The Relationship between Body Mass Index and Satisfaction of Body Shape among Athlete and Non-Athlete Female Students

Nowadays one of the most serious problems among people in the society especially teenagers is to maintain body shape. If people feel badly to their body dimensions, dissatisfaction of body shape will be seen. BMI is one of the most appropriate healthy standards to determine the body mass that is not identical with people’s image of body shape. The purpose of this study was to compare the relationship between BMI and satisfaction of body image among athlete and non-athlete female students. The study was conducted on 185 athletes and 901 non-athletes 15-17 years old. The Average weight in athlete 57.32± 9.03 kg and non-athletes 57.41 ± 9.37 kg and the average BMI was 21.62 ± 3.32 and 21.8 ± 3.68 kg/m2 respectively. In order to collect the data in consent form, demographic questionnaire, sport activities questionnaire and photographic figure rating scale were used. Based on results, there was a meaningful difference among athletes and non-athletes in dissatisfaction of body shape that non-athletes with 0.033 significance level had more dissatisfaction of their body shape. Moreover, the correlation between dissatisfaction of body shape and social pressure to change body weight was 0.487 in non-athletes and 0/395 in athletes. This research showed that non-athletes are at the risk of dissatisfaction of body shape than athletes. Besides, the factors that cause this dissatisfaction were different in athletes and non-athletes.