Sport and Disordered Eating (Adult Population)

The CNP Sport and Disordered Eating Research Category consolidates research exploring the relationship between sport, dietary intake, athletic performance, and mental health. Patricia Hubbard, MA is CNP’s Sport and Mental Health contributor and is the lead developer of this research category. To view each original study on the open internet, click “Original.” To view the CNP-written abstract summary, click “CNP Summary.” While only some of the CNP-written abstract summaries are available below for free, all abstract summaries are available to CNP members through the CNP Library Membership.

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FEATURED CNP RESEARCH SUMMARY

Difficulties in emotion regulation, alexithymia, and social phobia are associated with disordered eating in male and female undergraduate athletes

This 2020 study investigates whether gender and team interdependence (whether the competition is engaged with one person or as a team) affects psychosocial risk factors for disordered eating. This experiment was conducted among a sample of non-athletes, individual athletes, and team athletes. While gender was found to significantly influence these psychosocial risk factors, team type did not appear to have a main effect. However, there were considerable differences in psychosocial variables between genders. Women were characterized by higher scores than men in drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, and emotion recognition, whereas men scored relatively higher in emotional dysregulation and binge eating. Benau et al. also combined all the athletes (both individual and team athletes) and compared their statistics with non-athletes. Relative to male athletes and women non-athletes, female athletes showed higher scores in drive for thinness, emotion dysregulation, and binge eating. On the other hand, male athletes demonstrated greater difficulty identifying their feelings and increased body dissatisfaction, compared with female athletes. Risk of eating disorders can be conveyed by emotional processes among men and women, especially in athletes.