Disordered Eating In The Functional Fitness (CrossFit) World
Disordered eating is a disturbed and unhealthy eating pattern that can include restrictive dieting, compulsive eating or skipping meals.
Disordered eating is a real problem. But is disordered eating a real problem in the functional fitness world?
This is a question that when scouring the research I couldn’t necessarily find a cold hard answer to.
We all have thoughts, opinions and experience on this matter, however, do we actually KNOW if it is a problem and if it is how big a problem is it?
These are questions I was asking myself back in 2020 and so I decided to look into it. I launched a little research project designed to quantify the issue. The question we were looking at was:
What is the prevalence of disordered eating symptoms in the worldwide functional fitness community?
The aim of the research was simple. It was to improve the understanding of the issue of disordered eating within the functional fitness community by quantifying the prevalence of these symptoms of disordered eating within athletes, both recreational and professional, that partake in the training methodology of CrossFit.
What I Did
To do this I used an adapted version of the EAT-26 questionnaire with one question from the obligatory exercise questionnaire. These questionnaires were used due to their prior use in a number of clinical and non-clinical settings worldwide as a screening tool to assess eating disorder risk.
There existed a section in the survey too that asks for a prior diagnosis of an eating disorder. This allows me to quantify the prevalence of those currently suffering or in recovery as well as those without a diagnosis that are at risk. Those at risk are flagged due to their score on the survey questions with a specific cut off score being at risk of an eating disorder.
Now for some context. Due to the nature of disordered eating being a large variety of symptoms and a complicated psychological issue, it is very hard to estimate the prevalence of those who simply suffer from disordered eating in any one population. As it will be most people.
However, we can estimate the number of people at serious risk or currently suffering from an eating disorder. This study will compare the prevalence in the functional fitness community with other communities around the world.
The UK has an estimated prevalence of those suffering from an eating disorder of around 6.3% of the population. The estimated prevalence of eating disorder sufferers in the USA is 9%.
The Results
We obtained 540 responses, of which, 395 were female, 144 were male (1 did not disclose). 318 of these athletes identified as recreational athletes with the other 222 identifying as competitive, 21 of which as full time.
The highest standard of an athlete was that of having competed at the Crossfit games (9 athletes had achieved this). We had responses from 36 countries however most participants were from the United Kingdom (33%) or the U.S.A (33%).
Of the 540 responses, 93 (17.22%) were flagged as showing strong symptoms of disordered eating. And an additional 85 (15.74%) had previously been diagnosed with an eating disorder.
Our results suggest an increased prevalence of disordered eating in the functional fitness world.
We found no difference in the prevalence of disordered eating across the level of competitiveness of the athlete.
However, we found a higher prevalence amongst athletes that trained more than 5 times/week (18%) as opposed to those that trained less than 5 times/week (14%)
Of the 395 females who responded, 77 were flagged as showing strong symptoms (19.49%) and 83 (21%) had previously been diagnosed with an Eating Disorder.
Of the 144 Males, 16 were flagged as showing strong symptoms of disordered eating (11.11%) and 1 (0.69%) had previously received a diagnosis of an eating disorder.
Due to the reduced number of responses from countries other than the United Kingdom and the USA we cannot draw full conclusions on the issue from country to country.
However, out of 181 responses from the UK, 30 (16%) were flagged as showing strong symptoms of disordered eating and 19 (10.1%) had received a prior diagnosis of an eating disorder.
In the USA, out of 180 responses, 39 (21.67%) were flagged as showing strong symptoms of disordered eating and 35 (19.44%) had received a previous diagnosis of an eating disorder.
Take home points
Based on the results of this study, It is reasonable to assume that there is in fact an increased prevalence of disordered eating in the functional fitness world compared to the general population.
However, as with most research, the results of this study will lead to more questions to be answered. Questions such as
Why is this the case?
Does CrossFit attract those with a predisposition to disordered eating?
OR do symptoms of disordered eating develop because of CrossFit?
These are questions that we do not know the answer to and can simply speculate on.
At this point in time, it is clear that more research is needed on the topic. But in the meantime, more awareness and support of the problem can never be a bad thing!
What this support looks like remains to be seen, education on disordered eating, maybe not pushing one certain diet type (looking at you HQ).
I’m just hoping here to start a conversation that can lead to greatly improving the quality of life of many people worldwide.
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I'm a performance nutritionist with a Masters in Human Nutrition. My passions in life revolve around optimising human performance and I currently work with athletes across many levels including several Crossfit Games and Semi Final level athletes.
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