Disordered eating attitudes and behaviors are on the rise on a global scale as a result of multi-cultural influences on today’s youth. Symptomology of Disordered Eating puts individuals at increased risk of developing clinical eating disorders (Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia nervosa &Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder and Unspecified Feeding and Eating Disorder). Negative body image has been regarded as one of the strongest factors which lead to the development of disordered eating attitudes and behaviors.
The current study hypothesized that negative body image is the cause of disordered eating and the results of the current study show that negative body image is in fact strongly correlated with Disordered Eating Attitudes.
Female university students (n=400), were selected for the study. A number of 100 subjects who were first available from each university were selected for the study. Each participant filled out the questionnaire consisting of Demographic, EAT-26, Emotional Eating, and Body Image questions. The BMI of the participants was also calculated. Participants suffering from certain common chronic diseases were excluded from the study (n = 23) and statistics were applied to the data collected from the remaining 377 participants.
Filled questionnaires were analyzed statistically using SPSS version 21. Comparisons were made between the group with normal eating behavior and the group with disordered eating attitude using student’s t-test. Pearson’s correlations was applied to assess relations between, Disordered eating attitudes, Emotional Eating, Body Image and BMI. One way ANOVA was used to determine the differences between Disordered eating, Emotional eating, Body Image and BMI of the participants from the different institutes.
The results of the current study showed that disordered eating attitudes were present in 37.7% of the sample, however the behavioral problems of disordered eating were found in 57% of the sample and there was a strong correlation between disordered eating, emotional eating and negative body image (p < 0.01). Body Mass Index (BMI) was not correlated with disorderedeating, however it showed strong correlation with emotional eating (p < 0.05) and negative body image (p < 0.01), which, in turn are strongly correlated with disordered eating attitudes. Therefore, it can be concluded from the current study that there is a positive correlation between Disordered Eating, Emotional eating, being Overweight and a negative Body Image.