One-third of girls are unhappy with their weight

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Nearly two-thirds of girls in a high school survey had tried to lose weight in the previous year.

The figure of 63 per cent is more than twice the 28.6 per cent of boys who had tried to shed weight and is no surprise to the Eating Disorders Association.

The female age-group most likely to have tried to lose weight in the previous 12 months was aged at least 17, but even among girls aged 12 or 13, 52 per cent had tried.

"There might be some healthy weight loss," the lead researcher for the survey, Dr Peter Watson, of the paediatrics department at Auckland University, said yesterday, "but 15 per cent is very different to 63.2 per cent of girls."

He was referring to separate research which found that 15 per cent of children in an Auckland study were obese.

Dr Watson's national survey in 2001 of nearly 10,000 high school students also found that 32 per cent of girls and 13 per cent of boys were unhappy or very unhappy with their weight.

Amy Lawrence, a 14-year-old student at Avondale College in Auckland, confirmed the survey results.

"None of the girls I know are happy about how they look, with their weight," she said.

"They want to weigh more, or less. It's a big issue. It's peer pressure and stuff and seeing all the celebrities being thin."

She said many girls thought: "If I'm thin, all the guys will like me."

Amy said she had been overweight and with parental approval had given up some foods - "not a major diet" - since she was 11. She had lost as much weight as she wanted to.

Eating Disorders Association field worker Carol Drew said the incidence was increasing, both in males and females, and some girls as young as 5 were now afflicted.

"At intermediate schools I was horrified when I realised therewere a lot of boys vomiting because they wanted to be playing rugbyin the same team as their matesand if they put on too much weight they may not be able to."

She said losing too much weight could damage the heart, lungs, kidneys and brain and cause personality changes and depression.

Her classroom surveys had consistently shown that one in 10 students was worried about his or her weight or body shape, although this was not the same as having an eating disorder.

Carol Drew blamed the pressure to conform on the excessively thin fashion models popularised by magazines. She called for more models to be of normal weight and size.

But she also said some magazines refused to publish diets because people took them to extremes.