Abstract:

Any young person with unhealthy body weight control practices or who has a certain obsession with food/shape/weight or exercise can be a candidate for an eating disorder. Considering this and the growth of scientific productions on the subject was that it was aimed to investigate the prevalence of risk behavior for binge eating in adolescents of the Master College in São Luí­s-MA. It is a descriptive cross-observational quantitative study with 139 students from a private school with an age of 12 to 17 years. For the diagnosis, the questionnaire was used on standards of food and weight reviewed (QEWP-R), created for the diagnosis of the TCAP (periodic food compulsion disorder) and subclinical tables of binge eating, validated by (BORGES and contributors, 2005). Of the adolescents participating in this study most were female, family income from 3 to 4 minimum wages and color/brown race. As regards the nutritional status, the Eutrophy was appointed as dominant; It was identified that 1.4% of the sample presented TCAP and 41% presented episodes of Binge eating in the last six months. Of this group of risk behavior/subclinical cases of periodic binge eating, the main reports that relate to the episodes were: eat much faster than usual and eat large amounts of food without hunger. In addition, teenagers who have had episodes of compulsion, more than half reported compensatory behaviors to avoid weight gain (fasting, slimming pills and excessive exercise) and a relatively high percentage stated already have used laxative, diuretic and vomit induction for bodily weight control. The data showed the importance of returning efforts to early treatment of binge episodes and the identification of risk sub-groups. It is expected that the results of this research can subsidize the development of other research, in addition to activities in the school with the implementation of lectures to educate parents and students about the food disorder and to promote changes that cause impacts health and quality of life of this public.

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