Fit workout neighbor harms exercisers' self esteem

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young women who exercise next to a fit-looking peer will spend less time working out and feel worse about their bodies, a new study shows.

And the effects of pumping iron next to someone buff were the same no matter how fit the exerciser was herself, Dr. James A. Kulik and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla found.

Based on the findings, Kulik told Reuters Health, it's important for people to "realize that you may be influenced by your immediate environment in ways that you don't otherwise suspect." He added: "If you want to maximize how you're feeling about yourself, you might want to move to the areas of the gym where people are less fit."

Media depiction of thin, perfect-looking models are known to torpedo women's self-esteem, Kulik and his team write in the December issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders. But there's little information on how comparing oneself to a peer might influence body satisfaction.

To investigate, the researchers observed 45 female undergraduate students working out on a lateral pull-down machine in the campus gym in three different situations. In the first, a fit-looking woman began exercising at an adjacent machine; in the second, the woman who started exercising nearby looked out-of-shape; and in the third, there was no one working out alongside the study participant.

The "peer" was the same woman in each case. She wore tight workout clothing when playing the "fit peer," and baggy sweats with padding underneath to look unfit.

Kulik's team found that women spent just under three minutes on the pull-down machine when working out next to the fit peer. Alone, they worked out for four minutes, while they used the machine for more than five minutes when working out alongside the unfit-looking peer.

Women also scored significantly lower on two different tests of body satisfaction after they worked out next to the fit woman, but there was no difference in body satisfaction between when they worked out alone and when they exercised next to the seemingly out-of-shape woman.

It's worth remembering, Kulik said, that these were college-age women. Older women may be less susceptible to comparing themselves unfavorably to others, he pointed out, while people who go to gyms may also be more sensitive to body image concerns than those who don't.

Nevertheless, he added, the fact that fit peers made everyone feel equally bad, but an unfit peer didn't produce a corresponding self-esteem boost, "may help explain why body dissatisfaction is so prevalent in American women."

SOURCE: International Journal of Eating Disorders, December 2007.