In the current study, we examined predictors of healthy and unhealthy dieting behaviors with the aim of examining whether or not weight control strategies are associated with depression. Men and women (N=198; M=24.80 years; 51% women) were recruited from a university campus and its surrounding community in the northeastern US. Participants' height and weight were measured, and they completed a ...

BACKGROUND With increasing obesity rates worldwide, more and more people are actively attempting to lose weight or avoid weight gain, but relatively little is known about what specific behaviors comprise these efforts and which, if any, are associated with better weight control over time. METHODS This paper reports relationships between body weight, weight-control efforts and related behavior...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether weight-related teasing predicts the development of binge eating, unhealthy weight control behaviors, and frequent dieting among male and female adolescents. METHODS A prospective study was conducted with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 2516 adolescents who completed surveys at both time 1 (1998-1999) and time 2 (2003-2004) of the Project EAT (...

BACKGROUND The aim of this paper is to explore the relationships between mothers' report of parental weight talk about her daughter, herself, and others, and adolescent girls' weight-related behaviors and cognitions among a socio-demographically diverse population of mothers and their adolescent daughters. METHODS Data were drawn from the baseline assessment of 218 mother/adolescent daughter ...

OBJECTIVE To examine trends in weight control practices from 1995 to 2005. METHOD The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System biennially assesses five weight control behaviors among nationally representative samples of United States high school students. RESULTS Across time, more females than males dieted (53.8% vs. 23.8%), used diet products (10% vs. 4.3%), purged (7.5% vs. 2.7%), exercise...

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and multi-level modeling, we examine the role of social comparison with schoolmates in adolescent girls' weight control. Specifically, we focus on how girls' own weight control is influenced by the body sizes and weight-control behaviors of their schoolmates. Our findings suggest that comparisons with similar others (in this case, girls...