Effect of compassion meditation on body image and amount of exercise in a pretest-posttest study of college freshmen women and men

To assess the effect of meditation on body image and amount of exercise, 61 freshmen college students were randomized to six weeks of training in compassion meditation or to an active control condition consisting of a health discussion group. During the 1st (pretest) and 14th weeks (posttest) semesters of a personal health course, 32 women and 29 men completed the Adame, Cole, Johnson, and Matthiasson Amount of Exercise Scale, Stanford Usual Activity Questionnaire, and the Cash Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire. High practice time and low practice time meditators (defined by median split) were compared to each other and to controls with repeated measures analyses of variance. From pretest to posttest, high practice meditators increased in their body image health orientation. The high practice meditators increased in their investment in a physically healthy lifestyle while low practice meditators and controls became more apathetic about their health (p = .011). Overall, females as compared to males, felt less satisfied with their appearance, less invested in their appearance, less physically fit, more overweight, and reported greater overweight preoccupation. From pretest to posttest, males and females felt less satisfied with their appearance and less invested in their appearance. Correlation analyses revealed that, for males, higher amounts of time spent meditating were associated with higher amounts of moderate and vigorous exercise. These findings suggest that compassion meditation may contribute to improved body image and greater amounts of exercise in college students.