Perceived Body Image, Anti-fat Attitudes and Healthy Lifestyle Practices among Nursing Students towards Obesity Prevention

Obesity rates will continue to grow worldwide for the foreseeable future. Obesity is preventable. To improve the notion of health, everyone in society must practice a healthy lifestyle to prevent obesity and overweight. Recently, Malaysians who practice healthy lifestyles have decreased and the rate of overweight or obesity is increasing. Nurses and nursing students have a significant role and should become role models with good body image in educating and promoting healthy lifestyles to the public. However, a lot of studies show that nurses and nursing students fail to engage in healthy lifestyles. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to determine perceived body image, anti-fat attitudes and healthy lifestyle practices among nursing students at private healthcare university colleges in Malaysia. Methods: Data was collected using valid and reliable questionnaires to determine Perceived Body image, Anti-fat Attitude and Healthy Lifestyle behaviour. Dependent variables were correlated with independent variables. The results of this study showed that nursing students are satisfied with their body image (61.2%), most nursing students engage in unhealthy lifestyles (48.6%) and the majority of nursing students have strong anti-fat attitudes (58.6%). There is no significant relationship between perceived body image, anti-fat attitude and healthy lifestyles. Conclusions: This result could conclude that it confirms that there is no direct link between Perceived body image, anti-fat attitudes, and Healthy lifestyle behaviours, as suggested in the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). There are intermediary factors such as health motivation and perceived control as determining factors to contribute to behaviour prediction. This evidence can help nursing educators improve motivation factors in the nursing curriculum to encourage nursing students to practice healthy lifestyles.