Perceived changes in eating habits, body composition, physical and psychological condition of university athletes during the Covid-19 quarantine

Abstract

Objetive: Describe the perceived changes in eating habits, body composition, physical and psychological condition of university athletes during the quarantine by Covid-19, in the year 2020. Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study, from a secondary data source, 403 universitary athletes answered an online survey on 2020´s second semester. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data, Pearson´s Chi X2 <0,05 test was used to determine association between variables of interest: Sport type, sex and Covid-19. Results: The majority practiced individual sports (55.3 %). About 89 % of athletes did not present Covid-19 59.8 % felt that body weight worsened, being higher in individual sports (p= 0.005). Most of the athletes trained for at least one hour a day (81.1 %), a higher proportion of women received advice from a coach and from social networks (62.7 %), while 7 out of 10 men only complemented their training with information from social networks (p=0.001), the type of sport also presented an association in this variable (p=0.024) The psychological characteristics were those that showed the greatest significant differences according to gender and type of sport. Conclusion: The Covid-19 quarantine is associated with unfavorable changes in university athletes, specifically changes in eating habits were perceived with an increase in the amount of foods of low nutritional quality, negative changes in weight, worse physical condition, where the individual sports were more affected compared to group sports, feelings of loneliness, anxiety and bad mood, where women were the most affected.