The Effectiveness of a Course of Web-based Physical Activity on the Physical Literacy and Body Image Coping Strategies in Overweight Middle-Aged Women: A Study with an Expectancy Effect

Due to the fact that women are among the vulnerable groups of the society and have special characteristics in the field of health and treatment issues, for this reason it is necessary to know their needs and try to solve them. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to determine and the effectiveness of a web-based physical activity course on the level of physical literacy and body image tolerance strategies in overweight middle-aged women with a two-month follow-up.

The present semi-experimental study was conducted with a pre-test-post-test with an experimental group and a control group in 2021. Twenty-four overweight women with an age range of 40-60 years were selected and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups after the pre-test. Participants in the experimental group participated in an eight-week web-based exercise program. The program consisted of 10 minutes of warm-up, 40 minutes of the main body of the training including resistance and endurance exercises with moderate intensity and finally 10 minutes of cool-down exercises. The collected data were analyzed using Mixed ANOVA and Bonferroni's post hoc test.

 The results indicated that the effect of physical exercise training program on the levels of physical literacy and its components was significant and the participants in the experimental group had better performance than the control group in the post-test and follow-up stages (p<0.05). Moreover, regarding body image coping strategies, the results indicated the superiority of the experimental group over the control group in the post-test and follow-up stages (p<0.05).

The results of the present study revealed that 8 weeks of holistic physical activity based on the web has positive effects on the level of physical literacy and body image coping strategies in overweight middle-aged women. Therefore, physical activity is recommended for overweight middle-aged women to improve physical literacy and body image coping strategies.