Although this study was rather complicated and had a lot of elements that were hard to follow, the researchers set out to observe the relationships between compulsive exercise, psychological distress and the motivation to change in patients with anorexia nervosa. (Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that causes people to obsess about their weight and what they eat).  

What I really took away from this research was the background information and conclusions and how it could be beneficial to my own research project.  The results showed that greater compulsive exercise is moderately associated with people who have poorer eating disorder habits, and higher levels of eating disorder psychopathology.  Greater compulsive exercise is also weakly associated with higher levels of psychological distress. The type of data collected were surveys and questionnaires, cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions, sessions of LEAP treatment, and interviews.  

The researchers mostly used the questionnaires as a main source of data.  From this, they were able to asses eating disorder psychopathology, compulsive exercise, psychological distress, motivation to change and quality of life.  After compiling the different factors and their data, they were able to determine if there were strong, weak, or positive correlations between their findings.    

Researchers found that there was a weak positive associations between compulsive exercise and psychological distress.  There was also a weak positive relationship between exercise and obsessive-compulsive traits. They found excessive exercise to be negatively associated with obsessive-compulsive symptomatology. ‘This study utilized a quantitative definition of compulsive exercise and categorized patients as excessive exercisers if they endorsed obligatory exercise for at least 1 h per day, on at least 6 days per week for 1 month.’