You are not fat, why do you always say you want to lose weight?

Being keen on using diet to shape the body and become slim has undoubtedly become a trend nowadays. Whether young or old, almost everyone talks about losing weight. The motivations of the elderly and the young to control their weight may be different. The elderly are more for health, while more young people want to look better, just like the song "Calories": "I will work hard, I want to become a heartthrob."

Image source: Screenshot from the MV "Calories"

The desire to be thin is largely due to our dissatisfaction with our body image. Body image is the picture of our body in our brain, which may be biased from the objective. Some people who look good from the perspective of the public may feel that they are so ugly that they "affect the appearance of the city" and feel "unbearable to see people". Some may even avoid some normal social interactions due to anxiety about their appearance.

The "subjectivity" of body image is more obvious from the perspective of fatness or thinness. Clinically, we can observe that some people whose weight is obviously lower than the medically normal level still firmly believe that some parts of their body are too fat. In real life, some children who are not fat in the eyes of their parents still take some very "decisive" ways to control their weight. These decisive ways often harm their health.

How many young people think they are too fat? Researchers conducted an experiment to find out.

Part 1

Most girls want to lose weight.

The pattern matching test can be used to answer questions about people's attitudes towards their body image. In this type of test, researchers often provide subjects with a series of body pictures ranging from thin to fat, asking them to find out their current actual body shape and ideal body shape. In Italy, researchers used the pattern matching test to study local college students and found that 81% of female college students and 38.4% of male college students wanted to be thinner.

Does the same phenomenon exist among college students in China? In a study, using the pattern matching test method, researchers surveyed 425 college students in Beijing and found that 72.8% of female students and 46.2% of male students wished they were thinner.

Why do so many students want to have a thinner body? Is it because the sample in the survey happened to be fatter? For this reason, the researchers analyzed the self-reported height and weight data of these students and calculated their body mass index (BMI = weight (kg) / height 2 (m)). The results showed that the average BMI of boys was 22.28kg/m2, and the average BMI of girls was 19.86kg/m2. From this point of view, the girls in this sample do not seem to be fat.

At the same time, the researchers also calculated the proportion of overweight (or obese) people in this sample. For adults, the standard commonly used in my country is that BMI greater than 24kg/m2 is considered overweight. According to this standard, only 10.58% of people are overweight. Therefore, the selected sample is not actually fat, but rather thin among adults.

Image source: Veer Gallery

So these young college students don't want to lose weight because they are really fat, so what kind of body shape do they want to have? To this end, the researchers asked them about their ideal height and ideal weight, so that they could calculate their ideal BMI.

The results showed that the ideal BMI for women is 17.87kg/m2, which is significantly lower than the lower limit of the health standard, 18.5kg/m2. In fact, 75.7% of girls want to have a low body weight (BMI < 18.5kg/m2), while only 2.3% of boys have such a wish .

Is it because boys nowadays really like "super skinny" girlfriends that girls want to be so thin? To answer this question, the researchers also asked these college students to choose the opposite sex body type they think is most attractive in a figure matching test. The average value of the most attractive opposite sex body type chosen by boys is 9.21, which is significantly larger than the average value of 7.91 that girls hope to have. It seems that the degree to which girls want to be thin actually exceeds the degree that boys think is most attractive.

Part 2

Extreme weight loss plans can hurt your body and your heart

Among those who are dissatisfied with their body image, some want to be thin, while others want to be fat. However, almost all studies have pointed out that the desire to be thin is closely related to low self-esteem, high levels of negative emotions and abnormal eating behavior.

Losing weight and maintaining it is not as easy as advertised, especially to achieve the low weight level that most women in this survey want. In order to achieve such a goal, some people may "be ruthless" to themselves and restrict their food intake to keep themselves in a state of hunger. However, most scientific studies have shown that dieting is often ineffective for weight control in the long run .

Why can't a strict diet plan change your weight in the long run? Please note the word "long-term" in this sentence. To understand this principle, let's do a small experiment: In the next minute, please close your eyes and think about anything, but don't think about the picture of a giant panda chewing bamboo. Open your eyes after one minute.

Think back, during this minute, did you think about nothing except the sight of a giant panda chewing on bamboo?

Illustration: Yang Jingyi

Similarly, if you make and participate in a very demanding diet plan, you must first consider what you cannot eat, and these are often the things you like to eat very much . A demanding diet plan means that you will often be in a state of hunger, so it is very likely that your mind is full of content related to these foods. Once you can't bear to allow yourself to eat, you are more likely to eat much more food than normal. It's like ordering food when you are very hungry, and basically you can't finish it; when you go to the supermarket when you are very hungry, you will inexplicably buy much more food than usual.

There is a basic assumption in psychology that human cognitive resources are limited , which means that if you want to suppress the urge to get food, you need to mobilize cognitive resources. But once we encounter a stressful situation, we need to mobilize some psychological resources to cope with it. Therefore, the cognitive resources responsible for controlling the diet plan are transferred away, and the diet valve is loosened, and a cycle of eating and drinking will begin. People who don't diet usually don't feel any burden when they occasionally eat a lot, but for people who diet, they often feel deeply guilty after eating and drinking.

Then, driven by guilt, a new round of dieting plans, which are likely to be more demanding, will begin. A new round of weight cycle will follow. After a cycle, the base weight is more likely to rise rather than fall. If you are not careful, dieting to lose weight will turn into losing more weight. Then, people will blame themselves for not having willpower and doubt their self-control. All of this stems from people underestimating the difficulty of reducing and controlling weight.

Image source: Veer Gallery

In order to lose weight, some people even take risks and adopt some very extreme weight loss methods, such as inducing vomiting after meals, taking diet pills not recommended by doctors, using laxatives and diuretics, etc. These methods are not uncommon in life and are often used by patients with eating disorders. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the most common subtypes of eating disorders, among which anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of all mental disorders . Many patients with eating disorders have a strict history of weight loss before they meet the diagnosis. Therefore, the risk of weight loss is not as simple as not being able to lose weight.

Part 3

Being thin does not mean being beautiful, we need to accept ourselves

After understanding the harm of extreme weight loss methods, we should also go back to the basics and think about why being thin is so praised. Researchers generally believe that the media plays an important role in this . Mass media often use low-weight actors or models to convey the message of "thin is beautiful" to people in various forms; and through social media, interactions between acquaintances convey and reinforce this concept.

But people never know that actors and models are actually at high risk of eating disorders . If you want, you can use the above formula to calculate the BMI of the stars whose names you remember, and you will probably find that their BMI values ​​are far below the normal value. In some countries, models who are too low in weight are not allowed to walk on the catwalk, but there is no such law in our country yet.

People also need to know that body shape is mainly affected by genetics, and we should not easily judge others' body shape. Most people will not feel comfortable in a situation where they are being judged. People in different periods often have different standards for what kind of body is good-looking. However, when a standard requires people to pay the price of their health, then this standard is definitely not a good standard, no matter how popular and respected it is .

There are many more valuable things in life than being obsessed with your body shape. Being too obsessed with weight and body shape will prevent people from realizing their own value. So, if possible, please let go of your obsession with body shape and body shape. Loving yourself, accepting and appreciating your body is a compulsory course for us.

Produced by: Science Popularization China

Author: Wang Kui

Producer: China Science Expo

This article only represents the author's views and does not represent the position of China Science Expo

This article was first published in China Science Expo (kepubolan)