Weight stigma and health behaviors: evidence from the Eating in America Study

Background Weight stigma is pervasive across the U.S. and is associated with poor health outcomes including all-cause mortality. One potential reason that weight stigma may be detrimental to health is that it begets poorer health behaviors. Therefore, the present study tested for associations betwee...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Obesity 2021-07, Vol.45 (7), p.1499-1509
Main Authors: Lee, Kristen M., Hunger, Jeffrey M., Tomiyama, A. Janet
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
692/163/2743/393
692/499
692/699/2743/393
692/700/2817
692/700/459/284
Adult
Aged
Alcohol use
Body weight
Census
Demographics
Demography
Eating
Eating behavior
Eating disorders
Epidemiology
Female
Gender
Gender aspects
Health aspects
Health Behavior
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Humans
Internal Medicine
Male
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Metabolic Diseases
Middle Aged
Obesity - epidemiology
Physical activity
Psychological aspects
Public Health
Quotas
Sex differences
Sleep
Stigma
Stigma (Social psychology)
Surveys
Surveys and Questionnaires
United States
Weight
Weight Prejudice - statistics & numerical data
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background Weight stigma is pervasive across the U.S. and is associated with poor health outcomes including all-cause mortality. One potential reason that weight stigma may be detrimental to health is that it begets poorer health behaviors. Therefore, the present study tested for associations between weight stigma and four health behaviors (i.e., eating behavior, alcohol use, sleep disturbance, and physical activity), while controlling for BMI and other potential confounds. Subjects/Methods Participants ( N  = 2022) in the U.S. were recruited for the Eating in America Study using a Qualtrics panel between December 2019 and January 2020 and were census-matched according to national quotas for age, gender, income, race/ethnicity, and census region. Participants completed questionnaires about weight stigma, health behaviors, demographics, and anthropometric measurements. The current study employed a two-stage investigation: exploratory analyses were first performed on a random sample of the dataset ( n  = 438), then the remaining unexamined data were used to conduct confirmatory analyses that were preregistered on the Open Science Framework. Results Controlling for BMI, weight stigma was significantly associated with greater disordered eating ( b  = 0.34, 95% CI [0.31, 0.38], p  
ISSN:0307-0565
1476-5497
DOI:10.1038/s41366-021-00814-5