Eating Disorders Amonf Athlete Essay Research Paper

Eating Disorders Amonf Athlete Essay, Research Paper

Eating Disorders Among Athletes

Erin M. Dougherty

April 30, 2001

Dougherty 1

Susan is a long distance runner who was at the top of her sport in high school and was even given a scholarship to college. When she got to college she realized that the competition was much steeper and she was no longer the best. Susan did not know how to handle this, she was used to being at the top. She started working out more often and even cut back on what she was eating. She was sure that this would improve her athletic ability. She thought she was doing nothing wrong, her coach had said her speed was increasing so she continued with her new routine. Susan proceeded to do this for a while, increasing her running and decreasing her eating. Pretty soon she was not eating at all and running three times a day for extreme amounts of time.

Over time her athletic ability began to diminish. She was getting slower and when they lifted weights she was becoming weaker instead of stronger. Some of her teammates had noticed how thin she was and began to talk, they knew she had an eating disorder. When they confronted her, she denied it and made excuses for the way she was looking. She then tried to hide what she was doing by not eating with the team and wearing baggy clothes. This went on for a long time until everything came crashing down. Susan was at a big race and feeling very weak, but she raced anyway. While running up a hill she passed out and landed on her hip fracturing it. When she awoke she was in the hospital with a cast. The doctor had told her that she had passed out from dehydration and malnutrition; because she had not been eating her bones were not receiving calcium. The result of this was the fractured hip, this was because her bones were in the same state as an eighty-year-old woman, and Susan was only twenty-one.

Eating disorders are becoming increasingly common among athletes.

Dougherty 2

Athletic participation may hide the signs of an eating disorder because of the expectations that exist within athletics (Lemberg/Cohn 78). Studies have shown that athletes, as a group, appear to be more at risk for eating disorders that the rest of the population. There are many factors that contribute to this theory. One is thought to be because so much emphasis is put on the body. Individuals involved in sports such as distance running, ballet, gymnastics, wrestling, figure skating, and bodybuilding, which require a lean body mass for best performance, are at a higher risk for developing an eating disorder than an athlete in another sport. In addition to the leanness factor, there are other aspects of a sport that can contribute to an eating disorder. The mere competitiveness of the sport, its emphasis on appearance, the amount of stress put on the body, and emphasis on individual instead of team success (31-32). As discussed et al. (1992), an examination of the known risk factors for eating disorders suggests that athletes might be at an increased risk since they often train in an environment where emphasis is placed on leanness. They exist in a highly competitive culture in which the manipulation and control of body weight/fat is thought to be essential for both performance and appearance (Burke/Deakin 289). Female gymnasts and distance runners are shown to have the least amount of body fat of all women athletes. This creates a great deal of pressure to remain thin. Gymnasts and runners present the highest rate for developing and eating disorder, twenty to twenty-five percent go on to become bulimic (Yates 66). It is hard to say whether athletes engage in eating disorders or eating disorders engage in athletes. Naturally when someone puts so much pressure on his or her body weight, the individual becomes very compulsive about it.

Dougherty 3

Most people would assume that only female athletes suffer form eating disorders. Although studies have shown that female athletes are more prone to eating disorders than males, there are still some males that suffer from the disorders. Only five to ten percent of males experience eating disorders and this does not include the amount of males who suffer from sub-clinical eating disorders. Females and males normally have different reasons behind their eating disorder, but both tend to have the same personality traits. They are usually characterized by high self-expectations, perfectionism, persistence, and strenuous exercise (Lemberg/Cohn 32). Males usually become overly active instead of developing a classic case eating disorder. They tend to become obsessed with body weight for better physical performance instead of body image as in females (Yates 105). It is seen more in sports such as bodybuilding or weightlifting that emphasize appearance and individual performance. Women tend to decrease their food intake and/or increase exercise that may lead to a state of physical deprivation. The deprivation then begins to contribute substantially to the clinical picture. Females tend to become far more introverted, depressed, and obsessional (141).

Only a portion of athletes studied go on to develop a full-blown eating disorder. Athletes with disturbed eating and exercising practices far outnumber those who meet the strict diagnostic criteria for eating disorders. As pointed out in Clinical Sports Nutrition, the use o