Survey on female college students’ perception of body shape and diet status

This study was conducted to identify obesity status, body shape perception, and attempts at popular diet techniques, and to reveal the relationship between satisfaction with popular diet techniques and various factors such as body shape perception, body mass index (BMI), distorted body shape perception, and interest in weight loss etc. This survey was conducted from April to September 2024 with 1,486 female college students in Seongnam. Following results were obtained. In the question about body shape perception, the results were very fat (2.69%), fat (27.46%), average (54.44%), thin (11.91%), and very thin (3.50%). However, according to BMI, the results were obese (1.14%), overweight (4.17%), normal weight (66.76%), and underweight (27.93%). The satisfaction with popular diet techniques was higher in the obese group than in the underweight group. People with distorted perceptions of their body shape tried popular diet techniques more often than those with normal perceptions. And they were less satisfied than those with normal perceptions. As interest in weight loss increased, attempts at popular diet techniques increased. However, there was no significant relationship between interest in weight loss and satisfaction with popular diet techniques.