Girls who don?t gauge their own weight status properly run a greater risk of developing an eating disorder. These young women are not just dissatisfied with their appearance, they misjudge it entirely.
Knowing that it is a distorted self-perception rather than personal dissatisfaction which marks the normal or underweight girl as in danger of an eating disorder is helpful in terms of screening for the illness. Especially in today?s obesity-minded culture, doctors are usually open with young girls and parents about the risks of over-weight, but attention also needs to be given to teens of lower weight who reveal a body-image problem.
Feeling unhappy about the way you look or the shape of your body is not the same thing as having a poor body image. Since somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of American women express dissatisfaction with their body, a more precise indicator is needed. New research on the subject, gathered from a longitudinal survey of over 5,000 teenage girls with no obvious weight problem (their body mass index, or BMI, was lower than 85 percent), could lead the way to more precise screening.
Using a sample of this large subject pool, researchers compared girls? true weight status with their perceived weight status. Girls who gauged themselves as overweight, but who actually were not, were tagged as having a distorted body image.
The study team then employed analysis techniques to forecast how a distorted body image would impact the girls? behaviors, particularly in terms of diet, exercise and drastic weight loss measures like using laxatives or purging. By tracking the subjects to the one year mark, the researchers discovered that girls with a wrong body image who begin using drastic and unhealthy weight loss techniques are more than 10 times as likely to still be using those behaviors a year later.
The study found no link between a distorted body image and excessive exercise as a weight loss tactic. While a tiny percentage of girls do develop an addiction to exercise for weight loss, in the majority of cases exercise promotes a healthy approach to improved mood and self-perception.
The study highlights the importance of catching distorted body image thinking in young girls before they begin to choose unhealthy eating and extreme dieting. Once that thinking and behavior takes hold, it becomes quite difficult to break. To proactively guard against this risk, girls need reinforcement in understanding that bodies are vessels for the person inside, help in focusing on their personal strengths and a supportive atmosphere that focuses on health rather than numbers on a scale.
Some families may need to get rid of the bathroom scale entirely. Parents can help their young and teenaged daughters by cultivating positive life habits such as balanced eating, regular exercise, and correct talk about physical appearance. Good habits may be hard to form, but bad habits are hard to break.
Source: http://www.treatmentcenters.net/eating-disorders/body-image-and-eating-disorders/
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