KOREASCHOLAR

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of eating habits and control of overeating of obese children on the body weight control program. The program included nutritional education, psychotherapy and physical exercise on weekly session for 9 months. The results of this study were as follows. Participants of the study involved 30 obese children attending elementary school. The average age of the children was 11.78 years, mean height and weight were 146.22cm and 50.61kg. The average BMI and body fat contents were 24.06 and 30.49% respectively and WHR of the children was 0.87. There was a significant difference between boys and girls' BMI(25.18, 23.31, p<0.01). As a result of the eating habits test, 50% of the subjects showed low level of regularity of diet, and 76.7% of the subjects showed high level of balanced diet score. Large portion(83.3%) of the subjects had high level of healthy behavior score. WHR of girls significantly decreased from 0.86 to 0.82(p<0.01) after the body weight control program. There were no significant differences in serum components of the obese children after the program. When regarding the score of eating habits in relation to obesity indices, the WHR significantly decreased(p<0.05) in a group of children with high eating habits score. Also in the group of overeating controls, significantly decreased WHR(p<0.05). In the results of correlation analysis, body weight was positively correlated with BMI(r=0.624), the level of total cholesterol(r=0.5109) and HDL cholesterol(r=0.5088). The score of healthy behavior was positively correlated with height(r=0.5286) and negatively correlated with the level of LDL cholesterol(r=0.3555) and WHR(r=0.4028) These results suggest that the body weight control program must be considerate of the different groups of children with different scores in the eating habits and overeating controls test.

• 김경희 | Kim, Kyung-Hee