Calling a girl fat can actually make her fat in teen years: study

Being labelled as fat at a young age could result in girls turning fat in later on, says a new study that was conducted by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The study surveyed 1,213 African-American girls and 1,166 white girls living in Northern California, Cincinnati and Washington, DC. Close to 58 percent the subjects had been told they were too fat before the age of 10.

The study says that the girls who labeled fat were 1.66 times more likely than the other girls to be obese at 19. Also as more and more people told a girl that she was fat, he likelihood to become obese also went up.

The findings appear in the June 2014 print issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

“Simply being labeled as too fat has a measurable effect almost a decade later,” said A Janet Tomiyama, an assistant professor of psychology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and the study’s senior author.

“Even after we statistically removed the effects of their actual weight, their income, their race and when they reached puberty, the effect remained,” she added.

According to LATimes , Tomiyama said that the study was conducted as a response to those who believe shaming people into losing weight is an effective way to deal with obesity.

“Being labeled as too fat may lead people to worry about personally experiencing the stigma and discrimination faced by overweight individuals, and recent research suggests that experiencing or anticipating weight stigma increases stress and can lead to overeating,” said co-author Jeffrey Hunger.

According to Tomiyama, the best way to encourage healthy lifestyle is to not label girls as fat and to simply not use the word.