Original articleSelf-Weighing in Adolescents: Helpful or Harmful? Longitudinal Associations with Body Weight Changes and Disordered Eating
Section snippets
Study design and population
Project EAT-II is a longitudinal, follow-up study of Project EAT-I, a study of the socio-environmental, personal and behavioral determinants of dietary intake and weight status in adolescents [23], [25]. The study population includes 2516 adolescents who participated in both Project EAT-I and II. In Project EAT-I, middle school and high school students from 31 Minnesota schools completed in-class surveys and anthropometric measures during the 1998–1999 academic year. Schools serving ethnically
Self-weighing at Time 1 by gender and cohort
Females were more likely to report self-weighing behaviors than males at Time 1 (p < .001) (Table 1). Frequent self-weighing was reported by over a third of the females; 9.7% strongly agreed and 27.8% agreed with the statement, “I weigh myself often.” Frequent weighing was reported by a fourth of the males; 5.3% strongly agreed and 20.8% agreed with this statement. Among the females, self-weighing behaviors at Time 1 did not significantly differ by age cohort (p = .093). However, among the
Discussion
The current study examined whether frequent self-weighing predicted changes in body weight and disordered eating behaviors over a 5-year study period in adolescents, to begin to address the question: Is frequent self-weighing in adolescence helpful or harmful in terms of weight management and disordered eating behaviors? Our findings show that in a large population-based sample of adolescents, self-weighing is not predictive of weight change over time. In females, self-weighing predicted binge
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