We’ve been very active these past few weeks, and we’re really happy to share another new publication, available now in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. This work falls under our Project WHADE Program (for Women’s Health and Daily Experiences), which our team has been dedicated to for the past 10 years.
If you’re new to the CHASE Lab’s work, welcome! One of our main interests is in learning more about how we can support the health behaviors of women between the ages of 40-60 who have risk factors for heart disease – particularly their physical activity. National data show that most women in this age range do not meet the recommended physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. (In other words, the type of activity that we typically think of as “exercise.”) Not surprising, given that these women often have to balance work, family, menopause, and other life transitions, as well as their own health. It’s a lot to fit in each day! But because we know that movement of any type has so many positive effects on our heart health, we want to help women find ways to fit it in.
To do this, we need to understand what makes physical activity so challenging for these women, as well as what helps them be active. And it’s important that we see how this plays out as they go about their typical days. For example, in the past we have looked for real-life associations between social experiences and physical activity and under what circumstances women follow through on their exercise intentions.
This time we focused on body satisfaction. What younger women think and feel about their bodies gets a lot of attention, but we know a lot less about this experience for women ages 40-60. In general, many people feel better about their bodies if they’re more physically active. But we don’t know if (or how) associations between body satisfaction and physical activity unfold as women ages 40-60 go about their daily lives – does activity follow from body satisfaction, does satisfaction follow from activity, or both?
What Did We Do?
We asked women ages 40-60 with one or more risk factors for heart disease (smoking, high cholesterol, etc.) to complete 5 electronic surveys per day, for a period of 10 days. At each survey, women were asked to (1) rate their body satisfaction, (2) report on how motivated they were to be physically active in the next few hours, and (3) indicate if they intended to exercise over the next few hours. If they did intend to be active, they also told us what kind of exercise they planned to do, and for how long. We also asked these women to wear a research-grade physical activity tracker (i.e., an accelerometer) daily, during waking hours, over the course of this 10-day study. There were 75 participants and 50 assessment points during this period, so we got a great representation of these experiences in women’s everyday lives.
What Did We Find and What Does it Mean?
Across all reports, women said they were dissatisfied with their bodies 51% of the time. Those who were more satisfied overall also had higher physical activity motivation. But at times when women were more satisfied than they usually were, they were also more motivated to be active, and this lasted through the following day. There were no associations between ratings of body satisfaction and exercise intentions.
With respect to physical activity behavior, at times when these women engaged in more light-intensity physical activity than usual, they felt more satisfaction with their bodies in the next few hours. But the reverse was not true – better-than-usual body satisfaction did not predict later physical activity, and there was no association with more intense activity. So activity followed from body satisfaction, not the other way around!
This means that, for women in midlife, there is a real-time link from body satisfaction to physical activity in daily life – particularly light activity, which has many health benefits. Perhaps it is more effective to focus on light activity for women ages 40-60, as they may find it easier to increase this type of activity than to increase more intense “exercise.” It is possible that promoting body satisfaction in daily life may lead to increases in light activity for these women. And although engaging in light activity than usual did not relate to body satisfaction later that day, it is possible that over time, increases in light activity could result in better body image more generally. But because the method we used doesn’t speak to cause-and-effect relations, testing these predictions is an important next step for research and intervention. More broadly, now that we know body dissatisfaction is so common for women ages 40-60 (occurring 51% of the time), it will also be critical to recognize and address this experience for its own sake.
What Was It Like to Work on This Study?
I really enjoyed working on this paper, particularly in my roles as the researcher who ran the statistical analyses and led the development of the manuscript. It was interesting that women’s engagement in light-intensity physical activity was associated with greater body satisfaction in the following few hours, but that these associations did not also extend to their engagement in more intense physical activity (exercise). As this was the first study to examine these associations among women in midlife, I think that it would be interesting to see if they are replicated and other samples from this population.
— Dr. Kelly Romano, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota Medical School
I was so pleased I got to work on this paper, in part because it has been a few years since Dr. Arigo and I have collaborated in this way. We worked in the same lab during graduate school at Syracuse University and have been fortunate to continue to be friends and colleagues for nearly 17 years now! As we did in this study, my own research team frequently uses intensive self-report methods to study body image, but we use objective measures of physical activity much less often. It was a great experience to get to work on this project with my (now former) graduate student Dr. Kelly Romano and Dr. Arigo.
— Dr. Kristen Heron, Associate Professor of Psychology at Old Dominion University and HaBiT Lab Director
Working on this sub-project was a privilege for me and it would not have happened without this team. The CHASE Lab collected the data in 2019/2020 and always intended to examine body image experiences, in a population of women that is usually overlooked in this area. But there never seemed to be enough time to give this the attention it deserves. As Drs. Romano and Heron are experts in this area (and longtime collaborators/friends, as Dr. Heron noted), it was a great opportunity to combine forces, and I’m delighted that they were interested in taking the lead. “Which comes first – body image or physical activity?” and “are these actually reciprocal in daily life?” are questions that the field has been asking for years. Addressing them among women ages 40-60 makes an important contribution and highlights the experiences of this large and diverse group.
— Dr. Dani Arigo, CHASE Lab Director
Next Steps
Our ultimate goal is to design better physical activity interventions for women in midlife. We want to be mindful of their body satisfaction and sensitive to this topic in all that we do. And we are one step closer! Many of our participants tell us that they do not get enough social support for their physical activity and have a strong interest in finding social sources of accountability to achieve their individual goals. We think that forming physical activity partnerships will be helpful, and we’re offering the opportunity to help us test this hypothesis in a new physical activity program. Project WHADE: A Partner-Based Physical Activity Program for Women is launching in January 2024 – see here for more details and how to reserve your spot.
Clinical Health And Social Experiences Lab 