Eating Disorders and Athletes: What I Learned During my Summer Internship with Nourished and Known
Written by Emma Slusser, Davidson College class of 2026 and senior on the volleyball team
Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I am not a licensed counselor or medical professional. I’m still an undergraduate student who chose to spend my senior summer diving into the topic of eating disorders—especially how they show up in athletics—out of personal interest and a desire to learn more.
I also want to emphasize that this blog post is based entirely on my personal experience. Every athlete's journey is unique, so please don’t assume my story reflects everyone’s. That said, my experiences are not isolated—I’ve found they align with many of my teammates’ experiences, who come from diverse athletic backgrounds across the U.S., including different states, high schools, top-level club programs, and coaching styles from coast to coast.
During the summer of 2025, one of my main projects was to develop and deliver an evidence-based presentation on athletes and eating disorders. I read numerous scholarly articles and research studies on the topic, combining that information with my own experiences to create my project. I presented to various teams, schools, and athletes throughout the North Carolina area. My research focused not only on information essential for athletes, but also on what coaches and parents need to understand to better support these athletes.
At the start of this summer, I knew almost nothing about eating disorders & disordered eating: here’s what I’ve learned that I think everyone should know.
What is disordered eating?
I had never heard of disordered eating until my summer at Nourished & Known, so I’m sure not many are familiar with this term, but I think everyone should be.
Disordered eating is a spectrum of problematic eating behaviors and distorted attitudes towards food, weight, shape, and appearance, and it is probably the most common food issue you will see amongst athletes.
These behaviors could look like dieting, skipping meals, fasting, restricting food intake, eliminating specific foods or food groups, as well as the use of compensatory behaviors (purging, excessive exercising, or restricting on rest days).
What’s the difference from an eating disorder? You may ask.
Disordered eating is different from eating disorders because it doesn’t quite meet the criteria to be diagnosable, but they are still dangerous behaviors that can often lead to diagnosable eating disorders.
It’s also important to understand that, along with the various forms of unhealthy eating habits, there is often an element of denial or secrecy involved.
This can make it difficult to detect within your teammates and even within yourself.
In addition to their secrecy, disordered eating behaviors in athletics are often masked as discipline and ‘clean eating,’ but the thought processes behind these behaviors can turn obsessive and draining pretty quickly.
After this summer, I’m convinced every athlete experiences some degree of disordered eating—and I don’t blame them.
I discuss how disordered eating/diet culture shows up in athletics later in this blog post.
Can someone have an eating disorder and still look ‘healthy’?
Yes. Absolutely. I think this is one of the reasons that makes disordered eating & eating disorders so dangerous: there are often no physical signs or ‘a look’ of an eating disorder until it becomes extreme.
We often assign a specific look to a person with an eating disorder (and I’m sure that image comes to mind).
But it's important to deconstruct this assumption because it can leave many with the thought that their eating disorder or problematic eating behaviors aren’t “that bad,” simply because they don't fit the stereotypical image of what an eating disorder "looks like."
In reality, someone in a larger body might be severely restricting themselves, while someone in a thin body could be struggling with binge eating disorder.
Eating disorders don’t have a single look, and assuming otherwise can prevent people from getting the support they need.
Powerful statistics
Eating disorders have the HIGHEST mortality rate of any mental illness—Anorexia Nervosa (independently) is the 2nd deadliest mental illness, behind opioid use disorder.
Eating disorders are the 3rd most common chronic illness among adolescents, behind obesity and asthma.
One study showed that only 44.5% of coaches reported attending an educational program regarding disordered eating.
In one study, 57% of adolescent girls experimented with disordered eating, and 25% of female high school & college athletes were diagnosed with an eating disorder.
Diet culture & disordered eating in athletics
Diet culture/disordered eating is all around us: on our social media feed, in the comments & jokes from family and friends, and even within our self-acclaimed “I must ‘eat clean’ to be my healthiest & most athletic self.”
Diet culture is everywhere, regardless of whether you’re an athlete or not, but for athletes, the pressure to implement rigid food routines and to ‘eat clean’ is immense.
Athletes are 2-3x more likely to develop an eating disorder, and I think this is because of 2 reasons:
The factors attached to the athletic experience.
These include intense training, food monitoring, and changing one’s body composition to optimize performance.
The psychological makeup of athletes.
Athletes are naturally competitive, they strive for perfection, and they’re goal-oriented.
This is the nature of athletics, which makes it harder to recognize when behaviors become dangerous.
In addition to these two reasons as to why athletes are more likely to develop eating disorders, thinness—regardless of how it's achieved—is ingrained in the route to success within certain sports, like ballet, gymnastics, track & field, and wrestling.
These are what we call aesthetic sports, where thinness and rigid eating behaviors are a major component of being ‘successful’ at the sport.
There is a fine line between healthy eating discipline to optimize performance and disordered eating, and I’m still not sure how to distinguish this line.
A conversation with female athletes
Female athletes are even more vulnerable to eating disorders as we face both athletic & societal pressures to strive for an ideal body.
We’re told to eat enough to grow muscle and fuel our training, but don’t eat too much and don’t get fat.
We need lots of nutrients to be healthy and perform, but social media tells us we should cut out carbs, fats, and sugars.
“You’re an athlete, you’re supposed to be bigger, but you’re also a girl, so you should try to look like the models you see online.”
These conflicting pressures cultivate a space for eating disorders to develop and thrive: yet the eating disorder conversation has never been initiated in my athletic experience (and I’m a senior, female, Division l athlete).
It’s like building a fire in the middle of a dry forest and never mentioning the risk of wildfire.
Female athletes are surrounded by messages that glorify thinness, dieting, discipline, and performance. These messages spark obsession and restriction, and they quietly develop into serious issues. And yet, no one warns them about the dangers.
No one talks about eating disorders.
What are the messages about food, weight, or performance that athletes grow up hearing in sports?
To answer this question thoroughly, I asked other athletes what kinds of messages they’ve received in sports to expand the insights of this post.
Here’s what they said:
“My team and I went out for ice cream, and one of the coaches put their hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Not for you.’ I took it with a grain of salt, but the aesthetics of what track & field athletes ‘should’ look like definitely permeated into my food choices at times. ”
“During a time when I was struggling with Anorexia Nervosa, my teammate's mom told me that the way I moved while playing was amazing to watch after a game. It made me feel even more sure that losing weight and counting calories was helping me perform.”
“I’ve been told what food will or will not enhance my performance from a very young age. At 15, my coach mandated a ‘no soda’ and ‘no candy’ policy on my team. While these seem like healthy policies, they left players and myself feeling hesitant about what they were eating and guilty for wanting something sweet after a long day of playing.”
A common theme in these stories is the rigid food rules enforced by parents and coaches.
Although their intentions are often positive—aimed at promoting healthy habits—these strict and restrictive guidelines can shape problematic attitudes toward food, potentially escalating into obsessive and harmful thoughts.
What’s the role of teammates in prevention?
When I delivered my presentation about Athletes & Eating Disorders to various high school-aged female athletes, I left them with the following:
It’s easy to make comments or jokes about food and bodies—we’ve all grown up in a culture that normalized that. But for many people, these comments are not harmless. Some of your teammates, friends, or even you may be quietly struggling with the things we talked about today.
So, I invite you to start these conversations within your team, and I invite you to be mindful of how you talk about food and bodies, and to hold yourself and each other accountable. You never know who is battling intrusive thoughts, and hearing those same words out loud—from someone else—can make that battle even harder.
Your words carry power. Use them to support one another and yourself.
I think the most powerful, comprehensible, and simple thing a teammate can do is to be intentional with straying away from negative comments about food and bodies.
As a teammate, be a safe space for others—you never know is struggling.
Eye-opening experiences (to the reality of eating disorders)
One of the major reasons I wanted to write a blog post in the first place was because of the conversations I had when I started the eating disorder conversation.
I learned that those I’ve known for a long time, and I had no idea eating disorders played a role in their life, actually have significant experiences with eating disorders, either within themselves or within their loved ones:
Those who never raised suspicions of problematic food behaviors had actually struggled with a severe eating disorder in the past, to the point where they were hospitalized.
Those who talk very positively about food and their body were actively purging when they felt guilty for eating too much.
Those who seemed like their loved ones were happy and healthy had a family member who was being treated with an eating disorder.
This was evidence that eating disorders thrive in silence.
The research emphasizes this point, but actually experiencing what it feels like for these conversations to step out of the shadows made it even more real.
It showed me that even the people we feel closest to often hold things in more tightly than we realize, and that’s the reality of eating disorders.
You really never know what someone is going through behind closed doors.
References:
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596.
Anorexia Nervosa. (2024, May 13). https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/eating-disorders/anorexia-nervosa
Bratland-Sanda, S., & Sundgot-Borgen, J. (n.d.). Eating disorders in athletes: Overview of prevalence, risk factors and recommendations for prevention and treatment: European Journal of Sport Science: Vol 13, No 5. Retrieved July 9, 2025, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2012.740504
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