Athletes and Disordered Eating

Knowing when we have taken a healthy behavior too far can be hard to judge. In the March issue of Runner’s World, Caleb Daniloff writes about how his attention to nutrition, while training for his first marathon, drifted into bad eating habits. Believing that losing weight would help him train better and run faster, he ended up restricting his eating, drastically cutting calories, becoming preoccupied with his weight and body, and avoiding foods that he formerly ate with abandon. He caught himself before developing a full-fledged eating disorder, but the article describes several elite athletes who didn’t.

Disordered eating — that is, eating behavior that doesn’t meet the medical definition of an eating disorder, but can be injurious nonetheless — is widespread. Three-fourths of American women between 25 and 45 display some disordered eating, according to a study cited in Daniloff’s article.

How do you know whether your eating is disordered? The most common sign, according to Leslie Bonci, a nutritionist quoted in the story, is this: “Food choices become about what not to eat.”

The article includes some common food rules people adopt that can signal disordered eating. The magazine’s list of danger signs is directed at athletes, but it’s useful for everyone. Here’s a paraphrase:

1. Eating energy bars as meals rather than eating real foods.
2. Avoiding fat, or carbs, or a particular basic food group.
3. Rigidly scheduling mealtimes rather than eating according to feeling hungry.
4. Logging calories precisely.
5. Avoiding eating with others if it doesn’t fit with your food rules.
6. Skipping fuel on long runs.

When you’ve taken all the pleasure out of food for yourself — when food rules take precedence over friends and family, when it’s all about what you’re taking away from yourself, rather than what you’re giving to yourself — you’ve crossed over from moderation to disordered behavior. Athletes and non-athletes alike would benefit from shifting their focus from food as an obstacle to weight loss to food as a means of fueling and replenishing one’s body.