College Athletes And Body Image Essay

Words: 1250
Pages: 5

Eating behaviors amongst students on college campuses have caught the attention of many researchers. Body dissatisfaction has consistently linked positively with eating disorders, particularly in environments where upholding an “ideal” body image is important (Furnham, Badmin, & Sneade, 2002). College athletes seem to be the most vulnerable to developing eating disorders based on their environment. Negative body image and body dissatisfaction have been shown to have adverse psychosocial and psychological consequences, including disordered eating, depression and anxiety and poor self-esteem (Kostanski & Gullone, 1998, Powell & Hendricks, 1999). Gender has linked as a factor in the level of satisfaction with one’s body. They are most likely also linked to eating disorders. College female students have also found a pattern in the reason in which they need to watch what they eat is the idea which society claims as the “ideal body” image. This leads to psychological disorders such as eating abnormalities and depression, which demonstrates that body image has the ability to incorporate itself …show more content…
Some athletes feel self-conscious when comparing their bodies to other athletes and focus only on their body weight, shape and size. The desire to be thinner is to mainly improve sports performance, believing that the thinner you are, you will perform even better. The most frequent determined clinical eating disorders include bulimia nervosa such as subthreshold or no bingeing bulimia. “The importance of examining eating disorders among athletes is because of the relatively high prevalence of clinical and subclinical disorders identified and the unique pressures athletes experience to control body weight, shape, and size to meet sport-specific