Eating disorders in sport: Review of prevalence, risk factors, and studies of eating disorders in highly competing athletes

Ismailova Dilyara, Gazdowska Zuzanna. Eating disorders in sport: Review of prevalence, risk factors, and studies of eating disorders in highly competing athletes. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2016;6(6):351-358. eISSN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.55703

http://ojs.ukw.edu.pl/index.php/johs/article/view/3588

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This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial

use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

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Received: 05.05.2016. Revised 25.05.2016. Accepted: 10.06.2016.

Eating disorders in sport: Review of prevalence, risk factors, and studies of eating disorders in highly competing athletes

Dilyara Ismailova

University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

Zuzanna Gazdowska

University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

Dilyara Ismailova

University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

mgr Zuzanna Gazdowska

University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland; zgazdowska@swps.edu.pl

Abstract

In today’s society, where thinness is idealized and correlates with good personal characteristics, people resort to different actions in order to comply with social norms. Athletes do not differ; they face the same issue of body image and weight concerns as the rest of the society. In addition to general factors of eating disorders, they have an extra pressure from their sport environment to maintain certain body weight and body measurements. This type of pressure puts them in the high-risk zone for developing clinical eating disorders (Brownell, 1991; Byrne & McLean, 2002; Rodin & Larson, 1992; Smolak, Murnen, & Ruble, 2000). Numerous studies investigated this problem related to variety of risk factors (Krentz & Warschburger, 2011; Picard, 1999; Sundgot-Borgen, 1994). This paper is focused on reviewing the available and newest literature on prevalence, risk factors, and consequences of eating disorders in sport, specifically among elite athletes.

Key words: eating disorders, eating disorders in sport, sport psychology.