Fear of fat - adolescence

Pediatrics for Parents, April, 1989

Fear of Fat Ask any adolescent girl if she's been on a diet recently and there's a 75 percent chance she'll say yes. A study of girls attending an upper middle-class parochial high school found high levels of concern about weight. Using standardized scales, 36 percent of the 326 adolescents were underweight, 47 percent normal, and 17 percent were overweight.

Half of those who were underweight reported extreme anxiety about being overweight; over one-third were even preoccupied with body fat. In the remainder of the students, almost 70 percent were fearful of becoming overweight and 60 percent were preoccupied with body fat. There was no difference in bingeing, impulse to vomit, and actual vomiting behavior in the three groups At the time of the survey 20 percent of the underweight girls, almost one third of the normal weight girls, and 54 percent of the overweight girls were dieting. Many of the girls had a distorted perception of their ideal body weights. Some experts in the field advocate nutritional education as a way to fight these trends. This study found that general nutritional knowledge wasn't related to the attitudes about weight, eating behaviors, and body weights. Fear of obesity is defined as "self-induced malnutrition due to an exaggerated concern about becoming fat ... and is not associated with overt psychosis." This differentiates it from anorexia nervosa. It's the result of society's high esteem of thinness as being both more beautiful and healthier. These concepts seem to form very early in life. There's evidence that even elementary school children are concerned about their weight, follow diets, and believe obesity is worse than being handicapped or disabled.