Investigation of exercise addiction and orthorexia nervosa (healthy eating obsession) symptoms among sports center members

In this study, it was aimed to examine the levels of exercise addictions of fitness center members and the symptoms of orthorexia nervosa in terms of various variables. A total of 322 volunteers, 126 females and 196 males, who are members of fitness centers operating in Elazig province, participated in our research. As a data collection tool, the "Personal Information Form" developed by us, the "Exercise Addiction Scale" to determine the exercise addiction levels of the members, and the "Ortho-15 Scale" to examine the prevalence of Orthorexia Nervosa among the members were used. Statistical analysis of the data obtained from the scales was made in the SPSS 25.0 package program. It was observed that the data were distributed normally in the tests performed before the statistical analysis. Therefore, parametric tests were preferred in the analysis of the data. Independent sample t test was used to compare two groups, while ANOVA test was used to compare more than two groups. Pearson's correlation test was used to reveal the relationship between variables. The statistical significance level was determined as p<0.05. According to the classification of exercise addiction levels, the participants were in the low-risk group of 4%, the risk group of 32.3%, the addiction group of 54%, and the highly addiction group of 9.6%. When the exercise addictions of the participants were examined, there were significant differences in exercise age, weekly exercise duration, gender and physical appearance satisfaction variables, while there were no significant results in age, marital status and educational status variables. According to obsessive eating behaviors, it was observed that the participants consisted of 18.3% orthorexic and 81.7% non-orthorexic individuals. When the Orthorexia Nervosa status of the members was examined, significant results were found in exercise age, weekly exercise duration and gender variables. The relationship between exercise addiction and Orthorexia Nervosa levels of the participants was not found to be significant. As a result, among individuals who are members of fitness centers, exercise addiction is high, while the prevalence of orthorexia nervosa is low.