As early as kindergarten, kids who are overweight feel more lonely and anxious than their normal-weight peers, new research shows.

And for both boys and girls who are persistently overweight from kindergarten through third grade, these feelings of depression, anxiety and loneliness get worse over time, Dr. Sara Gable of the University of Missouri in Columbia and her colleagues found.

"I think there's a tendency to believe that boys don't experience those consequences until later," Gable told Reuters Health. "These findings suggest that they are experiencing some of these negative consequences earlier than may have been believed."

Her study included 8,000 children divided into three different groups: those who were overweight through kindergarten, first grade and third grade; kids who were only overweight as third graders; and kids who were never overweight. Gable and her team looked at teachers' perceptions of students in kindergarten, first grade, and third grade, and also had children fill out questionnaires about their own well-being.

Teachers rated the girls who were overweight throughout the study, as well as those who only were overweight in third grade, as having worse interpersonal skills than girls who were never overweight. They also viewed overweight girls as having less self-control, and the differences seen between the heavy girls and normal-weight girls increased over time.

However, a boy's weight status had no influence on how a teacher perceived his social or self-control skills. Heavy boys were actually viewed as showing fewer aggressive, acting-out behaviors than normal weight boys, while the opposite was true for girls, with overweight girls seen as showing more of these "externalizing" behaviors.

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