Sizing Up Your Body - Fit Nation - TIME

time.com - In a Canadian study released last month, a team of investigators surveyed 3,665 children in the 9-, 13- and 16-year-old age groups. After measuring each child's body mass index (BMI) — a figure computed on the basis of height and weight — they found that 14% of the subjects were overweight and 9% were obese. But when the kids were asked to select from a series of silhouettes the shape that most resembled theirs, the great majority of overweight subjects chose bodies thinner than theirs. "As more of the population becomes overweight, perceptions and social norms shift," says Katerina Maximova, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate in biostatistics at McGill University in Montreal. "If you're a little child and your parents are overweight and so are your peers, nothing else will make as big an impact."

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