EFFECT OF OBESITY ON SELF ESTEEM AND ITS CONSEQUENTIAL EFFECT ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND AEROBIC CAPACITY

Overweight and obesity are emerging as a global health epidemic. Obesity negatively impacts both mental and physical health status. The purpose of the present study was to study the effect of obesity on self-esteem, academic performance and aerobic capacity of collegiate students. Randomly selected 300 college going students participated in the study. The subjects were further divided into normal weight group and obese groups. Self-esteem, academic performance and aerobic capacity were observed for all the participants to investigate for differences between the groups. Within groups, correlation test was employed to assess association between BMI and other variables.On inter-group comparison, obese students had significantly lower self-esteem score (p=0.001), aerobic capacity (p=0.001) and academic performance score (p=0.001) as compared to normal weight students. BMI was significantly negatively correlated with self-esteem, academic performance and aerobic capacity in the combined girls and boys group. It can be concluded that that normal weight boys, girls and combined boys and girls have greater self-esteem, academic performance and aerobic capacity than their respective obese counterparts.