Gymnasts Research Paper

Psychology
Research paper

Eating Disorders Related With Gymnasts

The problem of eating disorders is becoming more and more urgent in today’s society. Generally they can be characterized as abnormal eating habits which may be manifested either in insufficient or excessive eating. The definition provided in the book by Tania Heller (2003) states that “Eating disorders are serious, potentially life-threatening illnesses that involve disturbances in eating habits and excessive concerns about body weight and shape”. (p. 7) What is most important about eating disorders is that they are caused by a set of different psychological, cultural and biological factors which makes the issue more complicated to solve than if the eating
They have to think of diets and exercises if they want to reach success in the profession of their choice. Such a situation can be very traumatic for nerves, as many gymnasts, especially those whose figures are naturally not predisposed to thinness. It is a common belief and recommendation that those gymnasts who can make successful professionals in their field have to be asthenics, which means that they are to have quick metabolism and light and thin bones. For such people remaining thin is usually easier than for the representatives of two other types of body habiti known by medicine – sthenics and hypersthenics. However, the gymnastic may require diet even from asthenics, which is especially dangerous as due to quick metabolism they do not have much of excessive weight that they can lose, therefore they have to maintain an unhealthy body weight. In the case of gymnastics eating disorders are predetermined by biological and psychological factors. The biological ones include the before mentioned incapability of a human’s organism to perform its normal functions under the conditions of constant diets and starving. To the psychological ones belong stresses and pressure that are especially indicative for perfectionists who place high demands on themselves. This type of people is really common among
Cultural and psychological factors are what can trigger the development of an eating disorder by any person and with current cultural values the issue is far from being solved. Facts show that the number of cases of eating disorders increases with the passing years. As the book “Abnormal Psychology: an Integrative Approach” reports: “A growing number of studies in different countries indicate that eating disorders are widespread and increased dramatically in Western countries from about 1960 to 1995”. (p.261) Fashion and media are the elements of today’s culture that contribute most to the emergences of eating disorders. The age group in which eating disorders are particularly prone to appear includes teenagers and people in their young twenties. The reason for that lies in the fact that in this social layer of people such factors, as low self-esteem and certain disposition towards following the trends that are dictated by the media, are especially likely to appear. Models that appear on TV and on the covers of magazines are always thin and some of them even seem to be unhealthily thin. Teenage girls who normally have poor life experience and are too young to have their own opinions of what is beautiful desperately want to be as thin as the models they see in adverts. They start to try diets in the age when the organism is still growing and developing which results in the various health