Weight discrimination and disordered eating behaviors among young adults with high weight status

Weight discrimination is a pervasive public health issue for people in high weight bodies, with well-established links to health, including the use of disordered eating behaviors. The current study extends the extant literature by focusing exclusively on the study of associations between weight discrimination and disordered eating behaviors among high weight young adults, as well as by determining if associations exist independent of body mass index. Centering this population allows us to inform interventions that avoid reinforcing weight-centric, pathologizing narratives. We utilized data from the 2023 wave of the Eating and Activity over Time (Project EAT) study. Our sample (N = 620) included participants with a BMI of 25 or higher. We included measures of weight discrimination, disordered eating behaviors, and Body Mass Index (BMI). We conducted frequencies and a series of logistic regression analyses. About one-third of high weight young adults in our sample (34.7%) reported weight-based discrimination. Those who reported weight-based discrimination showed significantly higher odds of disordered eating behaviors, including dieting, binge eating, extreme behaviors (e.g., diet pills, self-induced vomiting), and less extreme behaviors (e.g., fasting, skipping meals), compared to those who did not report discrimination. These associations remained largely unchanged after adjusting for BMI. The findings suggest that discrimination itself rather than body size may be one contributor to disordered eating behaviors in high weight young adults. Improving health and well-being in this population may require shifting focus from individual body size to the systemic weight discrimination (e.g., healthcare and education policy changes, system level interventions).