“I am worried about my daughter. She exercises too much and eats too little. She says she's fine, but I think she’s becoming anorexic.” Eating disorders can be devastating to not only teams but also to families. Coaches and parents alike want their athletes to eat well and be healthy. The struggling athletes just want people to stop policing their eating and exercise. The athletes have difficulty talking about why they struggle with food; they instead communicate unhappiness by starving or stuffing their bodies. This distracts them from the pain of feeling “not good enough” and other hard feelings. Unfortunately, too many athletes struggle with food issues. A survey of more than 400 female collegiate athletes indicated they typically believed their bodies were not good enough and wanted to lose five pounds. • 43% reported feeling terrified of becoming overweight• 22% were extremely preoccupied with food and weight • 31% had irregular or absent menstrual periods (a sign of inadequate fueling) • 34% had had a stress fracture or broken bone. (Weakened bones and stress fractures are common in athletes who experience loss of regular menstrual periods). • 18% of the women had/were at risk for having anorexia • 34% had/were at risk for having bulimia. (Beals, Int'l J Sports Nutr 2002) While there are no easy answers to resolving disordered eating, Dr. David Herzog, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School who specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, has addressed common issues in his book Unlocking the Mysteries of Eating Disorders: A Life-Saving Guide to Your Child's Treatment and Recovery. Here are some key points that might be helpful if you are the parent, coach or friend of an athlete with food issues. The goal is to help you understand what's really going on. If you yourself are the struggling athlete, you might want to highlight pertinent information in this article (or Dr. Herzog’s book), and then ask those who care about you to read the passages. This is one way to start a conversation. • First of all, eating disorders (such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa ) are a psychological diagnosis, not a nutritional diagnosis. Eating disorders have little to do with food. Food is just the symptom, not the problem. • Eating disorders affect both girls and boys alike. For boys, society's rule “men don't cry” means they are not allowed to express sadness, fears, or hurt. If they do, they can easily be ridiculed and rejected. So instead, they may starve or stuff themselves to numb difficult emotions. Some exhaust themselves with excessive exercise. Others take up body building, believing a muscular body means a perfect life. They need to be assured that having feelings in not a sign... |
Eating disorders and subclinical disordered eating behaviors are serious problems that can negatively affect both the health and performance of young athletes. The incidence of young women struggling with eating disorders or disordered eating behaviors may be higher in some sports. For example, in sports like gymnastics, cross country, swimming, cheerleading these disorders need to be better understood by both athletes and those working closely with athletes in all sports so that intervention and treatment can be provided early. The terms “eating disorders” and “disordered eating” are frequently used interchangeably, but they are distinct and should be recognized as such. With that being said, it may be easier to understand the differences if they are placed on a continuum. Anorexia nervosa can be placed on the far left end of the continuum with subclinical anorexia just to the right of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa on the far right end of the continuum with subclinical bulimia just to the left of bulimia nervosa and normal eating behaviors in the middle. All across the continuum (somewhere between the far ends and normal eating behavior in the middle) lies a host of abnormal eating behaviors. The definition of eating disorders is that they are “psychiatric disorders that affect individuals’ psychological, physical, nutritional, interpersonal, and emotional functioning and are characterized by dysfunctional eating patterns and disturbances or distortions about body size and shape” (Ray, R. & Wise-Bjornstal, D.M., 1999). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), there are three clinical eating disorders (Beals, K.A., 2004). The three include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS). The category of EDNOS was designed to describe conditions that meet some but not all of the criteria for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. While there are three distinct categories of clinical eating disorders, there is another grouping of disordered eating syndromes that are classified as subclinical eating disorders. This category is used to describe individuals with considerable eating behavior pathology, but who do not meet the clinical criteria for the three identified clinical eating disorders. It is interesting to note that the term anorexia nervosa originated from the Greek word “anorexia” which means “lack of appetite” (Beals, K.A., 2004). Perhaps early on it was thought that these individuals actually had a lack of appetite, but that is not really the case. In actuality, the individual is always hungry. However hungry, the individual denies her hunger and in the process is starving herself. The criteria for diagnosing anorexia nervosa include the following (Ray, R. & Wise-Bjornstal, D.M., 1999): • Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal ... |
Anorexia nervosa is a serious and potentially fatal eating disorder. The individual’s perception of her body image is distorted to the point that the individual develops an obsession with losing weight often to the physical and psychological detriment of the individual. While individuals with anorexia nervosa are seen in non-athletic populations, there appears to be a higher incidence of anorexia nervosa and subclinical anorexia nervosa in athletes. So the question becomes does participation in athletics correlate with the development of eating disorders in some athletes? This question is more difficult to answer than it appears because this question raises more questions. The first question is: are there some sports that attract individuals who either have eating disorders or are at risk for the development of eating disorders? Or, does participation in sports cause eating disorders? Last, does the participation in sports place at risk individuals into situations that serve as a precursor to the development of an eating disorder or disordered eating behaviors? These are good questions posed by Thompson, R.A. and Trattner Sherman, R. (1999) in their book Helping Athletes with Eating Disorders. Unfortunately the answers have not been identified in the research, but the answers probably fall somewhere along the lines of positive responses to each question. Factors that may Contribute to Eating Disorders in AthletesSo just what might be the factors in sport that may drive, precipitate, or encourage disordered eating behaviors in athletes? According to Ray, R. & Wiese-Bjornstal, D.M., (1999) there are multiple factors that may be involved including: • Weight restrictions either by sport or by coach For female athletes, the message that a lean body correlates to improved performance seems to be one of the driving forces that may start an athlete on the cycle of losing weight. Whether the message is correct or not becomes irrelevant. The only significant perception is what the athlete believes to be correct. A single comment by a coach that an athlete needs to lose weight can start an athlete on a dangerous path. Even if a coach does not apply pressure to a female athlete to lose weight, sometimes the sport itself will apply the pressure. For example, there are a group of sports known as “thin-build” sports. These are sports in which low body weight is thought to give a competitive edge to the performer (Beals, K.A., 2004). These include sports in which the performer is judged as in gymnastics, diving, figure skating and competitive cheerleading as well as sports in which a low body weight is thought to provide an edge to the performer as... |