By Benita Bobo, graduate nutrition student in the Coordinated Program
Whether it’s for power, endurance, grace, or strength, the ideal body type for optimal performance is different for different sports. ESPN’s Body Issues has showcased these differences since 2011, bringing to light that “every body has a story” and needs the proper nutrition to fuel performance.
Aesthetic sports like dance, figure skating, swimming, gymnastics, etc., emphasize leanness as an important performance aspect. Scoring typically includes a subjective component that relies on the judge’s perception of how athletes look and are classically more favorable for the lean athletes. This presents a nutritional challenge: the greater pressure to be thin can lead to Relative-Energy Deficiency in sports (RED-S). But what is RED-S? The International Olympic Committee stated that it is a mismatch between an athlete’s intake and energy used during exercise (for example, caloric restriction or excessive exercise) that leaves little to no energy to support healthy bodily functions. If left untreated, RED-S can lead to a slew of health problems, and disordered eating patterns can turn into full-blown eating disorders.
Due to the desire to maintain leanness, aesthetic sports athletes have long been considered “at-risk” compared to other athletes and non-athletes. According to the McCallum Place Eating Disorders Center, 43% of women in aesthetic sports have disordered eating patterns. In comparison, an estimated 13.5% have been diagnosed with a clinical eating disorder – but the manifestation of eating disorders is complicated. Some studies have linked personality traits, such as perfectionism, with eating disorder risk and guess what? Many athletes tend to be perfectionists, pushing themselves to their physical and mental limits. When put in the context of aesthetic sports, let’s use the example of a figure skater: her performance is suffering. The coach makes an ill-advised suggestion for her to lose weight so she can be more aerodynamic to land her triple axel. This scenario has the potential to be the perfect storm for a health disaster, with the athlete feeling the need to lose weight without understanding the nutritional implications of her food restrictions. That isn’t to say that perfectionism is always a bad thing, but extreme negative patterns of perfectionism can be harmful to an athlete’s health.
Here’s another question: who would you expect to be more likely to have disordered eating tendencies, athletes or spectators? A study published in September of 2020 looked at 120 Spanish professional female athletes (gymnastics and soccer) and non-athletes from the ages of 15-25. The researchers' main goals were to investigate whether the athletes exhibited more eating problems compared to non-athletes and whether specific personality characteristics (anxiety, self-esteem, perfectionism) were linked to eating disorder risk. The study participants received five questionnaires that assessed self-esteem, perfectionism, anxiety, eating attitudes and the presence of an eating disorder.
The results of these questionnaires were analyzed and produced some very interesting findings. As the perfectionism score increased, so did anxiety score (and vice versa); as the score of perfectionism and anxiety increased, self-esteem decreased, and as the scores of anxiety increased, the eating attitude worsened. Further, researchers found that in this particular population, there was a higher prevalence of disordered eating attitudes among non-athletes compared to athletes, which is contradictory to a majority of existing studies. They reasoned that athletes are forced to take care of their bodies because of the need to stay fit. Additionally, researchers believe that the high self-esteem measured among the athletes serves as a protective factor from eating disorders, despite their perfectionistic mindset.
In general, the biggest issue in eating disorder research is that there are no standardized methods for analysis available, which causes many inconsistencies with the results between different studies. Also, individuals with eating disorders sometimes deny that they have a problem which would render such questionnaires inadequate in detecting that negative eating behavior. Ultimately, this study expresses that eating disorders are a serious problem. It is critical to provide nutrition education to athletes and coaches to prevent or reduce the risk of occurrence. After all, every body deserves and requires the proper nourishment to perform!