The main goal of the current study is to identify the causal relationship between
physical and/or mental health and leisure sports activity of college students according
to BMI classification of college students. For this goal, the study conducted nationwide
surveys over 1,260 male and female college students via online. The main results of
this study are as follows. First, male students show higher performances than female
students in every variable except the variable that captures the appearance-oriented
attitude. The other variables are leisure sports participation, positive appearance
evaluation, body satisfaction, and life satisfaction. Second, for the overweight group
students, they attended leisure sports activities more frequently than low-weight
group students. Also, body satisfaction was high in the order of low-, normal-, and
overweight group students. Third, for low-weight group students, there was no
certain relationship between life satisfaction and the effects of leisure sports
participation. On the other hand, positive appearance evaluation increases life
satisfaction. Fourth, for normal-weight group students, leisure sports participation is
positively effective for body and life satisfactions. Fifth, the fourth result was also
valid for overweight group students. That is, they evaluated their appearance more
positively as they attended leisure sports activity more frequently. Furthermore, this
relationship was stronger than normal-weight group students, and this positive
appearance was led to high body and life satisfactions.