A cross sectional survey on unhealthy weight control attempts amongst female medical college students / 中华健康管理学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective This paper aims to describe the prevalence of unhealthy weight control behaviors and its related factors amongst female medical college students. Method Questionnaire surveys were conducted among a total of 798 medical students recruited by cluster random sampling in Jining Medical College from April 5 to 16, 2013. Result A total of 728 valid questionnaires were collected; 29 participants (4.0%) were overweight and 9 participants (1.2%) were obese; 250 participants (34.3%) were losing weight. Among participants who had experience of losing weight, unhealthy weight control methods mainly included not eating staple food (17.3%), drinking diet tea (16.1%), fasting (12.9%), taking diet drug (8.6%), inducing diarrhea (5.4%), inducing vomiting (2.0%), enema (1.5%), etc.; 29.0% (211/728) of participants had unhealthy weight control behaviors. The rates of being weak (c2=19.681, P=0.000), failure to concentrate (c2=12.031, P=0.001), dizziness (c2=5.461, P=0.019), irregular menstruation (c2=24.628, P=0.000), anorexia (c2=32.008, P=0.000), insomnia (c2=11.021, P=0.001) and anxiety (c2=14.402, P=0.000) among participants who had unhealthy weight-control behaviors were higher than those of participants without unhealthy weight?control behaviors. Multinomial logistic regression indicated that the factors associated with unhealthy weight control behaviors were senior class (OR=2.041;95%CI1.336-3.111), high average family income (OR=1.758;95%CI1.183-2.611), weight loss intention (OR=6.756;95%CI1.541-29.626),not hesitating to delay learning (OR=1.594;95%CI1.078-2.359),insisting on weight loss process regardless of discomfort (OR=2.008;95%CI1.245-3.238), slimming purpose (body beauty) (OR=1.786;95% CI 1.095-2.913), and slimming purpose (fashion) (OR=3.169; 95%CI 1.545-6.498). Subjects with longer dinner time (OR=0.556; 95% CI 0.341-0.907) and preferring light diet (OR=0.593; 95% CI 0.406-0.865) had lower rate of unhealthy weight control behaviors. Conclusion Part of female college students are lacking proper understanding of self body shape and unhealthy weight control behaviors and had done harm to their health.