Physical activity behaviour in childhood and adolescence has been shown to influence physical activity behaviour in young adulthood and in later life (Tammelin, Näyhä, Hills, & Järvelin, 2003; W. C. Taylor, Blair, Cummings, Wun, & Malina, 1999; Telama, Yang, Laakso, & Viikari, 1997), while mid-late adolescence and early adulthood have been shown to be a transitionary stage in physical activity behaviour (Nelson, Kocos, Lytle, & Perry, 2009; see Chapter 1). Research has also shown that the number of people meeting physical activity guidelines declines rapidly from age 18 to 24 (Grim et al., 2011) with the secondary school to university transition being accompanied with unhealthy behavioural change with reduced exercise and increased sedentary behaviour (Crombie, Ilich, Dutton, Panton, & Abood, 2009; Vella-Zarb & Elgar, 2009). Half of US and Canadian students (Irwin, 2004; Weinstock, 2010), around three quarters of UK students (Haase, Steptoe, Sallis, & Wardle, 2004) and 40% of Australian students are insufficiently active (Irwin, 2004). Those on campus were shown to be more inactive than those off-campus (Irwin, 2004), with an increase in sedentary behaviour (Buckworth & Nigg, 2004) often resulting in considerable weight gain during this time period (Fedewa, Das, Evans, & Dishman, 2014; Gropper, Simmons, Connell, & Ulrich, 2012). Barriers to physical activity have been shown to change over this period of time from later
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secondary/high school to university/college. There is an increase in issues such as health concerns and a lack of self-confidence present in university students (Arzu, Tuzun, & Eker, 2006; Gyurcsik, Spink, Bray, Chad, & Kwan, 2006) and some barriers only present in university students and not in high school students such as a desire for more sedentary activities including relaxing, and a lack of sleep (Gyurcsik et al., 2006).
Body shame has been shown to be associated with body dissatisfaction, higher disordered eating and more appearance related exercise motives (Jankauskiene & Pajaujiene, 2012), which have been shown to be associated with reduced long term participation in physical activity (Kilpatrick, Hebert, & Bartholomew, 2005; Segar et al., 2006). Body shame has also been shown to be associated with low physical activity as well as associated with external, introjected and autonomous forms of behavioural regulation, where shame also predicted physical activity at 6 months. The effects of shame and guilt on physical activity were shown to be mediated by autonomous regulation (Castonguay et al., 2017). Weight self-perception discrepancy has also been shown to be associated with physical activity, whereby physical activity is lower when ideal or ought (the body weight one feels one ought to have) self- perception was greater than actual self-perceptions. Agreement between actual and ideal self were directly and indirectly related to physical activity through motivational regulations (Brunet et al., 2012). Teasing and body image concerns have also been shown to contribute to adolescent girls reduced physical activity (Lopez, 2019; Slater & Tiggemann, 2011), while body image has also been shown to be associated with physical activity behaviour in adolescent boys and girls (e.g. Kołoło, Guszkowska, Mazur, & Dzielska, 2012), young adult women (e.g. Brunet et al., 2012), disabled men (e.g. Bassett & Martin Ginis, 2009), as well as associations between physical appearance (weight) of avatars in a game and subsequent physical activity behaviour (Peña & Kim, 2014).
As described in Chapter 3, self-compassion has been shown to be associated with lower body image concerns (Wasylkiw et al., 2012), shame and explains the association between body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness in eating disorder patients (C. Ferreira et al., 2013). Self-compassion has been associated with lower eating pathology and been shown to protect against eating pathology and poor body image (see Braun et al., 2016, for a review), as well as being beneficial for weight loss, nutritional behaviours, eating behaviour and body image (see
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Rahimi-Ardabili, Reynolds, Vartanian, McLeod, & Zwar, 2018, for a review). Self-compassion has been also shown to be related to pride and shame (Mosewich et al., 2011) and has shown a role in predicting introjected motives for physical activity along with ego goal orientation, social physique anxiety and obligatory exercise (Magnus et al., 2010). Physical activity behaviour has been directly predicted by self-compassion along with internal locus of control, social support and education in diabetes patients (Ferrari, Dal Cin, & Steele, 2017) as well as indirectly (along with other health behaviours such as sleep, eating and stress management) through positive and negative affect (see Sirois, Kitner, & Hirsch, 2015 for a review). Self- compassion and body image have also been shown to be associated with autonomous regulation which in turn is associated with increased physical activity (Thall, 2014).
Research in Chapter 5 showed that body compassion indirectly predicts behavioural regulation through bodily pride and shame. Specifically, it showed that increased body compassion predicted greater pride and less shame in one’s current and anticipated (with weight loss and gain) body weight, with current body pride and shame being positively predictive of external regulation and amotivation and negatively of intrinsic, integrated and identified regulations. It also demonstrated that body pride and shame associated with weight gain was negatively predictive of amotivation and positively of introjected, identified, integrated and intrinsic regulations. Chapter 6 also showed that body shame and pride was indirectly associated with physical activity behaviour through these behavioural regulations, where intrinsic and integrated regulations were the best positive predictors of MVPA, strength activity and overall physical activity, while intrinsic, integrated and introjected regulations were positive predictors of strength and overall physical activity, while identified regulation was a negative predictor of all three outcomes. This suggests that improving one’s body compassion might have an indirect effect on one’s physical activity motivation and subsequent behaviour. The role of BMI was also highlighted whereby BMI predicted pride and shame and motivations for physical activity, also highlighting potential interaction effects between BMI and body compassion on intrinsic regulation, integrated regulation and amotivation.
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