereas overweight girls who were happy with their weight had the same quality of life as normal-weight ones.

You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/06/23/perception-of-being-fat-harm-teens/2486.html

Prevention programmes for eating disorders

The number of girls and women affected by full-blown eating disorders remains quite small. Conservative estimates are 0.2% and 0.8% for anorexia, 1% for bulimia and 1-3% for binge eating disorder. However, a far larger proportion of girls have symptoms of disordered eating which can lead on to the development of an eating disorder with some studies showing a third of older girls and a quarter of younger (11-13) ones having problematic eating behaviour. There have been attempts to develop primary prevention programmes aimed at reducing risk factors and building up protective ones. One such programme - developed in Germany - is the Prima programme which uses standardized posters and guidelines and is delivered by trained female teachers either within the normal class schedule or as a separate workshop. The girls who took part in the course reported significant improvements in body self-esteem, figure dissatisfaction, knowledge and eating attitudes. The teachers who conducted the programme felt well qualified and were evaluated significantly positive by their students.

Berger, Uwe ... [et al] - Primary prevention of eating disorders: characteristics of effective programmes and how to bring them to broader dissemination European Eating Disorders Review May-June 2008, 16(3), 173-183

Self esteem, body dissatisfaction and restrained eating

Restrained eating is defined as a persistent fixation on dieting, weight and food, such that the type and amount of food eaten is restricted for the purpose of weight loss or maintenance. Restrained eaters commonly experience weight fluctuations due to alternations between dieting and pronounced lapses in dietary adherence. Dietary restriction has been implicated as a risk factor in the development of obesity, binge-eating and eating disorders. A U.S. study of 60 female undergraduates looked into the links between self-esteem, social anxiety, body dissatisfaction and appetite. The researchers found that low self-esteem and social anxiety were linked to dietary restraint. However, these relationships were fully mediated (accounted for) by the increased levels of bodily dissatisfaction experienced by those with low self-esteem and social anxiety. These researchers concluded that 'low self-esteem is a potent risk factor for developing an overvaluation of one's body shape, which in turn may lead to restrained eating in an attempt to achieve a more satisfactory body shape and size.'

Gianini, Loren M. and Smith, Jane Ellen - Body dissatisfaction mediates the relationship between self-esteem and restrained eating in female undergraduates International Journal of Behavioral Consultation and Therapy 2008, 4(1), 48-60

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

Fat talk and eating disorders

'Fat talk' can be defined as conversations with family and friends pertaining to positive or negative comments about appearance, dieting techniques and the need to lose weight and is common, though not exclusive to, teenage girls an age group particularly at risk for eating disorders. In a 2003 experiment female undergraduates exposed to a 'stooge' who, despite being thin herself, talked about how fat she felt and how much she wanted to lose weight, had significantly increased body dissatisfaction compared to a group who talked to a 'stooge' about neutral topics. A study of 272 college students - male and female - in the U.S. explored this relationship further and found that the frequency of 'fat talk' was positively related to eating pathology and body dissatisfaction in students with and without an eating disorder diagnosis. The most frequently reported topic of 'fat talk' was about other people's appearance rather than the participants'.

Ousley, Louise, Cordero, Elizabeth D. and White, Sabina - Fat talk among college students: how undergraduates communicate regarding food and body weight, shape & appearance Eating Disorders January-February 2008, 16(1), 73-84

Body image, eating and the media : eating snack and watching beanpoles

Most women suffer from anxiety about their physical appearance, especially their weight. Even normal weight women express a desire to lose weight ; something that has been found in girls as young as nine. This can lead, in some cases, to women opting for plastic surgery (which has increased by 165% since 1992) or developing eating disorders, which can, in extreme cases, lead to death. It is often claimed that depictions of unrealistically thin women in the media contribute to this process and a Canadian study looked at the links between 'thin' images and eating behaviour. In four different mini studies young women between the ages of 18 and 21 were shown video clips which they were asked to memorize for a test later. They were then told that in their break they would be participating in a taste test of different foods before the memory test. The women were encouraged to eat as much as they liked and after a while were told the true nature of the experiment - which was to see how much food they ate after watching the video clips - by the researchers. The first study compared women watching neutral commercials with those watching thin models and found that those watching the thin models ate less. The second study included images of successful, heavier women among the thin ones and this group ate more. A third group were told before the 'thin' adverts were shown that a majority of their peers thought that the women in them were too skinny and this group ate more too. A fourth group were shown the commercials then given a psychological test designed to measure how much they associated heaviness with rejection ; the stronger the women's association between heaviness and rejection the less they ate.

Strahan, Erin J., Spencer, Steven J. and Zanna, Mark P. - Don't take another bite: how sociocultural norms for appearance affect women's eating behavior Body Image December 2007, 4(4), 331-342