Body image; literature review.

Raquel Vaquero-Cristóbal, Fernando Alacid, José María Muyor, Pedro Ángel López-Miñarro

Nowadays, in developed countries there are standards of beauty based on pro-thin models, which are internalized by adolescents and young people especially in the case of women, assuming it as risk factor for developing changes in body image and perception. To analyze the current state of research in relation to body image, the sociodemographic variables that influence it, the relationship between body composition, conducting diets, eating disorders, sports and intervention programs and prevention, and the body image. It was searched in Medline, Isi Web of knowledge and Dialnet as well as a manual search among the references of selected studies and in different libraries. A increased socio-cultural influence is associated with a greater perception of body fat, greater body image dissatisfaction and lower self assessment of overall fitness. This leads to a lot of teenagers and young adults to abuse to the restrictive diets and to suffer eating disorders. Numerous studies have analyzed the relationship between sports practice with body image disturbance; there are conflictive results. Moreover it is necessary to design objective tools to detect changes and enhance the design of prevention and intervention programs in order to avoid distortion of body image, especially in those age ranges where the population is more vulnerable to this phenomenon. The excessive current preoccupation about body image has resulted in the realization of diets and changes as eating disorders. There are other factors that influence body image and perception as the realization of physical exercise, although the results about the relationship between these factors are contradictory. Therefore, further work is needed on the issue by creating tools to detect changes and enhance the design of prevention and intervention programs.