Perceived Body Image, Eating Behavior, and Sedentary Activities and Body Mass Index Categories in Kuwaiti Female Adolescents

Abstract

Background. The State of Kuwait has a growing obesity epidemic in both genders and all age groups; however, obesity rates in the young seem to be rising. Methods. We conducted a cross-sectional survey in 169 Kuwaiti female adolescents attending both private and public schools spanning the six governorates in the State of Kuwait in order to explore female adolescents' self-image, body dissatisfaction, type of school (private versus public), TV viewing, and computer games and their relationship to body mass index. Results. Approximately half the students classified as obese perceived their body image to lie in the normal range. Females in the obese category were the most dissatisfied with their body image, followed by those in the overweight category. Eating behavior, level of physical activity, school type, television viewing, computer/video usage, and desired BMI were not significantly associated with level of obesity. Conclusion. This study was one of the few studies to assess adolescent females' body image dissatisfaction in relation to obesity in the State of Kuwait. The results suggest that including body image dissatisfaction awareness into obesity prevention programs would be of value.

Potential psychosocial influences on gender differences in physical activity among Qatari adolescents: a first insight through descriptive observation

“…Furthermore, findings from a review of qualitative studies showed that adolescents' negative perception of their body relative to actual physical appearance was a barrier to PA (Stankov et al, 2012). With respect to adolescents in Arab countries, available literature supports dissatisfaction with BI to be positively associated with negative eating attitudes and higher Body Mass Index or BMI (Mousa, Mashal, Al-Domi, & Jibril, 2009;Shaban, Vaccaro, Sukhram, & Huffman, 2016). However, we found no studies that looked into the association between BI and PA in Arab adolescents to date.…”

Factorial Model of Obese Adolescents: The Role of Body Image Concerns and Selective Depersonalization—A Pilot Study

“…Overweight and obese adolescents are more likely to misperceive their body features, i.e., they tend to underestimate [ 184 , 185 ] or overestimate [ 178 , 186 , 187 ] their body weight and body parts [ 48 , 188 , 189 , 190 , 191 ], particularly when these are perceived as unattractive [ 135 , 192 , 193 ]. In the current study, selective dissatisfaction about with torso, in combination with depersonalization, was detected in obese adolescents.…”

Corrigendum to “Perceived Body Image, Eating Behavior, and Sedentary Activities and Body Mass Index Categories in Kuwaiti Female Adolescents”

“…In the article titled “Perceived Body Image, Eating Behavior, and Sedentary Activities and Body Mass Index Categories in Kuwaiti Female Adolescents” [ 1 ], reference [13] was incorrectly cited instead of reference [23] in the sentence “our complete questionnaire was a modified form of the Barrett and Huffman questionnaire but was modified to suit the aims of the study [13]” in Section 2.4, “Silhouette Questionnaire.”…”