A Reason For Overweight Kids To Exercise?
I don’t think I posted about this, but I do remember hearing a while back that overweight kids are not only more likely to be bullied, but they’re also more likely to be bullies. The topic is coming up again, with a new study showing that “expressions of anger” are reduced in overweight kids who exercise.
While there’s no evidence that overweight kids are significantly more aggressive than their normal-weight peers, they are more likely to be bullied or to bully others.
Given that exercise is known to help improve mood and reduce hostility in adults, Davis and her colleagues set out to determine if it might have the same effect in overweight young people… The more a child’s fitness increased, the greater his or her reduction in anger expression.
I would imagine “expressions of anger” would be reduced in anyone who exercises, of any age, whether they’re overweight or not. After all, it’s not only us overweight people who go blow off steam with a good sweaty gym workout, right? So why target overweight kids with this study? Am I being cynical to assume it is because money is being thrown at the “childhood obesity epidemic”? I am, aren’t I?
Posted by mo pie
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I don’t think you are being cynical, but maybe just overlooking an important aspect. That is, adults can influence their children to exercise more, and the results of this study inform parents as to WHY it is important to do that. It isn’t that money isn’t being thrown at obesity in general, and the results are clearly applicable across ages. I think they gave a good justification for using children in this study – we already know the benefits of exercise in reducing anger for adults, so does that translate to children also, given the different and differing levels of hormones.
This sounds like another way to try to shove personality traits (like laziness, gluttony, stupidity) into a particular pants size.
Yawn.
What I want to know is why they didn’t take some of those bullying thin kids and make them exercise and see if that lessened the amount of bullying they did. Why is it always just the fat ones who have to exercise in order to improve mood and fitness, etc? Why can’t they do the same thing with the unfit, moody, bullying thin kids?
i do also think they should have done the study with some thin bullies but i think the main reason they targeted overweight children was because of the whole ‘overweight children are more likely to be bullies’ thing that was mentioned
I think the reason the overweight bullies were targeted is because obviously (cue eyeroll), if they are overweight, they can’t possibly be getting any exercise. Those thin bullies must be bullies for other reasons.
Then how come so many of the athletics kids in my old school were some of the most violent and ruthless bullies I have ever had the misfortune to experience in my life?
After I began exercising regularly in grad school, I found I was actually more likely to be angry or upset than I had been before. Maybe that was a good thing – that is, maybe I hadn’t been standing up enough for myself prior to that. But it was a little unsettling at first to notice myself suddenly starting to get all fired up about something I would have blown off before!
I agree with you. I also would think that anger would be reduced in Anyone who exercises because it helps you relive built up tension. That’s an interesting post!
As I see it, if you’re likely to be a target you have two choices:
1. Be the victim
2. Take the offensive, and bully others before they can attack you
The link didn’t actually say anything about weight, but if the kids lost weight they might be less likely to be targets and that would change their behavior. Or, as reuters said, the extra attention the kids got may have made the difference.
I’d be curious to read the actual study (rather than the reuters summary).
Edit: the link didn’t say anything about weight lost, just to clarify what I meant!
What vesta44 said.
Plus I think it’s interesting that there was little to no probe into what might have aggravated the angry kids in the first place, hmmm? It wouldn’t have been bullying from the thin kids, would it?
That’s where I think the justifiable cynicism comes in, IMO.
Oh here we go, trotting out the stereotype that the fat kids are the bullies. The poor skinny kids are having to deal with constant daily harassment, over not being able to “fatten up” and being teased for not ever eating enough! No, that isn’t happening, at least on the massive scale that fat bullying is. I’m making sure nobody decides to flame/whine at me, that I’m forgetting thin people are teased too.
Yeah, it’s the fat kids who are the ones who are bullies. Why don’t these geniuses look into how many of these kids became bullies, to defend themselves from the students who bully them. Is it bullying, or a defense from students who bully with the intent of sadism, never getting punished or taught that they’re wrong.
Is it bullying, when it’s a last ditch effort, to stop the constant tormenting that someone endures at their school, because teasing about being fat is acceptable? Would these people rather the kid bring a gun to school instead?