Body satisfaction and body weight in under- and healthy-weight adolescents: mediating effects of restrictive dieting, healthy and unhealthy food intake

Abstract

Purpose Theoretical models, such as the transdiagnostic model of eating disorders highlight the role of cognitive factors (e.g., the way people perceive their bodies) and their associations with maladaptive weight management behaviors resulting in underweight. This paper aims at testing the indirect association of adolescent's body satisfaction and body mass index (BMI) through restrictive dieting, healthy eating or unhealthy eating as well as moderating role of adolescent's weight status. Methods The study was conducted in 16 public middle and high schools in Central and Eastern Poland. A sample of 1042 under-and healthy-weight white adolescents aged 13-20 (BMI: 12.63-24.89) completed two self-reported questionnaires (fruit, vegetable, and energy-dense food intake) with a 11-month interval. Weight and height were measured objectively. Multiple mediation analysis and moderated multiple mediation analysis were conducted to test the study hypotheses. Results Adolescents less satisfied with their bodies were more likely to diet restrictively and at the same time ate more unhealthy energy-dense food rather than healthy food, which in turn predicted lower BMI. No moderating effects of weight status were found. Conclusions Low body satisfaction is a risk for restrictive diet and unhealthy food intake. Prevention programs may target under-and healthy-weight adolescents who are highly dissatisfied with their bodies, have a high intake of energy-dense food and apply a restrictive diet at the same time. Level of evidence Level III: longitudinal cohort study.

Psycho-social factors related to obesity and their associations with socioeconomic characteristics: the RECORD study

“…Negative body perceptions are associated with weight management failure and treatment discontinuation in weight loss programs [10]. Weight dissatisfaction has been described as a risk factor for different eating disorders [29][30][31][32].…”

Body areas satisfaction and body mass in adolescents: mediating effects of actual–ideal body weight discrepancies

“…Moreover, even though efforts were made to choose the intervals able to explain the short-and long-term associations between the study variables, the choice of the time points in the study was arbitrary. Further, other variables which were not included in the present study but were found as significant in the explanation of the associations between BAS and BMI, such as: cognitive variables (e.g., perfectionism and self-esteem), emotional variables (e.g., depression, anxiety and emotion regulation), environmental variables (e.g., built physical environment and food accessibility), social variables (e.g., peer, parental, media influence), and behavioral variables (e.g., diet, physical activity and sedentary behavior) [25,28,41]. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that body dissatisfaction was previously found to be explained to a large extend by genetic factors [25] that were not controlled in the study.…”

“…There are many cross-sectional studies and only a few longitudinal studies that confirmed the associations between body satisfaction, actual-ideal body weight discrepancies and adolescents' BMI [20,28]. However, to understand temporal effects of BAS, actual-ideal body weight discrepancies and BMI, variables should be measured at separate time points [29].…”

Adolescent Feeding: Nutritional Risk Factors

“…20 The appearance of restrictive diets is due to an excessive concern about body image, based on a certain beauty (thinness) model, thus initiating slimming regimens that lead to an insufficient intake of many nutrients, especially in women, with an increase in physical activity or even an initiation of purging behaviors for weight maintenance. 23 The adoption of vegan and vegetarian diets, with the absence of the ingestion of eggs and meat, favors the appearance of deficiencies, especially for vitamins D and B12, riboflavin, calcium, zinc, iron, and other trace elements. Therefore, we must be especially alert for the adoption of "fashionable" diets that are hypocaloric and nutritionally unbalanced, as well as the use or abuse of nutritional and non-nutritional supplements.…”