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Exercise Itself Convinces
You That You Look Better
Attention weekend warriors: the simple act of exercise and not
fitness itself can convince you that you look better, a new University
of Florida study finds.
People who don't achieve workout milestones such as losing fat,
gaining strength or boosting cardiovascular fitness feel just
as good about their bodies as their more athletic counterparts,
said Heather Hausenblas, a UF exercise psychologist. Her study
is published in the September issue of the Journal of Health Psychology.
"You would think that if you become more fit that you would
experience greater improvements in terms of body image, but that's
not what we found," she said. "It may be that the requirements
to receive the psychological benefits of exercise, including those
relating to body image, differ substantially from the physical
benefits."
The study by Hausenblas and graduate student Anna Campbell is
the first to systematically analyze the wide-ranging effects of
exercise on body image by examining all intervention studies on
the subject until June 2008. From the 57 publications, the researchers
found conclusively that exercise buffed up the way people see
their bodies regardless of the actual benefits, but the results
varied.
Negative body image has grown to almost epidemic proportions
in the past 20 years, with as many as 60 percent of adults in
national studies saying they don't like the way their bodies look,
Hausenblas said.
Americans spend billions of dollars a year for products designed
to change their body size and shape, including diet pills and
various cosmetic procedures, she said.
"Body dissatisfaction is a huge problem in our society and
is related to all sorts of negative behavior including yo-yo dieting,
smoking, taking steroids and undergoing cosmetic surgery,"
she said. "It affects men and women and all ages, starting
with kids who are as young as five years old saying they don't
like how their bodies look."
The psychological advantages of exercise have been less explored,
including the reduction of depression or confidence in body image,
compared with the well-researched and understood physical benefits,
she said.
The study found no difference in body image improvement between
people who met the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines
by exercising at least 30 minutes a day five days a week and those
who did not, Hausenblas said. The guidelines are considered the
minimum amount of exercise needed to receive the health related
benefits of physical activity, she said.
"We would have thought that people exercising this amount
would have felt better about their bodies than those who did not
work out as much," she said.
In other results, the study showed slightly larger benefits from
exercise in terms of improving body image for women than men,
Hausenblas said.
"We believed the gap would be much bigger, but what could
be coming into play is the rise of body image issues among men,"
she said. "We're seeing more media portrayals of the ideal
physique for men rather than the overriding emphasis on women
we did in the past."
Age presented another difference, with older people most likely
to report enhanced body images from exercise, Hausenblas said.
The gap may be explained by the older generation having more concerns
about their body image than young people, who tend to exercise
more, she said.
While the frequency of exercise mattered for boosting body perceptions,
there were no differences for the duration, intensity, length
or type of exercise, the study found.
"People who say they have high body dissatisfaction tend
to exercise the least, so we wanted to take it a step further
and see whether exercise causes people's body image to improve,"
she said.
Kathleen Martin Ginis, a kinesiology professor at McMaster University
in Ontario, Canada, and exercise expert, praised the research.
"This is an important study because it shows that doing virtually
any type of exercise, on a regular basis, can help people feel
better about their bodies," she said. "With such a large
segment of the population dissatisfied with their physiques, it's
encouraging to know that even short, frequent bouts of lower intensity
exercise can improve body image."
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