NCT03007459

The Health of Competitive Fitness Athletes

The Health of Competitive Fitness Athletes, a Cohort Study of Female Fitness Athletes and Physical Active Control's During and After Three Months of Fitness Contest Dieting

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 47 (actual)
• Sponsor: Norwegian School of Sport Sciences · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years – 40 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Fitness athletes emphasize the value of staying lean, muscular and defined, and motivates and inspires followers through social media. We want to study the effect of such lifestyle on selected aspects of psychological and physical health in female fitness athletes, and compare the outcomes to a healthy, physically active female population.

Detailed description

Little is known about the mental and physical health effect from following the modern, idealized fitness lifestyle. The lifestyle is characterized by selective and restrictive eating behavior, strength training and use of supplements. The athletes emphasize the value of staying lean, muscular and defined, and motivates and inspires followers through social media. This study will recruit and observe a group of competitive female fitness athletes over their typical 3 month dieting period when preparing for contest. Before their contest diet is initiated, the athletes will be screened on selected aspects of psychological and physical health. The screening is repeated two weeks prior to their first seasonal contest, and then finally one month post-contest season. During the diet period of 3 months, the athletes answers brief questionnaires by email on eating- and training behavior and on mood, while also reporting dietary intake by telephone interview. Recreational physically females, not planning to do any fitness contest, will be recruited to serve as a parallel control group. They will perform the same physical and psychological screening, and answer the same questionnaires throughout the fitness contest diet period.

Conditions

• Resting Metabolic Rate
• Bone Mineral Density, Low, Susceptibility to
• Body Image
• Perfectionism
• Depression
• Eating Disorder
• Exercise-Related Amenorrhea
• Exercise Addiction
• Binge Eating
• Dietary Amenorrhea
• Dietary Deficiency

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Psychological health	Observing and measuring baseline, and changes in, psychological health through a fitness contest preparation period
OTHER	Physiological health	Observing and measuring baseline, and changes in, physiological health through a fitness contest preparation period

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-11-01
• Primary completion: 2017-11-01
• Completion: 2017-12-01
• First posted: 2017-01-02
• Last updated: 2018-03-29

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Norway