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What Happens When You Tease, Bully Kids About Their Weight

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If you have ever teased or bullied kids about their weight and are trying to make yourself feel better, a study just published in the journal Pediatric Obesity isn't going to help. Sorry, life can be so rough for you when you are a bully.

Yes, Johnny Lawrence's bullying may have helped Daniel Larusso learn the crane kick in the movie The Karate Kid. But that was a fictional situation, that wasn't Lawrence's intent, and that crane kick looked ridiculous.

If you want to see what may happen in real life, take a look at the real study conducted by a team from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NIH), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes. The team included Natasha A. Schvey, Shannon E. Marwitz, Sarah J. Mi, Ovidiu A. Galescu, Miranda M. Broadney, Deborah Young‐Hyman, Sheila M. Brady, James C. Reynolds, Marian Tanofsky‐Kraff, Susan Z. Yanovski, and Jack A. Yanovski. The study participants were 110 youths (an average starting age of 11.8 years) with or at-risk for overweight and obesity. Each study participant completed a questionnaire called the Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS). This questionnaire asked participants to rate how often they had experienced events such as "People made fun of you because you were heavy," and  "People called you names like 'fatso'," on a scale of one to five with 5 being very often. Participants could then score a total of anywhere from 6 to 30 on the POTS. The study also measured each participant's height, weight, and body composition at the beginning and then followed each participant and these measures for up to 15 years. 

If you think that your teasing or bullying isn't doing any harm, how's this for a crane kick in the face? Those who had scored significantly higher, that is two standard deviations above the mean, on the POTS ended up having significantly greater increases in body mass indices (BMI) and fat mass each year than those who didn't report any weight-based teasing. What's significantly greater? For the BMI, how about an average of 33% greater increase, which translates to 0.20 kg m2 more, per year? For fat mass , it was an average of 91% or 0.65 kg greater each year.

Yeah, these results don't quite support the "teasing and bullying is motivating" public service announcement, no matter what kind of friendly music you play in the background.

The study, of course, had its limitations. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Otherwise we'd be blaming the increase in the number of boy bands for the obesity epidemic. The study didn't evaluate all of the possible factors that may have led to greater BMI or fat mass gain. A complex system of factors and causes can lead to BMI changes. Perhaps some kids were in situations that led to both more BMI and fat mass gain and more teasing. In such a case, the teasing and bullying would not be the cause but instead be just another side effect of something else.

Nevertheless, this is yet more evidence that teasing and bullying do not help. Instead, they hurt. Basically, the notion that bullying is somehow good for people is bull-boop.

Instead, teasing and bullying could contribute to BMI and fat mass gain through a number of possible mechanisms. It could lead to stress, anxiety, or depression, all of which could affect eating, physical activity, and sleep habits and potentially even metabolism. It could prevent victims from engaging in healthy activities. For example, kids may be reluctant to play sports or engage in other group physical activities for fear of bullying and teasing. It could affect their self-confidence and drive them to engage in unhealthy activities such as alcohol or other substance use to cope with the resulting pain that they are feeling.

There is also evidence that being teased and bullied may result in biochemical changes, such as increased cortisol levels, in people's bodies that could lead to further weight and fat mass gain. As the NICHD research team explained in their publication, chronically elevated cortisol levels "may, in turn, stimulate the appetite, blunt satiety cues, inhibit self‐control, and increase preference for highly palatable, energy‐dense food." It could also change how your body handles food. All of these can create some pretty vicious cycles.

Moreover, teasing and bullying distract from real problem solving. It blames the victim and overlooks the systems of factors that may be leading to increased BMI. What if someone has no real access to healthy food or doesn't have the means to regularly exercise due to that person's location, income level, or life situation? What if a person's environment is contributing to obesity? What if a person just has a certain type of body? What if the person is struggling to make friends and lacks social support? What if the problem is really you and your incessant teasing and bullying?

Plus, when you tease or bully someone, you are essentially saying, "I have lots of unresolved problems myself and am trying let out my aggression on you." When you are truly happy, your first inclination is not to go kick someone who is helpless. Do you really want to show everyone else how inadequate you really feel?

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