Overweight in Students and Its Relationship with the Lifestyle: A Cross Sectional Study in Birjand, 2014

Student overweight is the most mutual health problem among students. Lifestyle change to immobility is one of the main causes of increasing non-communicable diseases like overweight. The aim of this study was to evaluate overweight in students and its relationship with lifestyle.
In this case-control study, 100 obese students of Birjand, Iran in 2014, and 100 healthy controls matched for age and sex, were randomly selected. Overweight was diagnosed by BMI > 85th reference percentiles. Data were collected via questionnaire. Data were examined using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 16 (SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL) for windows.
One hundred students (54 males and 46 females) with an average age of 14.45 ± 1.45 years as a case group and 100 students matched for age and sex (51 males and 49 females) with an average age of 14.65 ± 1.60 years as a control group were analyzed. Students with a higher economic level of households were significantly more obese (P = 0. 01). It was, in addition, associated with overweight index (P = 0.049), hyperlipidemia (P = 0.001) in Parents, low physical activity and dietary habits. There was no significant relationship between overweight in students and other factors (P = 0.05).
According to our findings, overweight in students had a correlation with overweight and hyperlipidemia in their parents. We also concluded that calories from protein and carbohydrates were associated with an increased body mass index.