Does Just Feeling Fat Make You Gain Weight?

Study shows teens with a bloated body image more likely to become fat in their 20s

By Barbara Bronson Gray
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Aug. 16 (HealthDay News) -- "Do I look fat to you?"

It's a question that no parent or friend wants to answer in the affirmative, but it turns out that, with normal-weight teens, this reluctance may make sense: A new Norwegian study shows that those who think they're too heavy are the ones most likely to be overweight by early adulthood.

In what is described as the first study to capture the relationship between perceived and actual weight over a period of several years, researchers said they found that a negative self-image may play a key role in driving teens toward obesity.

Among both girls and boys who were normal weight as teens but felt fat, 59 percent of the girls became overweight as women and 63 percent of the boys became overweight as men.

"When you experience yourself as overweight, it raises your chances of actually becoming overweight," said study author Koenraad Cuypers, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in Trondheim.

"We think it has to do with the idealization of their bodies, seeing all the models in the world of clothes and in the movies," Cuypers explained. "You have to be thin to be successful. That is the ideal."

That attitude makes teenagers -- girls and boys -- continually tell themselves that they're not thin enough, he said.

So how does that actually translate into gaining pounds rather than staying trim?

"It's stressful. Once you think you're fat, you'll feel fat in adulthood," Cuypers said. "Feeling fat may create a kind of psychosocial stress because they can't reach the look they think they have to have."

The researchers also speculate that those who went into adulthood feeling fat may have repeatedly tried to lose weight, which some studies suggest can increase the tendency to become overweight. Others may have tried skipping meals, which this study's data suggest can widen the gap between real and imagined weight.