The Good News
Eating disorders can be prevented—Preventing eating disorders is certainly preferable to dealing with them. Marianne Martinsen and colleagues at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences have researched how to prevent eating disorders from starting in the first place (Med Sci Sports Exerc, March 2014).
They created a one-year program to try to prevent the development of new cases of eating disorders among first-year students, representing 50 different sports and disciplines, attending all 16 elite sport high schools in Norway. The researchers randomized the different schools into the intervention group (those who received the program) and the control group (no input).
More: Athletes and Eating Disorders: How to Find Peace With Food
In total, they followed 465 male and female first-year students during three years of high school. To create supportive environments, the athletes' coaches at the schools were included in the intervention.
The primary focus of the eating disorders prevention program was to enhance self-esteem by strengthening the students' self-efficacy (belief in themselves and their abilities to meet performance goals). Over the course of the year, the intervention students attended lectures, performed teamwork exercises, and completed homework assignments.
On a closed Facebook page, they read posts by renowned athletes who shared their experiences related to self-esteem, self-efficacy and mental training. Every day, for several weeks, each student recorded three positive events that were not related to their sports performance, as a way to develop a strong sense of themselves that was not contingent on performance or approval from significant others.
More: How to Identify and Overcome Eating Disorders
The students learned the following information:
- Physiological changes that occur during puberty
- The role of nutrition with enhancing performance
- The need for proper fueling throughout the 24-hour day
- Ways to evaluate the latest nutrition supplements and diets
- The importance of rest days; the dangers of overtraining
- Causes of stress in competitive athletics; how to manage it
- How to set reasonable and achievable goals
- Visualization techniques to build a positive mindset
- Skills to create positive self-talk
- How to show concern for teammates with eating issues
As a result of the one-year intervention program, the female athletes significantly reduced their dieting behaviors by 90 percent. Not one of the athletes developed an eating disorder during that year or the one-year follow-up—a contrast to 13 percent of the female athletes in the control schools. Of the 13 athletes who started the educational program with an eating disorder, 12 recovered. In comparison, only four of the 13 with eating disorders in the control group recovered.
