Muscle Dysmorphia: A Comparison Between Competitive Bodybuilders and Fitness Practitioners
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: The primary aim of this study was to investigate the features of Muscle Dysmorphia and other body image-related concerns in a sample of competitive male bodybuilders. Method: We screened 217 male athletes, 119 bodybuilders and 98 fitness practitioners, recruited in 12 gymnasiums in Southern Italy, by means of an ad hoc socio-demographic schedule, the Muscle Dysmorphia Inventory (MDI) and the Muscle Appearance Satisfaction Scale (MASS). Results: Twenty one of the bodybuilders (17.6%) show high levels of preoccupation and dissatisfaction with their muscularity, 45.4% (N=54) a marked dependence on bodybuilding; 35.3% (N=42) follow a high-protein diet and 35.3% (N=42) used vitamin supplements to improve their weightlifting performances and favor post-training physical recovery. In addition, forty-three (36.1%) also report use of substance while nine subjects (7.6%) declare to avoid situations in which their body might be seen or manifest high levels of distress when this happens. The ANCOVA (Exercise Frequency per Week as a covariate) results indicate that bodybuilders, compared to fitness practitioners, report significant elevations in all measures. Moreover, considering only the bodybuilders sample, who report a regular use of substance scored higher in Dietary Behavior, Body size-symmetry, Physique Protection, Supplement Use MDI scales and on Body building Dependence, Muscle Checking and Injury MASS subscales. Discussion: Our findings seem to suggest that the practice of the bodybuilding is associated to the proposed criteria of muscle dysmorphia if compared with regular fitness practice. In particular, we found that a regular use of substance was associated with greater dissatisfaction with muscularity.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".