IMPACT OF NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND DIETARY HABITS ON WEIGHT MANAGEMENT OF FITNESS PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

Abstract

In developing nations like Ethiopia, poor weight management has become more prevalent recently. Individuals may differ in their comprehension and implementation of nutritional knowledge and good eating practices. Numerous well-educated people struggled with weight control, and little research was done on how dietary practices and nutritional knowledge affected body weight management. This study was to assess the nutritional knowledge and dietary habits of fitness program participants and their impact on weight management in selected Harar fitness center practitioners. An experimental study design was conducted in selected Harar fitness centers from June 25-Augest 25, 2024. The total sample size of this study was 247 fitness center participants. A simple random sampling technique was used to select fitness centers. Enrolling randomly selected fitness center participants in a selfadministrative, structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data was entered into epidata version 4.6 and analyzed by SPSS Version 26.0. Descriptive statistics are used to describe participants’ background characteristics and the nutritional knowledge and dietary habits of fitness center participants. From the study, the total response rate was 98%. The majority of respondents were the ages of 27% (18-24) and 28% (25-30) years. From the total study participants, 214 (87%) were male and one hundred fifty-seven (64%) with a 95%CI (57.7-71.0%) of the respondents had a normal range body mass index. Harar fitness center participants have good nutritional knowledge (28.6%) and good dietary habits (81.6%). In conclusion, the effect of nutritional knowledge and dietary habits on managing body weight is positive. But in the Harar city fitness center, participants’ nutritional knowledge and dietary habits were above the mean. We recommended that critical intervention on nutritional knowledge and dietary habit awareness will be important to manage body weight. The impact of nutritional knowledge, dietary habits practice, and physical activity is very important to body weight management practice.