'Underweight too thinks they are heavy'

CHANDIGARH: If you thought that girls with absolutely normal body weight are a happy lot, sample this. Over 60% female students in city, between the age group of 18-24 years, who have a perfect body weight, are too conscious about it and think they are heavy.
This despite the fact that 16% respondents were underweight and 54% had normal weight. In fact, only 28% females were overweight and 2% obese, who actually needed to worry about how to lose weight.
A study was conducted by Panjab Universitys Centre for Public Health, on 100 such females, of which 50 were between 18-24 years age bracket.
More interesting figures revealed that 42% females applied weight loss tactics under peer pressure. For 36% of them, their parents nagged them to reduce weight.
Moreover, most these young women thought that dieting was the best way to reduce weight and very few of them actually believed in working out to shed those extra kilos. Out of the total respondents, 70% used dieting to cut down their body weight, while only 10% exercised.
Our study was about weight loss perception among young females. In our culture there is emphasis on weight as measure of a womans worth so, females are very concerned about body weight and give a lot of importance to their appearance. So, intentional weight loss is one of the most common health-related practices among them, said Ruchi Sharma, a member of research team.
The pilot study was jointly conducted by Ruchi and Yuvraj Narang along with their faculty member B K Nair and presented in the recently-concluded Chandigarh Science Congress at PU.
Through our questionnaire we were focusing on finding out their weight perception, life style, dietary habits, consciousness for body shape and physical activity, added Ruchi.
The researchers noted their daily calorie requirement on basis of height and lifestyle and then their recommended dietary intake was calculated and compared with recall of calorie intake on the previous day. Respondents, who were classified according to Body mass Index (BMI), were then questioned if they were using any weight control methods.