Overweight: Many fat people feel slim
All content is checked by medical journalists.Munich“Am I too fat?” - many young people answer this question in the negative. There are more and more of them who actually have too much on their ribs. They don't seem to realize that they're too fat. A realistic self-assessment is the first step in achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight.
Jian Zhang, an epidemiologist from Georgia Southern University in the USA, worked with colleagues to study the body perception of adolescents. To this end, the team analyzed the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of over 4,200 adolescents, which were collected either between 1988-1994 ("earlier") or between 2007-2012 ("current"). The 12 to 16 year old participants were asked whether they thought they were overweight, underweight or just right.
Shifted perception
The trend shows: More and more fat adolescents do not even notice that they are overweight. Even test persons who, according to their body mass index (BMI), were clearly too fat, described themselves as “just right”. In contrast to the previous survey period, 29 percent fewer people currently describe themselves as too fat. The influence of age, ethnicity, gender and family income was taken into account. Overall, girls assess themselves more realistically than boys.
"We may be dealing with a generation-related shift in the perception of body weight," the researchers speculate. It is possible that extra pounds have become more normal as a result of the increase in obesity and are therefore more socially accepted. That would be in line with social comparison theory. It assumes that people compare themselves with other people and not with absolute standards such as the BMI.
Another explanation for the phenomenon: “It can of course also be the case that young people these days do not dare to admit that they are too fat.Especially when the media are so strongly promoting slimness, ”says Zhang.
Lack of awareness of the problem
The researchers find the increase in misperceptions worrying. "Only adolescents who are aware of their obesity may be willing to change their behavior and lose weight effectively," they explain. That is why one must help overweight young people to assess their weight realistically and to counteract it.
The challenge, however, is to destroy the teenagers' self-esteem and not to exert too much psychological pressure. Otherwise you run the risk that even young people of normal weight will find themselves too fat and want to lose weight to an unhealthy amount.
Dangerous pounds
Researching and combating obesity is important because the extra pounds can have serious health consequences: Overweight people, for example, have a significantly increased risk of diabetes, joint wear, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. In addition, fat children and adolescents also suffer psychologically from being overweight: They are teased by their peers at school and in the swimming pool and are often chosen last in physical education classes.
In Germany, around 15 percent of all children and adolescents between the ages of three and 17 are overweight. (vv)
Source: Hui Lu, Yelena N. Tarasenko, Farrah C. Asgari-Majd, Cherell Cottrell-Daniels, Fei Yan, Jian Zhang. More Overweight Adolescents Think They Are Just Fine. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2015; DOI: 10.1016 / j.amepre.2015.03.024
