relationship between perceived body satisfaction, perfectionism and poor nutritional behaviors

aim and background: poor nutritional behaviors currently are a widespread issue. poor nutritional behaviors include inability to maintain control over eating, food restriction with the purpose of influencing on weight and shape, and tendency toward overeating in response to the negative emotions. this study was conducted to review the relationship between the perceived body satisfaction, perfectionism and poor nutritional behaviors in mediating relationship between body satisfactions and disordered poor nutritional behaviors. methods and materials: this study was performed on students of university of tabriz using descriptive-correlation method. the study subjects consisted of 340 female students, who were randomly selected through cluster random sampling method. the data collection tools employed in the study included the almost perfect scale-revised (aps-r), the body esteem scale, and the three-factor eating questionnaire-r21 (tfeq-r21). findings: the analyses showed that satisfaction with sexual attractiveness (β = -0.30), weight (β = -0.29), perception of a discrepancy between those standards and actual ideals (β = -0.15), and orderliness (β = -0.13) were the important predictive factors of poor nutritional behaviors. furthermore, perfectionism was found to partially mediate the relationship between body satisfaction and poor nutritional behaviors. conclusions: this study had important implications for clinical settings. clinically, these findings revealed the importance of considering other factors such as perfectionism and body satisfaction, particularly when working with a population displaying poor nutritional behaviors. by improving positive feelings of individuals toward their body and self-image and decreasing perfectionism, poor nutritional behaviors might also be reduced accordingly.