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Eating Disorders in College Athletes

Chelsea Ladd
The University of Memphis

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In NCAA college athletics world today, it is all about being the best. Every college
athlete just wants to make it to the top and they are willing to do just about anything it takes to
get there. One of the biggest lengths college athletes, especially females, will take to make it to
the top is maintaining or achieving their ideal body image that they should have and that will
help them perform to the best of their ability. A recent NCAA study has shown that one-third of
female Division 1 athletes have body image issues and develop eating disorders. An eating
disorder is any range of psychological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating
habits, such as anorexia or bulimia. Many athletes have this certain image in their head of what a
Division 1 athlete should look like and they will do whatever it takes to achieve that look. With
all of this being said, there are also many college athletes that will go their whole athletic careers
and never have these problems at all. It all depends on the sport and the pressures being put on
that athlete in their daily lives.
Over the years, multiple studies have found that anorexia and bulimia are the two most
common eating disorders that college athletes usually acquire over time. Anorexia is an
emotional disorder that gives individuals who are diagnosed with it an obsessive desire to shed
weight by not eating. People with this disorder obsess over everything they eat and are very
peculiar and watch everything that they put into their body. Bulimia is also an emotional disorder
but it differs from anorexia in that individuals that are bulimic have sessions of extreme
overeating, or binging, and then this is followed by making themselves throw up, or purge. They
usually binge eat and then experience depression or anxiety from it and that is what causes them
to purge. In extreme cases of this disorder, you will find individuals that eat normal, daily meals
and purge them instead of binge eating, to cause even more significant weight loss. Bulimics
have a distorted image of their body and the obsessive desire to lose weight, just like individuals

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with anorexia. Both can easily spiral downward and get out of hand and be very dangerous
disorders.
These types of eating disorders are mainly a problem occurring in females, seeing as how
no more than 15% of males experience this problem (Winsor, Murrell, Magun-Jackson, 2015).
There are many reasons why these female college athletes develop these disorders, or have body
image issues. The first is that statistics have proven that immensely decreasing body fat will lead
to enhanced speed, strength, and aesthetic appeal among the people of the athletic community
(Davis, 1992). I am a college athlete myself. I run cross country and track and one thing my
coach always says to us at practice when he is giving us his health spill every now and then is,
The lighter you are, the faster you will run. In most cases, this is true. This less weight that
your body has to carry, the easier it will be for you to move around and run faster. Also, it is
easier for female athletes to put on muscle when they are thinner. If an athlete is not already lean
when trying to build strength and add muscle, then all of their excess fat will just get in the way.
A lot of strength coaches advice their athletes to diet or try to lose weight before they get them in
the weight room to help build up their strength.
Another reason why athletes develop eating disorders is because of all of the pressure
they are dealing with. A few factors that could influence eating disorders among student-athletes
are pressure from their coaches, support from their friends or family, and their training sessions
(Zyl, Surujal, Dhurup, 2012). With this being said, in most situations, the main pressure comes
the coaches. It has been proven that when athletes have a good and healthy relationship with
their coaches, the risk for them to develop an eating disorder decreases significantly (Zyl,
Surujal, Dhurup, 2012). A lot of coaches drill it into their athletes heads that they must look a
certain way to perform a certain way. This is very common among sports such as gymnastics,
swimming and cross-country. A reason for this is that these sports as individual sports, meaning

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they focus on the individuals performance alone, instead of it being a team effort. Often times,
coaches want all of their athletes to be very lean and muscular, not only to improve on their
performance, but also as a show at competitions or races. They want to look serious so that they
can be taken serious so they will hound their athletes about what they eat and lay it on their
athletes in their workouts to help make them look the ideal way that a successful athlete should
look.
Another main reason that some athletes develop eating disorders is because they have
low self-esteem or come from families with eating disorders or chronic dieting and this puts
them at risk of developing a disorder, according to a study conducted by the National Eating
Disorder Association (NEDA) in 2005. Having low self-esteem is something a lot of female
division 1 athletes struggle with. There are some women that are born with the athletic body type
and some girls work their whole life for it. When female athletes see their peers with the body
types that they strive for, it can cause them to take desperate lengths to achieve that. Also, being
born into a family where eating disorders or having body image issues runs in the genes, it can
be very hard to escape developing those same problems.
Taking a look on the other side of things, there are a great number of college athletes who
will go their whole athletic careers and never once develop an eating disorder or struggle with
their body image. From a study conducted among university college athletes containing men and
women, 61.5% said they had never dealt with binge eating and 85.3% said they had never forced
themselves to get sick or throw up in order to lose weight or help maintain a certain body image
(Zyl, Surujal, Dhurup, 2012). In this same study, over half of the athletes that were interviewed
said that they simply increased the amount of exercise they engaged in everyday to help them
keep excess weight off. This is the healthiest way for an athlete to get rid of the excess weight

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that they do not want, but many do not take this route because it is not always the fastest way to
do so; this is another cause that leads to eating disorders.
Another reason many college athletes are able to avoid eating disorders is because they
have seen or read about how it can negatively affect others and they know to stay away. In one
study that interviewed college athletes, 69% of participants experienced negative results from
their eating behaviors, such as not even being able to do their normal everyday activities, and this
percentage of the participants stated that this initiated recovery (Arthur-Cameselle, Quatromoni,
2014). In this same study, 50% realized that their eating disordered had significantly decreased
their quality of life and that motivated them to try to recover because they felt they could turn
things around without it being apart of their life. These studies are conducted and the information
is published so that this can be brought to athletes attention that could be struggling with these
issues. While at the time, an eating disorder may be causing an athlete to lose weight and may
seem like it is paying off and all worth it, it can come with some very negative, long-term effects.
For those that do struggle with body image issues and eating disorders, there are ways to
break the habit. When interviewed in a study, participants stated that being able to talk to others
and come out in the open about their problem and actually be able to talk to someone, that wasnt
a professional, sparked recovery in 38% of participants (Arthur-Cameselle, Quatromoni, 2014).
One of the biggest downfalls of these disorders is that the athletes that develop them tend to be
very embarrassed and ashamed of it and do not want anyone to know, therefore making it very
hard for them to receive help. 25% of participants stated that throughout their disorders, certain
environments had become toxic or put off negative vibes and so a change in environment was
an important factor in recovery (Arthur-Cameselle, Quatromoni, 2014). A change in scenery and
getting rid of all things, both mental and physical, that remind an individual of their old life and
old habits is vital to helping them rid themselves of their old temptations. It was also conducted

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from this study that when an athletes self-esteem levels started to increase, their body image
issues started to decrease and this was another factor that lead to the road to recovery.
In conclusion, no matter what sport or what school it may be, there is always college
athletes that struggle with their body image. Some struggle more than others, though, considering
some go as far to develop an eating disorder, and some do not. This could be because some are
placed under different pressures than others are or for example, you would not usually see a
football player trying to lose a lot of weight like you would somebody on the cross country or
swim team. Through all the studies conducted and research gathered on this issue, it is a very
well known topic and researchers are still making efforts in trying to get to the bottom of it and
learn more ways to help student-athletes break these bad habits.

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7
References

Arthur-Cameselle, J. N., & Quatromoni, P. A. (2014). A qualitative analysis of female collegiate

athletes' eating disorder recovery experiences. Sport Psychologist, 28(4), 334-346.
Santrock, J.W. (2010). Adolesence (13th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Thompson, J.K. &
Smolak, L. (2001). Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Obesity in Youth Assessment,
Prevention, and Treatment. Baltimore, MD: American Psychological Association.
Van Zyl, Y., Surujlal, J., & Dhurup, M. (2012). Eating disorders among university studentathletes. African Journal For Physical, Health Education, Recreation & Dance, 18(2),
267-280.
Winsor, D., Murrell, V., & Magun-Jackson, S. (2015). Lifespan Development: An Educational
Psychology Perspective. Boston, MA: Pearson.
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