Sprinters compete during a track meet. Photo courtesy of LISD.
By Natalee Gomez
Eating disorders prevalence is 2.8 percentage points higher among self-identified athletes than non-athletes according to data published by the National Eating Disorders Association.
With constant monitoring of their bodies, athletes are prepped to be the most efficient contenders in their sports. This, however, can lead to nutrition practices detrimental to their well-being.
Sport psychologist and founder of the mental health consulting company Mind Body Endurance Riley Nickols said it’s important to remember that not all athletes with an eating disorder will present in the same way.
“A common misconception is that you can visibly see when an athlete is struggling with an eating disorder,” Nickols said. “That is just not accurate and true.”
An athlete’s performance ability may also not be negatively impacted, he said. It eventually will be, but for a period of time, it may increase and improve.
Eating disorders are a psychiatric illness, Nickols said. The best practice to help an athlete work through one is through a multidisciplinary treatment team, including “a sports medicine physician, sports dietitian, mental health provider and sometimes even a trainer or strength and conditioning coach,” he said.
“A common misconception is that you can visibly see when an athlete is struggling with an eating disorder,” Riley Nickols, founder of Mind Body Endurance, said.
Sarah Price, director of sports nutrition at Texas Tech, has seen “under-fueling”— or not eating enough — as especially problematic among athletes.
“Under-fueling can be intentional or very unintentional,” Price said. “Once they are educated on how to fuel themselves, we are able to look closer at the underlying motivations and determine behaviorally if there is something more significant going on with them.”
Eating disorders affect all aspects of the body, both physical and mental, experts say – and at the collegiate level, athletes are only just beginning to learn how to cope with their body’s needs.
Hannah Petersen, an associate sports dietitian for Texas Tech Football, said athletes often don’t recognize how much they need to eat.
“Male sports [are] slightly easier to explain. However, female sports need more re-wording and a different approach,” Petersen said. “A lot of times it’s harder to explain because they don’t want to gain weight or change how they look even though they are growing from how they used to look in high school five years ago.”
Both Price and Petersen said nutrition education is one of the most important things to teach to collegiate athletes because more knowledge can lessen anxiety about bodily changes.
The emphasis is on explaining rather than just presenting athletes with numbers and letting them interpret them themselves, Price said.
One example of a tricky concept is body composition, which refers to the percentages of fat, muscle, bone and water that make up the body.
“Body composition is not the end all be all,” she said. “If the emphasis is only put on body composition, we are missing a lot of other things, and that can trigger disordered behavior.”
Nickols said that research on eating disorders among athletes is limited by self-reporting, as many athletes do not seek treatment.
If one is struggling with an eating disorder, they are advised to contact a physician, a qualified eating disorder professional or call the National Eating Disorder Association at (800) 931-2237.
About Reece Nations
