The price of gold: The prevalence of ‘Anorexia athletica’
The international Olympic Games is a time to celebrate individual and team accomplishments with nationalistic fervor. We marvel at the incredible strength, dedication and perseverance of athletes who perform seemingly superhuman feats with aplomb — like those featured here and here. What’s not often discussed are those cases of (primarily female) athletes for whom the desire to excel extends far beyond a gold medal and the cover of a Wheaties box. With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games nearly upon us, it’s a good time to discuss issues of eating disorder behaviors amongst athletes, or as some have come to call it, ‘anorexia athletica.’
The British Times Online featured a story this week on the issue with a focus on British athlete Allie Outram, who recently published Running on Empty. The memoir recounts Outram’s struggles with anorexia and bulimia and how her eating disorder and intense training regimens nearly killed her. This book, of course, is not to be confused with ED-Bites blogger Carrie Arnold’s eating disorder memoir of the same name. The former Olympic long distance runner developed anorexia in her teens. She spent two years in an inpatient hospital eating disorders unit but later developed bulimia while in recovery. And according to Outram, she isn’t alone in her struggles. In fact, she says, the athletic community and the nature of sports not only helped to conceal and legitimize her disorder, it also encouraged it:
“At one World Cross Country Championship I can confidently say that, of six of us in the Great Britain junior women’s team, four had some form of eating disorder,” said Outram. “It is so common in the sport, yet no coach or team manager ever expressed concern. I was never told that I was too thin, and was never withdrawn from a race because of my weight.”
“Outside of sport, people would think I ate too little and exercised too much, but within athletics my behaviour was not only accepted but endorsed and encouraged,” she said. “There were lots of others like me so it was easy to hide.”
The article goes on to cite a study published last year in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise journal, which revealed that almost one in five of Britain’s leading female distance runners has an eating disorder or has suffered from one in the last, compared with just one percent of the general population. In the U.S., a study published last month by researchers at the University of Denver revealed that female athletes and exercisers tend to exhibit eating disorder symptoms more often than those who don’t exercise as regularly. At least one-third of female athletes have some type of disordered eating, according to two studies of college athletes done by eating disorder experts, one in 1999 by Craig Johnson of the Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital in Tulsa and another in 2002 by Katherine Beals, now at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Beals is also the author of Disordered Eating Among Athletes, a guide book for health professionals.
Among those athletes who have spoken openly about their struggles are Charlotte Dale, a former European junior cross-country champion, and Bryony and Kathryn Frost, 24. The Frost twins were considered track medal contenders at the 2012 Olympics, but last year revealed how they survived on just a few pieces of fruit a day. Liz McColgan counts her second place finish in the run-up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics to her low body weight and eating disorder. “I was so weak and undernourished that I didn’t have the energy to sprint for the line,” she said. Kimiko Hirai Soldati, a 2004 Olympic diver, struggled with bulimia and now speaks out to other women on eating disorders awareness. Gymnast and Olympic gold medal winner Nadia Comaneci has also come forward and admitted struggling with anorexia and bulimia, along with 1972 Olympic gold medal winner Cathy Rigby, who suffered from anorexia and bulimia for 12 years and went into cardiac arrest twice because of it. You can read about more famous men and women athletes who’ve battled eating disorders here.
And the above are the lucky ones for whom recovery is still a possibility. Among those athletes struck down by an eating disorder is world class gymnast Christy Henrich, who died in 1994 at age 22 from multiple organ failure brought on by anorexia. Seven years later, German rower and 1988 Seoul Olympic eight gold medallist Bahne Rabe died at age 37 as a result of an eating disorder. And in 2003, Helen Lee, a former Middlesex county and South of England cross-country champion died at the age of 18 from pneumonia and organ failure thought to be a direct result of her long-term battle with anorexia.
I like to cycle and rollerblade for fun and I’ve really come to enjoy playing (not watching) tennis, but I have very little experiences with athleticism or team sports in general. Marching band is the closest to organized sports I’ve ever come (unless I make the roller derby team in January!), so I have no personal relevant experiences to share, only concerns. Still, during my eating disorder, I worked out at my gym at least six days a week for at least two hours a day. The staff there knew me by name and we even discussed details from our personal lives with each other. I remember once going to the gym’s massage therapist I had befriended with concerns that my blood pressure and resting heartbeat were abnormally low. She reassured me that both were “normal,” because I didn’t have so much fat to beat blood out to and through. I was later diagnosed with a heart condition brought on by anorexia. I’m sure the gym staff had to see the dark circles under my eyes, the times I had to catch myself for fear of blacking out, and my extremely rapid and very unhealthy weight loss. Instead of expressing concern, they asked me to be their Member of the Month. I felt guilty and hypocritical, but reluctantly agreed because I was unemployed at the time and needed the free month membership offered with the “honor.” My picture and personal ’success story’ were then displayed prominently as a model for others to emulate and aspire to. It remained on the wall for another two months until I demanded they take it down.
Are you an amateur or professional athlete or know someone who is? Was/is the culture of your own athletic circles body-positive or body-negative? Weigh in with your experiences both on and off the playing field.
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