What is the difference between disordered eating and eating disorders?
The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) mission is to lead and enable a united high performance (HP) system that supports Australian athletes/teams to achieve podium success.
What is the difference between disordered eating and eating disorders?
The 2019 International Olympic Committee (IOC) consensus statement on mental health in elite sport compares characteristics of ED versus DE (Reardon et al. 2019)
Eating disorders | Disordered eating |
|---|---|
Restricting, bingeing or purging often occur multiple times per week | Pathogenic behaviours used to control weight (e.g. occasional restricting, use of diet pills, bingeing, purging or use of saunas or ‘sweat runs’) may occur but not with regularity |
Obsessions with thoughts of food and eating occur much of the time | Thoughts of food and eating do not occupy most of the day |
Eating patterns and obsessions preclude normal functioning in life activities | Functioning usually remains intact |
Preoccupation with ‘healthy eating’ leads to significant dietary restriction | There may be preoccupation with ‘healthy eating’ or significant attention to caloric or nutritional parameters of most foods eaten but intake remains acceptable |
Excessive exercise beyond that recommended by coaches may be explicitly used as a frequent means of purging carbs | While exercise may not be regularly used in excessive amount to purge calories, there may be a cognitive focus on burning calories when exercising |
Individual athletes can move back and forth along the spectrum of eating behaviour at any point in time over their career and within different stages of a training cycle (e.g. during the off-season, pre-season, when injured). Athletes are more likely to present with DE than a clinical ED, however, there are health and performance implications regardless of where an athlete falls along the spectrum, as risks increase when DE worsens into a diagnosable ED.
Behaviour that was previously ‘encouraged and rewarded’ such as losing weight to enhance performance, may result in a failure to maintain adequate energy availability required for training and competition demands. These behaviours may not have been maladaptive at first, but may develop into problematic eating behaviour and worsen to reflect ED psychopathology.
Familiarisation with ED diagnostic criteria among members of an athlete’s support network facilitates appropriate questions about eating behaviour. Feeding and eating-related disorders are defined by specific criteria published in the American Psychiatric Association’s (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edition, DSM-5).