March 2017 Question 3
The article concludes with further research to be done by looking
at other factors that may contribute to overweight and obesity in this
population. If you had to choose one factor, (dietary intake, physical
activity, sedentary behaviors, disordered eating behaviors, or stress) which
would you choose to focus on in your own research when trying to determine
causes of overweight and obesity in lesbian and bisexual women?
posted by Nikki @ 9:52 AM
30 comments
30 Comments:
I would be most interested in investigating how stress levels may contribute to weight gain and obesity in lesbian and bisexual women. I think these populations, in general unfortunately, have to endure and put up with a lot of scrutiny and hateful words, thoughts and actions. I think it is likely that heterogeneous individuals don’t experience as much of this, or in other words, don’t experience the kind of discrimination based on sexual orientation that lesbian or bisexual individuals might. This no doubt creates a lot of stress for lesbians and bisexuals and I think it would be interesting to see how this might impact or play a role in weight gain or the prevalence of obesity among these individuals.
I would also hypothesize that stress has a monumental impact on overweight and obesity rates among lesbian and bisexual women. In my research on weight stigma, stress from discrimination created a snowball effect further discouraging overweight and obese people from adopting healthy lifestyle behaviors. Being a minority is stressful. As we know, emotional eating is not uncommon and we as a society have unhealthy coping mechanisms, turning to fatty and sugary foods to calm emotional upsets. Stress can effect diet, exercise, disordered eating behaviors, and emotional health, all which contribute to factors affecting weight.
If I were conducting my own research on this topic I would also focus on stress because I fell that this population has added stress that heterosexual women do not have. I realize that stress is a very subjective factor and would be hard to measure and even more difficult to evaluate the impact upon the person but it is still a factor that should be considered. I would also pick stress because it is a topic that interests me. I have learned how important it is to pick a topic that interest you otherwise the research is just work and the final product is not as good as it could have been. Since stress is measured objectively I would design a qualitative study. I would ask participants to attend a focus-group style interview session with other women of similar sexual orientation. Then I would code and compare the different orientation groups (lesbian, bisexual, straight) and see how the levels of stress differ from each. This would obviously be a much smaller study than the article in question, but I think it would provide valuable insight into stress and how it can affect the weight of these women.
I would look at either stress or disordered eating behaviors. As others have mentioned, this population is likely to be under a greater amount of stress than heterosexual women. Being a minority, as well as experiencing discrimination and a lack of equal rights would increase stress levels in this population. As a result of excessive stress, disordered eating may occur more frequently. I would look at binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa within this population to see whether either of these eating disorders may be the cause of the increased prevalence of being overweight and/or obese in lesbian and bisexual women.
I would be most interesting in further investigating stress. Think of the stress and hardship that bisexual and homosexual individuals can endure and now think about how stress alters and affects the entire body. Higher cortisone levels, which in turn affect metabolism, and so on. I would also be interested in investigating disordered eating. As Erin said, excessive stress may cause disordered eating.
I think Reilly's methodology of a focus-group style interview is extremely interesting. A study looking at such factors would need interdisciplinary fields, which could warrant very interesting findings. Those looking for more anonymous-approaches may use stress questionnaires, private interviews, or some type of anonymous online support group.
Reilly, you make a great point about the challenges of measuring stress levels. If I were conducting research further into this topic, I would be stumped with how to objectively define and evaluate stress and how to compare measurements from person to person. Furthermore, it would be difficult to specify how much stress is founded in sexual orientation identity versus other life stressors.
I find it hard to focus on only one option. I think the two that stick out the most to me would be psychological conditions and inactivity. When I say psychological conditions, I am referring to the social implications that result within rural areas of coming out as an LGBT individual. Having grown up and currently residing in a rural area, LGBT individuals are not completely socially accepted. Times are changing and the repercussions many face from coming out are shrinking, but there are still many stigmas and inappropriate behavior towards the LGBT community. I could see this creating psychological conditions where one would be depressed and not want to leave the home unless necessary. This could lead to the decreased activity levels. As we all know, even if one eats really well, one can still gain weight if they eat more calories than they exert.
Though I do understand some of the thoughts here on stress and elevated stress within this population, I don’t think that I would argue overall stress for bisexual and lesbian women to be greater than that of heterosexual women. Likely the stressors are different within this group, so looking at kinds of stressors and their impact on health and weight may be interesting, but I would seek to target sources of stress rather than overall stress or feelings of stress. I think Reilly’s thought of using a qualitative design would benefit a more specific stressor targeted approach.
I think the category I would most likely research would be a combination of physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Especially with a longitudinal study, looking at the changes in activity and increases in sedentary behaviors would likely be key indicators to weight gain, metabolism changes, and altered energy needs. I think our population in general is experiencing this problem and this may affect the lesbian and bisexual population as well.
I, like Justine, Jenni and Reilly, would want to focus on stress when assessing obesity levels. One of the focus areas of my thesis was parental feeding practices and one parental feeding practice some parents utilize is “stress” but in a different way. Research has found that parents who are more concerned about their children becoming overweight pressure their children to eat “healthier foods” and end up with children with higher BMI. Why is this? Stress. I believe that stress can have a large impact on diet quality for all individuals. Therefore, this would be the area I would focus and would expect to find the most results.
As many others have mentioned, stress may be an important factor when analyzing the increased prevalence of overweight/obesity rates in bisexual and lesbian women. However, if I were to conduct a study in this area, I would choose to focus on physical activity and dietary intake. While the study found that homosexual women may have a better diet quality, it is possible that the "calories in, calories out" statement may still play into their weight status. Ultimately, it is far better to be consuming higher quality foods such as plenty of fruits and vegetables. However, how much a person consumes is just as important as the type of food consumed. If these women are eating more nutritious foods in larger amounts (namely healthier fats and complex carbs) and exhibit physical inactivity, there is a greater chance that they would have a higher weight. While this is merely speculation, it would be a great focus area for RDs to provide nutrition education.
I think that Elyse brings up an excellent point, and (having also grown up in a rural area) I completely agree that there may be individuals that do not completely agree with homosexuality. The geographical region that bisexual and lesbian women live in will greatly influence their lifestyle behaviors as well as their overall stress and psychological well-being. They may be less motivated to exercise in public places for fear of retaliation. It would be interesting to study the prevalence of anxiety and depression in this population as well, which could be an underlying factor for their stress.
I, like many others, would conclude stress to be large factor in the prevalence of obesity in this population. The bisexual and lesbian population have many challenges to face everyday which can increase stress levels dramatically. Because our society has progressed so much within the past 10 years in regards to LGBTQ rights, it think it is easy to forget these populations do indeed still deal with racism and other hurdles continuously. This increased stress may lead un-healthful coping mechanisms, such as alcohol, binge eating, or not eating at all.
Justine and Reilly have mentioned the difficulty in measuring stress objectively. I know is some hospitals/cancer clinics patients are screened on distress levels. This questionnaire is typically administered by a nurse and asks questions related to stress and concerns and determines a "distress score." It is very similar to a depression screening tool. Such a questionnaire may be beneficial if choosing to study the effects of stress on obesity within this population.
When reading this article, I was curious about the possibility of a genetic factor. Research on obesity in other populations indicates that weight can be influenced by diet, physical activity and genetics. Therefore, I would also expect there to be a genetic factor associated with obesity in lesbian and bisexual women. But, out of the specific factors listed per the article, I would focus on the association between physical activity and obesity/overweight in lesbian and bisexual women.
As many of you have mentioned, stress would be an interesting factor to examine, but I’m a little more interested in disordered eating behaviors. When I answered the first question, I mentioned there’s still a lot we don’t know about this population and I would be interested to see what type of disordered eating patterns are associated with this population, possibly using stress as a mediator when examining this relationship. I think it would be interesting to see the results of a study that examines this relationship and could hopefully contribute to the disordered eating behavior body of research.
I believe stress and disordered eating behaviors would be the most interesting factors to study. As others have said, I expect that bisexual and lesbian women encounter significant stressors associated with their sexual orientation especially that come from lack of acceptance from others. The physiology of stress may have direct impacts on these women’s weights, but the behaviors used to deal with stress may also play a role. For example, does the daily stress these women face lead them to stay home and be sedentary? Do they turn to emotional eating or alcohol to deal with stress? Additionally, studying disordered eating in this population could be warranted. Women have higher rates of disordered eating than men, so exploring these behaviors in sexual minority women may provide interesting results. Further, if women are in relationships with other women who practice disordered eating, it may be easier to fall into a similar pattern.
Like many others, I would look at stress. I feel like that would be much different in the different population groups. Many of us have probably seen a lot of research linking obesity with stress. Stress can often be a cause of disordered eating as well. I like what Kirsten wrote, that perhaps this stress is causing psychological stress. Maybe the stress from society has caused depression which leads to a sedentary lifestyle or excessive intakes. I do appreciate what Lauren wrote that the types of stress will likely be different, and it would be interesting to examine the perceptions of stress in the lesbian and bisexual groups compared to the heterosexual group and how they deal with their life stress.
I would want to investigate the prevalence of disordered eating behaviors between lesbian and heterosexual women of multiple age groups and its relation to diet quality and weight status. In question one I conjectured this topic contributed to diet habit differences between the two populations. I believe this research could be completed as a cross-sectional study in contrast to the longitudinal methods of the original research.
Like what was said above, I think stress would be an excellent area for future studies. I would also add that stress could also be measured via cortisol levels from rubbing a cotton swab on the inside of one's cheek. Additionally, I think it would be interesting to see if self-reported stress levels of bisexual and lesbian women would vary by state.
Stress aside, I think in-depth studies of lifestyle factors (drinking, smoking, physical activity, etc.) would be important to pursue as well. As I mentioned in the first question, it would also be helpful to have a better understanding of bisexual and lesbian family dynamics. For example, perhaps the greater rates of overweight and obesity in this population stems from couples spending more or less time at the workplace than heterosexual couples. As another example, perhaps how bisexuals and lesbians create support networks are different from that of heterosexuals.
In conducting further research myself, I think that I would choose to look at stress and disordered eating behaviors. I think this would be a major contributor to overweight and obesity in the lesbian and bisexual population due to sociological factors, family matters, and other hardships in day to day life. I believe disordered eating behaviors and stress would be more prominent in the earlier years of life due to recent discovery of one’s sexual orientation and the stress of wondering how friends and family are going to accept you as well as how society is going to accept you. I believe this would lead this population to find comfort in food which would increase the likelihood of disordered eating behaviors, therefore, an increased risk of overweight and obesity.
Both Justine and Moriah eluded to stress that results from weight discrimination or from being pressured or reminded to consume "healthy" foods and that this stress may be a plausible explanation to help understand why individuals remain or go on to become overweight or obese. While not necessarily pertaining to homosexual women exclusively, I think it would be fascinating to investigate how the pressure to be thin and to eat "healthy" foods affects weight and BMI outcomes in today's population. While Moriah discussed research that supports increased BMI among individuals who were pressured by parents to eat a healthy diet, I also think this pressure can lead to disordered eating practices and unhealthy weights for individuals. Additionally, I think social media plays a huge role in this stress or pressure involving food, weight and body image that individuals experience, so I think it would also be interesting to investigate social media usage and habits and how they might impact weight management and eating patterns.
If I were conducting my own research to determine causes of overweight and obesity in lesbian and bisexual women I would choose to focus on stress. I also think that disordered eating behaviors can go hand-in-hand with stress. I know that personally when I am stressed I tend to completely over eat or not eat enough, which is somewhat disordered. As Reilly mentioned, measuring stress is subjective and challenging, but I would assume it is a very pertinent issue in this population. Unfortunately, this population experiences a lot of discrimination and negativity. On top of some societal disapproval, this population tends to lose family members and friends because of sexual orientation causing extra stress. Stress eating is a very real thing and could be a major contributing factor on the obesity of this population.
Disordered eating behaviors stuck out to me right away, and is what I would choose to focus on if I were to conduct research in this area. As we said in question one, clearly there are many factors involved, but I feel that looking at disordered eating behaviors could provide novel insight into this population. I agree with others that stress and these behaviors, such as binge eating disorder, or bulimia nervosa, go hand-in-hand. There is some underlying issue causing the individual to eat in an irregular and unhealthy way- this may be that they are stressed, or there could be another issue (or set of issues) that are causing the person to be both stressed and to eat in a disordered manner. Lauren made a good point that yes, this population is stressed, but are they more stressed than a single mom that is working two jobs? It is just a different source of stress. As Reilly noted, measuring stress may prove to be too subjective. Disordered eating hits on a deeper level, but may also be tricky to study due to the fact that self-reporting of disordered eating is low and frequency of behaviors may vary.
I appreciated Mike’s mention of using cortisol swabbing to interpret levels of stress among participants. I would find it interesting to investigate cortisol levels as well as interpreted stress levels and types of stressors within a study to understand levels of stress hormone and feelings of stress. I think that interpretation is important to make because the measures do not always go hand in hand and this approach may help to decipher who actually experiences the highest physiological stress, versus who interprets their stress to be greatest.
I think it would be interesting to compare the eating habits of all sexual orientations with those that are in a relationship or not in a relationship. Many individuals try to eat well and stay in shape when looking for a significant other. This may play a role in how the participants respond to the FFQ. I'd be interested to see the percentage of bisexual and lesbian women that are in relationships compared to heterosexual women. I imagine that if there were a significant difference in that information, there may be a significant difference in the lifestyle habits amongst the different sexual orientations.
As several of you mentioned above, I think contrasting the prevalence of disordered eating in heterosexual versus bi/lesbian women would be very informative. I would also be interested in seeing if disordered eating is correlated with differences in family dynamics between the two groups. As Rachel mentioned above, bisexual and lesbian woman may be more likely to have family members disapprove of their sexual orientation, thus significantly altering one's family dynamic and support network. Granted, numerous other factors would need to be considered as well (SES, geographic location, etc.), but perhaps these things feed into each other.
Lauren, I like that you mentioned measured vs. perceived stress. As with pain tolerance, I would assume there is such a thing as stress tolerance, and that it can vary based on an individual. Those with high measured stress levels, but lower perceived stress levels may have different associations with weight status than someone who has low measured stress, but high perceived stress or even someone with high measured and perceived stress levels. It would be interesting to see the results of a study that takes into account the measured and perceived stress levels of participants while associating these levels with weight status.
Erin, I think your ideas about measuring the difference between measured and perceived stress and how this affects weight status. Just because a person has many stressful factors in their life, does not mean they will react negatively to this stress and may cope with it better than others. I would think that the people who are able to cope would have less stress related eating habits and thus weight issues. I think it is interesting that so many of us would want to focus on stress as the factor. I was expecting a lot more of us to focus on anthropometrics since that is what many of us our most familiar with. I think this is a good sign that shows we are adaptable and want to learn more about the patient than just the standards.
Jenni’s response peaked my interest. It would be quite interesting to study the way social media usage, habits, and even attitudes, influences one’s weight management and eating patterns. I am interested in this study not only for the specified population, but a broader population as well. It seems like a “no-brainer” type of study, though, in that we expect social media to influence people to want to better themselves, eat healthier, exercise more, etc. to compete with today’s standards. There might actually be the opposite effect seen in certain populations, perhaps the lesbian and bisexual population, meaning that they could become depressed, may develop disordered eating/negative view of food, and instead eat larger amounts of poorer quality foods. Again, this is feasible in any population and as others have mentioned towards the end of this feed, the way a person reacts to stress (this could be a form of stress) is entirely unique. I wonder if there is a trend of surrender or resilience towards stress in this particular population.
Elyse, I like how you suggested researching eating behaviors among all sexual orientations with those in a relationship or not in a relationship. This would be a great way to understand if relationships truly influence lifestyle habits. Do heterosexual people practice better eating behaviors in a relationship or not in a relationship? Do bisexual or lesbian women practice better eating behaviors in a relationship or not in a relationship? Do bisexual or gay men practice better eating behaviors in a relationship or not in a relationship? Do transgenders practice better eating behaviors in a relationship or not in a relationship? etc... If results showed that many people in relationships eat similar to their significant other, it can almost be assumed that their dietary habits were influenced by each other.
This is a little off topic but I thought it was somewhat similar to what we have been discussing in this post. The other day I was listening to the radio on my drive back to school and the talk show was discussing how food can cause a lot of arguments in relationships. As I was listening to several stories, I realized that this could definitely be an issue. If one partner in a relationship does not eat meat, it makes it difficult to go out to for food or prepare meals for each other. In one story, a man and his girlfriend continuously argue about organic food. They have a child together and the mother only feeds their daughter organic food, where the father could care less what the kid eats, as long as she is eating. This supposedly caused a lot of tension in their relationship. In another story, one man keeps trying to get his boyfriend to eat fish but every time he makes it for dinner, it causes an argument because he refuses to eat it. I was thinking about my parents and how their relationship is affected by food. Everyone in my family eats their steak cooked to medium besides my mom who refuses to eat steak with any pink in it. I can not even tell you how many times my dad accidentally did not cook my moms steak well done and it caused an argument. I think after about the 30th time my dad finally started to make her chicken while he made the rest of us steak, just to solve the issue.
I know it sounds funny to argue over food, but I actually believe that food is a huge component to a relationship! With that said, I think no matter what your sexual orientation is, you are going to be influenced by your significant other when it comes to eating.
Micheal, the point of measuring hormonal differences as related to stress were interesting to hear. I would also like to see the results of any further research. Though I have not seen any specific studies on cortisone levels related to dietary habits. I would be interested in seeing cortisone levels (stress) vs. long term fat storage and BMI in lesbian vs. heterosexual women.
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