To date the literature has been inconsistent regarding

To date, the literature has been inconsistent regarding the direction of impact between weight perceptions and health behaviours. That is, no consensus has been reached on whether perceptions of being overweight – or underweight, for that pikfyve inhibitor – foster or discourage PA and healthy eating. As the majority of weight perception research is from the eating disorder or body image field, the focus has primarily been on extreme weight loss strategies (e.g., purging, fasting), for which under-perceptions of overweight/obesity appear protective (Fan et al., 2014; Jiang, Kempner, & Loucks, 2014; Sonneville et al., 2016). Weight perception research involving PA and general nutrition are scarce, while longitudinal studies are essentially absent. Extant cross-sectional reports demonstrate conflicting results by both specific behaviours and gender (Edwards et al., 2010; Khambalia et al., 2012; Mardiyati et al., 2015; Murillo et al., 2016), not surprisingly given varying aesthetic ideals (Murray, Griffiths, & Mond, 2016) and preferences for physical activities (Corder, Atkin, Ekelund, & van Sluijs, 2013) between boys and girls. To address these gaps, the current study examined how weight perceptions predict several PA and dietary behaviours among youth, using linked data from a large prospective study of secondary school students to test models stratified by gender and weight status.
Methods
Results
Discussion The purpose of the current study was to examine weight perception as a predictor of various measures of diet and PA among a large cohort of youth. In general, weight perceptions of “about right” were associated with healthier diet and PA behaviours in both girls and boys, regardless of weight status. Given the potential of overweight perceptions to discourage PA and healthy dietary practices, as well as the psychosocial risks demonstrated by previous research (Minor, Ali, & Rizzo, 2016; Roberts & Duong, 2013; ter Bogt et al., 2006), results suggest obesity prevention strategies aiming to increase awareness of weight status may have unintended effects.
Funding The COMPASS study was supported by a bridge grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes (INMD) through the “Obesity – Interventions to Prevent or Treat” priority funding awards (OOP-110788; grant awarded to S. Leatherdale) and an operating grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) (MOP-114875; grant awarded to S. Leatherdale). Dr. Leatherdale is a Chair in Applied Public Health Research funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in partnership with Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
. Introduction Women\'s health during the childbearing years is important for reproductive success (Craft, 1997; Atrash, Jack, and Johnson, 2008) and according to life course theory, postpartum health status can promote or hinder healthy aging (Morton, Mustillo, and Feraro, 2014; Vasunilashorn & Martinson, 2013; Davis, Stange, and Horwitz, 2012; Perng et al., 2015; McClure, Mustillo, and Feraro, 2013). Women’s health prior to and during pregnancy has been the focus of the large majority of maternal health scholarship, while postpartum health receives far less research attention than the period of pregnancy or pre-pregnancy (Meltzer-Brody & Stuebe, 2014; Fahey & Shenassa, 2013). Postpartum markers of health and well-being can help us predict women\'s future health (Davis et al., 2012; Karlamangla, Singer, and Seeman, 2006; Wu et al., 2016), making the postpartum period a critically important phase in women\'s lives. Further, the well-known health inequalities by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position demonstrated for pregnancy seem to continue during the postpartum period for a variety of outcomes including utilization of health care (Glasheen et al., 2015; DiBari et al., 2014; Seplowitz et al., 2015), psychosocial well-being (Glasheen et al., 2015; Liu & Tronick, 2014; Phelan et al., 2015), and exposure to stressors such as discrimination (Rosenthal et al., 2015).