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How Self-Control Affects our Training and Nutrition Goals: A Comparison Between Overweight Women and Bodybuilders

Henry Chan, Roberta C Muzy, Paula HD Kanas, Paulo C Muzy, Antonio H Lancha Jr, Katia Rubio, Luciana OP Lancha, Ivan S Rabelo

The psychological and dedication in bodybuilding has a significant impact in these athlete’s lives, supporting self-control and individual’s social realization. Moreover, their motivation is an important key during the pre-competition period, when high levels of self-control contribute to achieving goals and performing under pressure.

Purpose: The aim of this research is to study the differences between the locus of control of overweight women and bodybuilding athletes.

Methods: The current study was designed to compare two groups (n=18); female bodybuilders (n=10) and overweight women (n=8). Data were collected by survey monkey URL link, composed of 12 questions involving nutrition and training lifestyle, each with 3 possible columns with answers: relying on reward/relying on others/relying on me. Participants were requested to answer by classifying how the sources of control affect each item with ratings from 1 to 5. The average result of each question and column was calculated with comparison purposes.

Results: The column “relying on me” had the same average rating 4.9/5 rating for bodybuilders and overweight women. For “relying on others” the athletes’ average rating was 1.2/5 and for non-athletes 1.4/5. The major difference was regarding “relying on a reward” with an average rating of 2.7/5 for the group of bodybuilders and 1.9/5 for non-athletes.

Conclusion: We concluded that a source of reward is much more significant to athletes, which can refer to either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.