Body Perception and Eating Disorders in Adolescent Girls Studied by IPB Researchers
Body perception is the image of a person about the shape and size of his/her own body, this image is influenced by the actual shape and size of the body, the feelings about the body shape, and the hope for the body shape that he/she wanted. Teenagers who are dissatisfied with their appearance ultimately lead to the concept of bad body perception (negative perceptions) and cause the urge to become thin. Pressure to become thinner again in the mind will cause body dissatisfaction.
Two researchers from the Department of Community Nutrition, Faculty of Human Ecology (Fema) Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) namely Mohamad Yulianto Kurniawan and Dodik Briawan conducted a study related to body perception and eating disorders in adolescent girls.
"The dissatisfaction of the body will affect a person's confidence level. Another negative impact is increased eating disorders including dietary restraint, binge-eating and other negative effects. This study aimed to determine the relationship between body perceptions with eating disorders in adolescent girls, "said Dodi.
The subjects of this research were 103 new female students of Science Degree Program of Nutrition Science at IPB. The results of this study showed that the proportion of subjects with normal nutritional status has a percentage of 84.5 per cent (%), obesity 11.7%, obes 1.9%, and 1.9% thin.
"Most subjects have normal perception (49.5%) meaning the subject believes that their physical characteristics are in accordance with the ideal physical they want, so that the effort to have the ideal physical is low. But the subject of women has negative perception of 5.8% means that the subject has a big difference between the actual and ideal body shape. The remaining 44.7% of subjects have a positive perception, showed the small difference in the gap between the actual and ideal body shape, "he said.
Most subjects' perceptions of nutritional status had positive body perceptions (48.5%), consisting of 44.7% of subjects at no risk of eating disorders and 3.9% of subjects at increased risk of eating disorders. Only 3.9% of subjects had negative body perceptions and 7.8% of subjects experienced eating disorders with more risk because they felt the desire to eat continuously and could not stop eating (2-3x a month). This research revealed that there is no significant relationship between body perception and eating disorders.
The researcher explained that the presence of exposure to the thin and ideal images of the body will increase dissatisfaction with the body. Eating disorders is a major problem of adolescents characterized by changes to bad eating behavior, negative perceptions about body shape (body image) and less precise of weight regulation.
"Most subjects believe that their physical characteristics have been in accordance with the ideal physical desired so they accept the existing state of the body. Most subjects pay little attention to the appearance of the body, so there is no attempt to improve their self-appearance. This causes the low effort to have physically ideal, "he said. (TK)
