Anorexia and sports

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060912/COLUMNISTS18/609120345

It gets a bit more interesting towards the bottom, when it talks about how the issue affects how coaches deal with their players.

Honestly, it isn't something I had thought much about before.

 

Check gymnasts, wrestlers and a couple other 'sports' like drill team and cheerleading and you'll find eating disorders are much more common than most are willing to acknowledge.

 

Add figure skating to the list too. Anything where you gain an edge by being small is going to have an eating disorder issue.

 

Those examples I've thought of. Softball? Never really occured to me.

 

Since I'm eating as I read this, my personal headline: A good meal spoiled

 

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, by Joan Ryan.

Quite possibly the best-reported sports book I've ever read.

 

track as well. I battled starving myself to stay in shape during the season, and in the offseason as well. actually it carried over into college before I just taught myself to eat less instead of not eating at all.

 

I wonder if this is a problem in horseracing too. The jockey's have to be as tiny as possible.

 

Yes it is, very much so. Jocks have been known to purge themselves before weigh-ins.

 

This reminds me of the wrestlers I went to high school with. Some of those guys would look like they were halfway in the grave during the day.

I think ESPN did an Outside the Lines on this a while back, mostly about female athletes. The main point was about how it wasn't always a lack of eating. Sometimes it was working out too hard and not eating enough to keep up.

 

If by "have been known to" you mean "routinely" you've got it nailed.

 

If that's the disease, then here's the cure: