For many girls growing up, it’s a rite of passage: Enduring taunts of looking “too ugly” or “too fat” from fellow classmates. Yet now research shows that calling people fat in their adolescence is more likely to make them obese later in life, according to research from the University of California.
Now published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, lead author A. Janet Tomiyama says these results show that calling someone fat doesn’t help motivate them to be skinny–instead, it seems to do the exact opposite.
“This study is one step closer to being able to draw that conclusion, but of course we can’t definitively say that calling a girl “too fat” will make her obese,” says Tomiyama. “This study recruited girls when they were age 10 and followed them over nine years, so we know it’s more than just a one-time connection, which makes me believe that it’s an important question to continue researching.”
Studying over 2,000 10 year old girls in the United States, Tomiyama first started her research by asking them if anyone, such as their parents or friends, called them fat. She then tracked how many of these girls answered yes–an overwhelming 1,188 girls–and looked at how their body mass index, or BMI, changed over the next 10 years. As it turned out, those who answered yes were more likely to have a higher body mass index, whereas those who did not were more likely to maintain a healthier weight.
Tomiyama also found another troubling statistic: Those who heard these criticisms from their family members were 60 percent more likely to become obese.
“The effect seemed to be strongest when the labels came from family members, which increased the risk of obesity later by 60 percent, compared to 40 percent when the comments came from friends or teachers,” says Tomiyama. “The pressure to be thin in our society is intense, and other research shows that people label both themselves and others as ‘overweight’ even if their objective body mass index is in the ‘normal weight’ range.”
So what do these results mean for you?
- Weight bullying simply doesn’t work. Even for those who weren’t overweight, just hearing the accusation that they were fat caused them to weigh more later in life, and those effects intensified when it came from family members.
- Teasing or bullying can contribute to weight gain. Many people often think if they bully a person about their weight, they’ll try to lose weight to avoid being bullied–but it doesn’t work out that way. Instead, they cope with the bullying by eating more for comfort, increasing weight gain.
- Staying thin begins in adolescence. Girls are impressionable from a young age, so parents should use that time to encourage positive reinforcement about their bodies and eating habits–being negative often results in worse eating habits down the road.
In turn, researchers suggest this study shows a correlation, though not a definite cause-and-effect relationship, between weight bullying and weighing more later in life. If you’re truly worried about your friend or family member’s weight, saying he or she is fat isn’t going to work in this case–instead, you may want to focus on other behaviors, such as emphasizing the need to be healthy or involving the person in more physical activities.
Readers: Were you bullied about your weight in school? How did that affect you as you grew up?
Source:
Calling Girls Fat More Likely to Lead to Adulthood Obesity – Reuters.com
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