Longitudinal relationships between negative attitudes towards obesity and muscle dysmorphia symptoms

Weight-based discrimination is a major public health problem. The pervasiveness of weight stigma can lead to weight-bias internalization and in turn to deleterious behaviors to change one's appearance. Weight bias internalization is linked to eating disorder behaviors, but whether this relation holds for muscle-building behaviors is unclear. Thus, the current study tested longitudinal relationships between Negative Attitudes Towards Obesity (NATO) and drive for muscularity (DFM), as well as muscle dysmorphia (MD) symptoms.

Undergraduate participants (n = 1175; 79.9 % cisgender women; 87.6 % white; Mage = 19.14) completed the Eating Pathology Symptom Inventory-NATO subscale, Drive for Muscularity Scale, and the Muscle Appearance Satisfaction Scale. Multiple linear regressions, adjusting for gender, examined the longitudinal relationships between NATO, DFM, and MD symptoms.

There were positive longitudinal associations between NATO and DFM, as well as negative longitudinal associations between NATO and muscularity satisfaction.

Greater weight stigmatizing attitudes longitudinally predicted the desire to increase muscularity and engage in muscle-building behaviors. Clinical interventions may target weight stigmatizing attitudes to reduce later symptoms of MD or DFM.