Fitness at all costs?

Two articles Friday highlighted the growing consequences of today’s intense promotion of sports and fitness among young people: an increased focus on body image and eating disorders.

Thinner to be a winner?

One female athlete in five is suffering from an eating disorder...The first national conference on eating disorders and sport (organised by UK Athletics and the Eating Disorders Association), and UK Sport (the national body for high-level sport), held this week, is about to publish its first guidelines on the issue.....Five runners out of seven in the UK cross-country team at the Junior World Championships in 1996 admitted to an eating disorder. Some of them ended up in hospital. Such admissions are rare. People with eating disorders are notoriously secretive and athletes have an additional disincentive to speak: the fear that recognition of their problems will disrupt training and cause withdrawal from competition....

“Put a group of athletes together and they’ll exchange all the unhelpful tips,” says Dr Sheelagh Rodgers, a clinical psychologist with UK Athletics and the English Institute of Sport. She knew a Russian coach whose idea of a high-protein diet was lettuce leaves and cottage cheese and, she says: “One lass I asked about her diet turned up with a rucksack full of apples. She’d heard that they were good for you (and low calorie). That was all she was eating!” ...

This is even more important for young people, who are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders, says Rodgers: as teenagers they are desperately aware of body shape and they need even more food because they’re still growing; something school sports teachers need to be aware of....

In a society such as ours — with an increasingly problematic attitude to eating and endemic dissatisfaction with body shape — the greater body awareness encouraged by sport is more likely to have a negative impact, increasing the risk of eating disorders....

Norwegian research has indicated that more than 40 percent of female dancers, endurance sportswomen (distance runners, etc), and those in aesthetic sports (gym, skating, diving) have menstrual dysfunction....

Full article here.

Anorexia in athletes - starving for speed

....Studies show up to 30% of women athletes have eating disorders. Laurie says its probably more....What the athletes often don't see is the danger they're in when they don't eat right. "You can have heart arythmias, and you can die," said sports medicine specialist Michael Potter. He works in Williamsburg and sees many athletes from the College of William and Mary. "I've seen young female and male athletes have as many as six to seven stress fractures at one time," he told us. He says those fractures are a result of poor nutrition.

He also sees young women who are skipping their menstrual periods - another sure sign of an eating disorder. "If you look at olympic athletes, as many as half of those women skip their menstrual cycles, so it becomes normal on the team," Potter said. That's one reason he believes these sick athletes are slipping under the radar. He believes the other reason is the athletes are so successful. They're typically smart, attractive, attending great colleges....

Full article here.

Musing: Being physically active doesn’t need to mean sports and structured “exercise.” For kids, activity is just having fun.