Feeling overweight
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
What the scale says or the mirror shows is important, but a study indicates that what a girl thinks about what she weighs or how she looks can affect her mental state.
Researchers looked at data on weights and depressive symptoms for more than 6,100 girls, in a larger study on teens and weight.
Girls who correctly judged their weight - even if they were overweight - had less of a problem. But Jason Houle of Penn State says this was not the case with girls who could not judge their weight:
"Parents often worry about overweight girls' mental health, but our findings really show that it's girls who have a healthy weight but perceive being overweight that are most likely to feel depressed." (8 seconds)
The study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.