The study describes people who are prone to body image and eating disorders

Text: Maria Fernanda Ziegler | FAPESP Agency

Based on data from two questionnaires answered by 1,750 volunteers, Brazilian researchers have identified a set of characteristics that make a person more likely to develop mental disorders related to body image and eating habits. According to the study, the problem mainly affects women, young men, and consumers of fitness supplements or drug substances to change body shape. Also on the list are supporters of restrictive diets, sedentary people, people diagnosed with obesity or overweight and poorly assessing their food.

The survey was conducted by researchers from Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) and Federal de Alfenas (Unifal) and received financing from FAPESP. The results were released in the journal Environmental research and public health.

According to the authors, knowing the characteristics of individuals who are most susceptible to this type of body disorder can support prevention and health promotion strategies.

There is worldwide concern about diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, which affect the health of the population in a significant proportion. However, there are other conditions, such as eating disorders, that are not well diagnosed and ignored, even though they also greatly affect people’s health. It is necessary to take into account that a bad relationship with food can precede a series of physical and mental problems, ”he warns. Anderson Roberto da SilvaProfessor at Unifal University and co-author of the article.

However, according to the researcher, it is important to keep in mind that although disorders such as binge eating, anorexia, and bulimia nervosa have a low prevalence in the population, they can lead to serious problems. “They are closely associated with negative emotions, such as anxiety, stress and depression, which are among the major health challenges of the 21st century,” he says.

In the work, the researchers applied two questionnaires to examine the relationship between “attention to body shape,” “social physical anxiety,” and the participants’ “personal characteristics.”

In the first phase of the study, which included 1,750 Brazilian adults, it was determined that the more individuals were interested in their own body shape, the more likely they were to expect a negative assessment of their physical form. In addition, they tend to be less comfortable with the physical display of their bodies.

The most common characteristics among those who showed high levels of interest in body shape were: female gender, consumption of fitness supplements or body-shaping medication and frequent restrictive diets.

Among those who had a higher expectation of a negative assessment of physical shape, the most common traits were: female gender, being a young adult, consumption of body shape-altering drug substances, sedentary lifestyle, negative self-evaluation of food quality and being overweight or obese.

The researchers also noted that among the individuals who were more comfortable with their bodies in general, they were older, male, not overweight or obese, did not use drugs to modify their body shape, did not follow restrictive diets and did not engage in physical activity. physical. In addition, in this group, self-evaluation of diet quality was more positive.

real body

In the second phase of the study, the researchers evaluated a subsample of 286 individuals who underwent a biological resistance test, which was performed on a type of scale capable of measuring factors such as percentage of total fat, lean mass, and level of visceral fat.

“Through this analysis, we noticed that an individual’s body composition affected perception regarding the physical shape of the body. Those with the highest amount of fat and the lowest muscle mass were the ones most likely to have problems,” the researcher reports to FAPESP Agency.

Therefore, according to the study, people who care excessively about their bodies, to the point of triggering anxiety, may display dysfunctional behaviors both in terms of food and their bodies. “The big question in the work is highlighting that there are individual characteristics that indicate increased susceptibility to dysfunctional behaviors in relation to negative body image and disordered eating. It is important to pay attention to these behaviours, as they are the root of future problems. With this in mind, there is an opportunity to develop actions more packaged for disease prevention and health promotion, whether in a group or individual context,” he says.

The work was developed with a focus on the cognitive (such as paying attention to the shape of an object) and affective (such as the anxiety generated when an object is exposed) aspects of body image. According to the article, in the context of body image, when individuals turn their attention to what is physical, they can experience feelings of adequacy, but also of inadequacy, which, depending on their severity, can lead to mental disorders such as anorexia or bulimia nervosa. .

Silva explains that this attention can be understood as selective cognitive processing, in which the individual intentionally focuses on a specific object, or relies on internal and external stimuli. “In this process, the person consumes some information while ignoring others and this happens individually, and may vary according to the intensity of each stimulus,” he explains.

According to the researcher, anxiety is related to eating behavior and the relationship people have with their body image. “It affects actions. Therefore, a person with a high level of anxiety may be more likely to have an eating disorder, especially if they have body image issues. You can use inappropriate strategies to change your body image, without any kind of supervision by a trained professional, and this It harms your health rather than improving it,” he says.

Examples of dysfunctional behaviors include the adoption of restrictive or fad diets without specialized monitoring, excessive physical exercise without supervision and the consumption of nutritional supplements or potentially harmful substances (anabolic steroids, for example) without a proper prescription. “As you can see, there are many strategies that can disrupt an individual’s life in various aspects, affecting their physical, mental and social health,” he highlights.

Article The relationship between attention to body shape, social body anxiety, and personality characteristics of Brazilians: a structural equation model It can be read at: www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/14802.