Eating habits and body image among gym goers
Although regular exercise is widely recommended to promote health and improvement quality of life, young people commonly report exercising primarily for weight control and for reasons related to their physical appearance. The objective of the study was to evaluate the degree of body satisfaction and its association with eating habits of individuals exercising in gymnasiums. This was a cross sectional study involving 432 adolescents and young adults (men 39.8% women 60.2% A body self perception questionnaire and a silhouetted scale was used to evaluate body image, as well as a food consumption questionnaire, whose score was calculated using the formula: Eating score (total of points obtained maximum of possible points according to the number of items filled out) x 100. The scoring scale ranges from 0 to 100 and the higher the score the greater the inadequacy of eating habits. The chi squared test was used to analyze the association between the degree of body satisfaction and the ingestion of the food groups, a p value <0.05 was considered significant. The total prevalence of body dissatisfaction was 75.7% with no significant difference between the sexes. Men were more "dissatisfied with thinness" (58.2% while women were more "dissatisfied with excess weight" (46.5% The individuals who were "satisfied" with their body image had a lower score in the food consumption questionnaire (46.96 points) compared to "dissatisfied" individuals (p<0.05) and, therefore, the "satisfied" individuals consumed a higher frequency of vegetable and fruit groups (p <0.05) The association between body dissatisfaction and food groups revealed that people who were "unsatisfied by thinness" had a higher frequency of consumption of processed products, soft drinks and eggs, while those who were "dissatisfied with excess weight" had a higher frequency of consumption of sweets and candies. In this study, a high prevalence of body dissatisfaction among young individuals attending gymnasiums was observed, which was associated with a higher frequency of an inadequate diet.