It starts with a love of sports, ends with excessive training, vomiting and compulsive calorie counting. Recently, doctors are drawing attention to eating disorders that develop in connection with excessive exercise. In addition, the risk is up to three times higher for professional athletes. The problem is often triggered by inappropriate comments from coaches. “What did you eat again?” heard, for example, a successful cyclist.
“At the age of fifteen, the coach told me that I was fat, but I was at the standard weight. I was training, but the coach told my dad the opposite. When we hadn’t seen each other for a long time, the evaluation came. ‘What have you been eating? Look at how you look, ‘ he told me once. That was the last straw,” says Klára Křížová. She was engaged in cycling at a competitive level until the age of eighteen, regularly participating in the national championship in junior categories. Today, he only rides his bike recreationally and trains his children at the same time.
The turning point, which led to eating problems, for her was a transfer to another team, under the leadership of a coach with a successful career. The pressure to perform from her parents was compounded by his insistence. “I first tried to eat less, then switch to a diet completely without carbohydrates, which is wrong for an endurance athlete. When I started to restrict myself, I gained ten kilos in six months. You can’t ‘carry’ that on a bike anymore,” describes Křížová.
Compared to the general population, professional athletes are three times more likely to develop eating disorders. “Joy turns into addiction. They fall into illness due to excessive exercise,” says psychotherapist Petr Minařík from the E-clinic institute, which deals with the treatment of eating disorders.
A study by Norwegian sports medicine professor Jorunn Sundgot-Borgen among 1,200 elite athletes showed a disorder in almost 14 percent of them. Moreover, in the Czech Republic, similar diagnoses have been on the rise recently. According to doctors, among other things, as a result of isolation during the covid epidemic. The increase in eating disorders is noted mainly among young people aged 15 to 19. In 2020, 1,093 were treated, which is almost 90 percent more than ten years ago, according to an analysis by the Institute of Health Information and Statistics.
Monika Míčková Vlčková, the five-time champion of the Czech Republic in modern gymnastics, now thirty-one years old, tried everything possible during her career to weigh as little as possible and have the slimmest figure possible. She stuck her fingers in her throat to induce vomiting. When she couldn’t, she took laxatives. “I’ve heard that my ass is only in Ostrava or that I’m eaten up and can’t get off the ground with a heavy ass,” she outlines. “When I was growing up, I was sensitive to these things, and because of that, people said that I had no morals and that I didn’t give my all to sports,” she adds.
Sports based on aesthetics, such as gymnastics, dance or ballet, are the most risky. “The difference is that athletes start with diets and adjusting their menu earlier than other people. They focus on a healthy diet associated with omitting fats and emphasizing proteins. They also adjust their training in order to achieve optimal performance,” explains psychotherapist Minařík.
Professional athletes often have to follow longer diets during preparation. As a result, there is a sudden increase in the volume of sports and at the same time fluctuations in weight. It is these periods that can contribute to the development of an eating disorder. Pressure to perform, personal perfectionism or dissatisfaction with one’s own body also helps. However, these factors can contribute to eating disorders in normal people as well.
Excessive exercise can thus lead to anorexia or bulimia even in individuals who engage in sports only recreationally. According to Minařík, people start exercising excessively during the first phase of the disease. “With anorexia, they exercise excessively in up to 80 percent of cases, with bulimia nervosa in 55 percent of cases,” he says. A person who suffers from an eating disorder and exercises excessively requires longer treatment than a non-exerciser. In addition, he is more likely to develop a chronic course of the disease.
“I’ll train you if you lose six kilos”
“I haven’t had my period for almost a year. To this day, I suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, which is probably also a consequence of bulimia,” describes triathlete Dominika Svobodová, who developed the disease around five years ago when she started a combination of swimming, cycling and running. Even now, she cannot claim to have fully recovered. “To this day, I observe myself obsessively and often find myself constantly dissatisfied with something,” she adds.
“Until now, I observe myself obsessively and often find myself constantly dissatisfied with something,” says triathlete Svobodová. | Photo: Sylvain Cavatz
Compared to patients who do not exercise, those who do sports are also subject to greater psychological stress, and suffer more often from anxiety, for example.
Misplaced comments from the mouths of trainers alluding to weight or appearance are the main cause of their problematic relationship with food for all the sportswomen interviewed. For 30-year-old triathlete Aneta Grabmüller, weight loss was even a condition for acceptance when she was looking for a new coach as a teenager.
“I had to persuade her for a long time to take me under her supervision. In the end, she agreed, but only if I lose six kilos,” she describes the claims of the then successful representative for the website Bez frazí. At the same time, the coach herself lectured at the university about health warnings in sports, for example about the loss of menstruation. “She knew that this was my situation too, but she didn’t do anything about it,” adds Grabmüller.
Advice for trainers on how to approach their clients with sensitivity:
Never tell anyone they are fat. Limit hysterical shouting, do not turn people against each other and do not humiliate them. To want clear and equal rules for everyone. Demand a positive atmosphere during training and comprehensive preparation. Promote cooperation between teams, coaches, competitors and parents. Create a similar rule and strictly follow it in every club.
Source: Monika Míčková Vlčková, Without Phrases
Today, the triathlete admits that the coaches may not have realized that she was struggling. “Because I actively sought out a nutritional therapist myself, they might have thought that I had my food under control,” she adds. Now the athlete is dedicated to a project fully supported by the International Olympic Committee, which draws attention to eating disorders in sports.
Just a liter of kefir for three days
In other cases, the female trainers forbade their charges to eat completely. “We were afraid that they would see us with food, so we preferred to hide our supplies in our clothes on the way to the competitions,” explains gymnast Monika Míčková Vlčková.
The last straw for her was the concentration in Russia, where she was given only a liter of kefir for three days. “I came back with a stress fracture that didn’t allow me to put full weight on my leg for important elements,” she says. However, the doctor’s recommendation was not an obstacle in the coach’s eyes, and Monika continued to train.
Psychotherapist Minařík also confirms the importance of the coach’s approach. “Professional athletes spend more time with their coaches than with their own family. Nothing influences them more than their feedback. That’s why athletes should get a multidisciplinary team, not just a performance specialist,” he says. According to him, they should also be in close contact with a psychologist, physiotherapist or nutritionist.
It was the path of regeneration and nutritional therapy in sports that gymnast Vlčková chose for her studies. “I never want to do to anyone what the trainers did to me. That’s why I try to pass on nutrition information to the girls I coach,” she adds. However, both Vlčková and Křížová agree that only the younger generation of coaches is trying to further their education.
Video: I didn’t eat five in a row, the disease controlled my whole life, says the cured anorexic (April 24, 2020)
I wanted to lose a kilo or two to get into modeling too. I didn’t want to admit that I was sick, I was at least 40 kilos. | Video: DVTV, Daniela Drtinová
