Female athletes face increased risk of eating disorders, body image issues
For Chloe Morgan, it all started with a prerace bagel.
As a coxswain for the Mount Saint Mary Academy crew team in Kenmore, New York, Morgan was expected to weigh 100 pounds or less. If a coxswain weighs less than 100 pounds, she has to carry a sandbag in the boat.
On the day of the race, Morgan weighed in at 92 pounds and had an eight-pound sandbag. It was after weighing in that she decided to snack on a bagel before the race but her coach saw her eating and questioned why she was eating after weighing in. He told her she should not have been eating because she was going to put extra weight in the boat.
“That was like the most devastating thing,” Morgan recalled. “I went on a sweat run before the race, I went on like a two mile sweat run and I was just dripping sweat. I went to the bathroom and I threw up and I tried to make myself poop. I remember, ever since then, I was never going to be overweight. I was going to make weight every single time.”
Morgan said that was her first experience with bulimia, but the more competitive her rowing career became, the more obsessed she became with getting smaller and smaller. When a new coxswain joined the team her junior year, she began to feel pressure to lose weight.
“I was always the lightest, always the smallest,” Morgan said. “And then, I wasn’t.”
At her lowest weight, Morgan, who is 4’9”, was 80 pounds.
“I wasn’t eating and if I did eat, I would just throw up,” Morgan said. “If I had anything that was high in calories, I knew I had to throw up.”
Morgan’s bulimia was at its worst her senior year. She was throwing up everyday, sometimes twice a day. She was fatigued all the time and could not focus. Morgan said her lack of focus impacted her negatively on the water.
“Being out on the water, you have to be sharp,” Morgan said. “You’re relaying a message from your coach to the rowers. It’s a lot of numbers and distances and calculations that you have to do in your head out on the water and memorize. At one point, I couldn’t memorize it all so I started writing everything down in a little journal and read off of it in the boat.”
Stories like Morgan’s are unfortunately not uncommon. According to a Yale study, 25 percent of female athletes exhibit some form of disordered eating habits. The Clinical Manual of Eating Disorders states that athletes who compete in certain sports face a greater risk for disordered eating and eating disorders than the general population.
Eight percent of elite and collegiate female athletes meet the criteria for a clinical eating disorder, while 19 percent of female college athletes were found to have subclinical symptoms, according to the Hynes Recovery Service.
Athletes who participate in sports with a focus on leanness or low weight, such as gymnastics, face a greater risk of developing an eating disorder.
“Coaches and athletes really believe that if an athlete is leaner, they will perform better, if they are lighter, they will perform better,” said Dr. Tiffany Stewart, who is the director of the Eating Disorders and Obesity Behavioral Technology Laboratory at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. “That’s kind of a myth, to some degree, because if athletes are malnourished and they don’t have the stamina to perform, then obviously leanness is not a main contributing factor to them not completing a skill or performing well. But this is a belief that many coaches and athletes hold and because of that, there’s a lot of pressure to look a certain way from a performance angle.”
A 2002 study from the International Journal of Eating Disorders found that girls who participated in aesthetic sports, such as diving, figure skating and synchronized swimming, developed weight concerns as early as 7 years old. According to eatingdisorderhope.com, 42 percent of all female athletes who participate in aesthetic sports demonstrated disordered eating behaviors.
Female athletes who wear more revealing uniforms, such as swimmers and volleyball players, also have an increased risk of developing an eating disorder, according to the manual.
Allyson Stewart, a former Div. III swimmer at SUNY Oswego, faced challenges with bulimia during her time as a college athlete. While her eating disorder stemmed from negative comments about her weight from family, friends and an ex-boyfriend, she said being in a bathing suit all the time did not help her self-confidence.
“Swimming did not help,” Stewart said. “During season, I would be at my bulkiest. I would put on a lot of muscle. I would stand in the mirror and look at myself and say ‘You could lose this’ or ‘This could be smaller.’”
The first time Stewart made herself throw up was after she went on a long run on a hot day in the summer of 2014.
“It accidentally happened one time,” Stewart recalled. “I went on a really long run, it was hot out and I just threw up. I was like, I don’t see why I can’t keep doing this, just eat what I want and go work out and I can throw it up later.”
She said she got into the habit of eating whatever she wanted, then going on long runs, forcing herself to vomit after and then eating something small, such as a bowl of broccoli, after her workout.
Research shows there are many reasons athletes are more susceptible to develop eating disorders. Traits and characteristics that are desirable in athletes are very similar to those who develop eating disorders.
Athletes face pressure from coaches, teammates, family members and themselves to perform at their best every time they compete, said SUNY Oswego assistant athletic trainer Stephen Papay.
“A high school athlete, they want to get to that next level and in order to do that, they’re going to do everything they can to get that scholarship or get to college and be a college athlete,” Papay said. “If you’re at the college level, at that point you’re like, ‘I have to perform my best every time because I’m part of this team and I’m representing my college and there’s the potential for me to maybe move on after college.’ So there’s always that pressure on the athletes, constantly to be bigger, faster, stronger, maybe a little bit lighter.”
Papay also said the media can contribute to athletes wanting to change their bodies.
“What do we promote in the media, when you think of someone who does wrestling or someone who does gymnastics or cheerleading at these high levels? These athletes train for hours upon hours everyday and then you have younger athletes who feel they have to look just like that and they need to be able to perform just like that,” Papay said. “And a lot of time, that leads into, ‘I don’t look like that so I need to do something’ and then you have the disordered eating that starts.”
Poor nutrition is another risk factor to developing an eating disorder, according to Dr. Stewart. Not eating properly can have devastating short and long-term impacts on female athletes.
Athletes who do not get the proper nutrition face an increased risk for injury, as well as lack of endurance and energy, which can negatively impact athletic performance. Female athletes can also develop pre-osteoporosis and lose their menstrual periods as a result of improper nutrition, which sets them up later in life for infertility and chronic injury, Dr. Stewart said.
“Low bone mineral density and menstrual disorders can haunt you for the rest of your life in terms of fertility challenges when athletes have long moved on from their sport and want to start a family,” Dr. Stewart said.
There is hope for athletes who struggle with eating disorders.
Stewart and Morgan were both able to get help for their bulimia.
Stewart said her aunt, father and her friends were her biggest supporters when it came to getting healthy and while she still is not 100 percent happy with her body, she is healthier today.
“Love your body,” Stewart said. “I don’t. I still hate it now. I can’t get it to what I want. What I want is what I have now, but in my mind, I still look like how I was in high school. I can’t shake off what everyone said.”
Morgan said her wake up call came after she received a scholarship to join the Div. I women’s rowing team at the University of Wisconsin.
“That was the biggest scholarship I received,” Morgan said. “All my hard work, four years of rowing, getting up early, finally paid off.”
After visiting Wisconsin and talking with the coaches and athletes, Morgan decided the program seemed too intense for her.
“There were three practices a day, nutritionists watching what you eat, weighing in every day, trying to keep your GPA up to keep your scholarship and when I came home, I was really stuck,” Morgan said. “If I’m miserable now in high school rowing and I’m doing this to myself, I can’t imagine doing this for another four years in college.”
Morgan decided not to accept the scholarship and began going to therapy for her eating disorder. She now studies nutrition at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, and is a coxswain for the Geneseo Rowing Club.
“I think people need to know about this and I hope I can make a difference,” Morgan said.
