February 26th marks the start of this year’s National Eating Disorder Awareness week, as it spans until March 3rd. NEDA week is an annual campaign meant to bring awareness, support, and education for those impacted by eating disorders. Providing information about eating disorders, even for those who don’t suffer from one, helps improve empathy and understanding, and creates more opportunity for interventions and support. Within the United States, it’s estimated that 9%, or 28.8 million Americans, will suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime, with very few of that percentage seeking treatment for one. As well, anorexia nervosa, one of the subsets within an eating disorder diagnosis, has the highest mortality rate amongst mental health diagnoses.
Within the sports world, there is often a higher prevalence for an eating disorder than within the general population. The higher rate for eating disorders can be correlated to a number of factors, one of them being the thin ideal—where being lean is seen as an esteemed positive—and its association with greater fitness. As well, revealing uniforms can increase body consciousness, dissatisfaction, and restriction of food intake. Another factor could be sport body stereotypes, or the idea that there is a specific body type associated with a sport. For example, long distance runners are often assumed to be lean and wiry, and if someone doesn’t meet those criteria, there can be a pressure to change their body to fit the stereotype. Finally, the culture within sports in general praises similar qualities in its athletes as are identified within eating disorder clients: perfectionism, excessive training, and performance despite pain or denial of discomfort. Athletics can often become a breeding ground for eating disorders due to these factors and more depending on the specifics of the environment, coaches, and the sport itself.
Interventions for working with body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and eating disorders within athletes can be shifting from body positivity to body neutrality. Body positivity is a social movement that emphasizes loving one’s body no matter the physical representation. This sounds like it could inherently be a great thing, but the attribution of one’s physical appearance to their worth is still present, and for some, the language with body positivity can make it feel like they’re lying to themselves. A shift would be to use the ideas of body neutrality, where there’s more acceptance of the body than praise. In this, there’s an acknowledgement that one’s worth is not associated with their physical appearance or how their body looks. An example of this language could be: “how I feel about myself has nothing to do with my appearance.”
Another approach ties into the ideas of body neutrality, as instead of noting how a body part looks, it’s switching the focus to what function that body part serves. So instead of praising a body part for its aesthetic, it’s offering gratitude for what one’s body allows them to do. This is particularly helpful for athletes because it moves them from a stereotypical idea of how their body should look, and instead lends a more compassionate lens to what their body does for them. This inherently places the focus on how their body feels performing their sport, instead of feeding into the idea that fitness has a certain look.
These two approaches are just a few of the options available for interventions for eating disorders. Treatment options vary depending upon a variety of factors, and it’s not a one-size fits all approach. These two can be beneficial for athletes, but also the general population as well. The lean ideal is notable in sports because of its association with fitness, but the emphasis on thinness, especially for women, is pervasive in society. Shifting one’s mindset from appearance to function and acceptance offers an escape from the pressures enforced on bodies in any arena.
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