Vol. 2 No. 2 Specials

“Leanness is underrated... You should look like a skeleton with a condom pulled over your skull.” So advises Mark Wetmore, coach of the nationally-ranked Colorado Buffaloes men’s and women’s cross-country teams. In a sport where thinness often coincides with faster times, Coach Wetmore’s attitude toward his runners’ weight is not unusual. Coaches from colleges and universities across the country focus on the weight of their athletes, often conducting weigh-ins and enforcing strict low-calorie diets. As Wetmore said to one of his runners: “You’re looking good, I can see two of your ribs.” In the world of collegiate athletics, a “win at all costs” attitude leads athletes to take their coaches’ comments to heart. They look like skeletons. They run faster. And then they break down.

Sports-induced body breakdown, which is disproportionately common among women, was coined the “female athlete triad” at a 1992 meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine. The triad includes three potentially life-threatening symptoms that affect female athletes: disordered eating, amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), and osteoporosis (skeletal weakening).

Certain athletes are more susceptible to the triad than others: those most at risk include dancers, gymnasts, figure skaters, and cross-country and distance runners. Of these athletes, as many as 62 percent may suffer from disordered eating, which often leads to the other elements of the triad. Affected women wreak havoc on their bodies, acquiring stress fractures in the short term and premature osteoporosis in the long term, as well as a variety of other health problems.

Disordered eating behavior, the first element of the female athlete triad, occurs along a continuum that ranges from minimal food restriction, to occasional binging and purging, to the extreme calorie restriction of anorexia nervosa and the frequent binging and purging of bulimia nervosa. Because they exercise so strenuously, athletes have a higher risk of menstrual irregularities and bone injuries to begin with; eating disorders only compound these problems.