Eating Disorders in Athletes

In our society many females are victims to eating disorders. This is because being thin is more socially accepted in our community and media. Eating disorders are becoming more and more common in female athletes then they ever have been. In 1992 the American College of Sports Medicine conducting a study that proved "eating disorders affected 62 percent of females in sports like figure skating and gymnastics". Sports that stress the need to be thin have a higher percentage of female athletes with eating disorders. These females find it necessary to be thin because it will enhance their overall performance and please their coaches and judges. In my own opinion I feel that certain coaches could have an emphasis on encouraging their athletes to eat less and loose weight. Although this is a terrible thing to think, there are coaches out there that just want to win and don't think about the health of their athletes. Especially in sports like dancing and gymnastics where performance and appearance is a significant aspect in the overall sport its easy enough for females to think that they will increase their performance if they could just loose a few extra pounds. Through my own experiences with gymnastics and diving, part of the sport is getting up in front of a crowd and a panel of judges to perform your routine. Even in middle school I remember my coaches telling me that appearance is something that judges take into consideration. So that gave many of us the impression that if a small skinny girl gets up and does her routine and then the next girl is a little over weight but still performs well she wont score as well as the other girl. Now that I am older and I understand more about eating disorders I think that's sickening that someone could even say that to a bunch of young girls.

This year they had a few speakers come in to talk about eating disorders, one of which was a mother who lost her daughter to a severe case of anorexia. One thing I remember her saying was when her daughter was hospitalized there were alot of nurses and people who had no sympathy for her illness and would say things like "why don't you just eat? its not that big of a deal". Its unreal to me that their are still many adults out their who don't classify eating disorders as a life threatening disease.

Criticizing and making comments about someones weight can effect them more ways then you could imagine. In researching I found some famous gymnasts that were victims of eating disorders. Kathy Johnson, Nadia Comaneci, Cathy Rigby and Christy Henrich. Rigby who was a 1972 Olympian fought bulimia and anorexia for 12 years of her life which eventually led to cardiac arrest in two separate occasions. Henrich starved herself in hopes that she would make the Olympic team. In July of 1994 Henrich passed away from multiple organ failure at a low weight of 47 pounds. Athletes stand at higher risks for eating disorders to result in death or larger medical problems because aside from not eating they are constantly burning calories and putting so much stress on their bodies that at any moment their body wont be able to take much more and just such down. In this magazine article called A Deeper Understanding of Women, they state that "gymnastics is one sport where the size of the gymnast has changed drastically over the years. In 1976 the average gymnast was 5'3" weighing 105 lbs, and in 1992 the average gymnast was 4'9" weighing 88 lbs".

This should be something that is constantly brought to public awareness in hope to decrease the amount of women that face this problem. Sometimes eating disorders start at such a young age which is even more dangerous because they can be so naive to the consequences that they will later face with their health. Coaches, trainers, and parents of athletes should educate themselves on the signs that could indicate an athlete who has an eating disorder.