Having a personal weight goal that mismatches healthy weight recommendations increases the likelihood of using unhealthy behaviors among a representative population-based sample of adolescents

Free living populations adopt practices designed to maintain or influence their weight. These practices include at least two components: a personal weight goal and use of a variety of behaviors to reach this personal weight goal. Personal weight goals can either concur (match) or not concur (mismatch) with recommendations that a health professional might stipulate for achieving a healthy weight status. The variety of behaviors used to achieve a personal weight goal can be thought of as inherently healthy, unhealthy, or disordered. We examined associations between matched vs. mismatched personal weight goals and the frequency of use of different types of weight-related behaviors among adolescents. Measures included whether or not personal weight goals matched or mismatched aims that should be pursued given current weight status and self-reported frequency of use of behaviors from a representative population-based sample of adolescents (n = 2, 346, 51% female; 93.3% complete data). Sex-specific multilevel logistic and ordinal regression analyses showed that pursuing a mismatched personal weight goal increases the likelihood of using unhealthy behaviors across sexes. This association is however not significant for healthy and disordered behaviors. We conclude that there is an association between pursuing a mismatched personal weight goal and the use of unhealthy behaviors but not with healthy or disordered behaviors.

Research Highlights
► Mismatched personal weight goals increases the use of unhealthy behaviors.
► This results is different between sexes: Girls use more unhealthy behaviors than boys.
► Mismatched personal weight goals are not linked with healthy and disordered behaviors.