Body Weight Preferences Research Articles

PERCEPTION OF PATIENTS WITH INTESTINAL OSTOMY IN RELATION TO NUTRITIONAL AND LIFESTYLE CHANGES

ABSTRACT Objective: to describe the perceptions of people with intestinal ostomies on changes related to nutritional and lifestyle aspects. Method: exploratory and descriptive study, with a qualitative approach, performed with 17 patients with intestinal ostomies, who participate in a group of ostomized in a municipality in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed based on the thematic analysis from which two categories emerged: “Change in the eating habits and nutritional profile of people with ostomy” and “living with the new”. Results: many changes that occur with the ostomized people, with body weight preferences and eating habits. There are daily situations that require adaptation to be experienced, among them: domestic tasks, sexuality, sports, work and leisure activities. The subjects who use the irrigation method presented autonomy in their daily life and see the ostomy as a new possibility in the face of the disease. Conclusion: to minimize the repercussions that occur in the lifestyle of ostomized people, there is evidence of the need for individualized nutritional and psychological follow-up and of extension in the guidelines of the professional teams that work with them, as well as the dissemination of the irrigation method to people with ostomies who are able to perform such procedure.

Visual Diet versus Associative Learning as Mechanisms of Change in Body Size Preferences

Systematic differences between populations in their preferences for body size may arise as a result of an adaptive ‘prepared learning’ mechanism, whereby cues to health or status in the local population are internalized and affect body preferences. Alternatively, differences between populations may reflect their ‘visual diet’ as a cognitive byproduct of mere exposure. Here we test the relative importance of these two explanations for variation in body preferences. Two studies were conducted where female observers were exposed to pictures of high or low BMI women which were either aspirational (healthy, attractive models in high status clothes) or non-aspirational (eating disordered patients in grey leotards), or to combinations thereof, in order to manipulate their body-weight preferences which were tested at baseline and at post–test. Overall, results showed good support for visual diet effects (seeing a string of small or large bodies resulted in a change from pre- to post-test whether the bodies were aspirational or not) and also some support for the associative learning explanation (exposure to aspirational images of overweight women induced a towards preferring larger bodies, even when accompanied by equal exposure to lower weight bodies in the non-aspirational category). Thus, both influences may act in parallel.

The relative contribution of profile body shape and weight to judgements of women's physical attractiveness in Britain and Malaysia

Ninety-six Malaysian and British men rated for physical attractiveness a set of photographs of real women in profile, with known body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Results showed that BMI accounted for the greater amount of variance in all settings. There were also significant differences in preferences for body weight, with low resource, low socioeconomic status (SES) raters preferring a significantly heavier partner than high resource, high SES raters. The disparity with previous findings using line drawings of women in profile was discussed in terms of the weaknesses of line-drawn stimuli.

Does financial security influence judgements of female physical attractiveness?

To account for male preferences for female body weight following a consistent socio-economic pattern [Nelson, L.D., Morrison, E.L. (2005). The symptoms of resource scarcity: judgements of food and finances influence preferences for potential partners. Psychological Science 16, 167–173] proposed a social-cognitive model based on the individual experience of resource scarcity. We replicated their studies showing that financial dissatisfaction can influence preference for female body weight using a different dependent variable, namely photographic stimuli of women with known body weight and shape. Using this revised methodology, we found that operationalised intra-individual resource scarcity does not affect preferences for body weight: 25 financially dissatisfied males showed no difference in body weight preferences from 22 financially satisfied males. These findings contradict those of Nelson and Morrison (2005) and possible reasons for this are discussed in conclusion.