Body image disorders associated with lifestyle and body composition of female adolescents

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the association between body image disorders and the lifestyle and body composition of female adolescents. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: The Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) and Silhouette Scale and Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 were used to evaluate the participants’ body image. Body composition was evaluated by a Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry equipment, and lifestyles were identified by latent class analysis (LCA) using the poLCA package for R. Participants: Female adolescents aged 14–19 years old, in the city of Viçosa-MG, Brazil. Results: In total, 405 girls participated in the study. Almost half of the participants were dissatisfied with their current physical appearance (51·4 %), presented body perception distortions (52·9 %). 47·3 % of the adolescents were dissatisfied with their body according to the BSQ, and another 8 % severely so. Subjects with an ‘Inactive and Sedentary’ latent lifestyle were 1·71 times as likely to feel dissatisfied as those with active and sedentary or inactive and non-sedentary lifestyles (95 % CI 1·08, 2·90, P = 0·047). Body image disorders showed an association with decreased amounts of moderate and vigorous physical activity, high screen time, increased alcohol consumption and excess body fat. Conclusions: Particular patterns of lifestyle and body composition seem to be associated in female adolescents with dissatisfaction with, distortion of and excessive concern about appearance. Specifically, physical inactivity, sedentary behaviour, alcohol consumption and high body fat percentage may be strongly linked to body image disorders.

Use of latent class analysis as a method of assessing the physical activity level, sedentary behavior and nutritional habit in the adolescents’ lifestyle: A scoping review

“…Until 2019, only one study was conducted in a middle-income country (Brazil) [ 20 ]. from 2020 onwards, 4 more articles used the LCA to assess the adolescents’ lifestyle [ 9 – 11 , 13 ]. The other 25 articles were conducted in high-income countries.…”

“…Ranging from 166 to 19,831; the mean size was 5,892, and the sample size was above 1,000 adolescents in 13 studies. Five studies [ 10 , 11 , 20 , 25 , 31 ] were with girls only, and 25 (83.33%) were with girls and boys. Seventeen articles did not report race or ethnicity, two were carried out with only white non-Hispanic adolescents, and the percentage of White and Caucasian ranged from 53% to 84.7%.…”

“…In addition, it was found that psychosocial diseases can also be associated with the behavior of adolescents. As an example, inactive adolescents with high BS showed greater dissatisfaction with body image [ 11 ] and with signs of depression and anxiety [ 13 ]. However, Xiao et al [ 36 ] showed that adolescents in the classes with adequate PAL, SB and nutritional habits, when compared to those in classes with lowest engagement in health-promoting behaviors, showed an increase in suicidal behaviors.…”

“…These unhealthy behaviors and habits can decrease the cardiorespiratory fitness and as consequence to result in pediatric obesity [ 9 ], body fat accumulation and clinical manifestations of cardiometabolic diseases, inflammatory status [ 10 ]. Besides that, psychosocial consequences, such as low self-esteem, body image disturbance [ 11 ], eating disorder risk [ 12 ] and signs of depression and anxiety [ 13 ].…”

Predictive capacity and cut-off points of adiposity indices for body fat prediction according to adolescent periods

“…Excess body fat is related to the development of diseases such as diabetes mellitus (10,11) , hypertension (12) , the metabolic syndrome (13) and CVD (12) , whose onset occurs in adolescence and progresses through adulthood (8,12) . In addition, obesity is a risk factor for psychosocial diseases such as body image disorders, which may evolve and contribute to the development of body image disorders (14) . This context highlights the importance and need of monitoring the health situation of adolescents.…”