Abstract

Background: Sedentary behaviour is related to the prevalence of obesity among school going adolescents. Lifestyle habit among adolescents is one of the factors related to the occurrence of obesity which is an important public health issue.

Aims & Objectives: To assess the factors associated with the prevalence of obesity among school going adolescents.

Materials and Methods: This was a cross sectional descriptive study of 680 school going adolescents, aged 10-19 years. Participants were enrolled by using multi stage random sampling technique. Predesigned and pretested schedule was used to elicit information on lifestyle habits that included eating food with family, consumption of breakfast, frequency of eating fast food, aerated drinks in a week, modes of transport used, participation and duration of hours spent in active sports, time spent in watching television and anthropometric variables. Age and gender specific percentile growth charts of 2007 (WHO) was used as reference to classify subjects as obese.

Results: About 71.5 percent of adolescents used to eat food with family which was significantly (p=0.0001) associated with the low prevalence of overweight. The percentage of overweight was higher among those who ate fast food daily. The primary predictors for overweight in our study were eating food with family, mode of transport used and duration of watching television. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that the prevalence of overweight was 3.06 times higher among those who used public/private transport respectively than who walked [OR: 3.06 (95% CI: 1.87-5.02)].

Conclusion: The lifestyle habits of adolescents that included eating food with family, frequency of eating fast food & aerated drinks, modes of transport used, duration & participation in active sports and time spent in watching television showed the association with prevalence of overweight. Therefore there is an urgent need to educate parents and teachers regarding healthy lifestyle and healthy eating behaviour of the adolescents.

Key words: Body Mass Index; Lifestyle Habits; Sedentary Behaviour; School Going Adolescents