Disordered eating in bodybuilders, powerlifters, and fitness enthusiasts - With Pro Bodybuilder Winnie Yip - Ep. 212

That's interesting to me because I don't know that the research has been able to answer the question, does bodybuilding or powerlifting for that matter, cause an eating disorder? My view based on the research I'm aware of, and I don't know nearly enough as you obviously, because it's not my job, but from what I am aware of, my personal view is that, and also based on my own experience, i suspect that the the sports themselves do not cause eating disorder behaviors just like tracking calories per se doesn't cause an eating disorder i think there are predisposing factors and in eating disorder um in when in discussing clinical eating disorders clinicians discuss precipitating factors as well as predisposing factors.

And so my view is I had predisposing factors to developing an eating disorder.

And I developed it long before I even knew what bodybuilding was.

At that point, I wasn't even lifting weights, nothing like that.

Then I had the leftover disordered behaviors from the eating disorder, even when I was physically recovered from the eating disorder itself.

And one would have said, okay, you no longer have anorexia because you are physically recovered and you no longer have the urge to essentially starve yourself.

I still had disordered eating and that's when I went into bodybuilding.

And so I already had these predisposing factors.

I'd already had the eating disorder itself.

But then so my suspicion is I wonder and also the way that my personality works.

I am extremely organized, extremely structured and ambitious and hard working and driven.

When I'm passionate about something, I will do it to the nth degree.

And one of the reasons I developed anorexia was that I channeled all of this.

into the desire to lose weight.

And I took it to an extreme.

I've always been an overachiever and I managed to overachieve losing weight loss, essentially.

And I suspect, okay, bodybuilders share a lot of traits, a lot of these traits with me.

It seems to be the nature of the person that goes into the sports, or at least not everyone, but many bodybuilders have these traits.

So that makes me wonder, is it...

In the chicken or egg situation, my personal opinion is I don't think that bodybuilding causes anything disorder, but the people who are attracted to it can.

I don't know how you feel about

it.

I agree.

I completely agree.

Because right now, even my paper, like the regression analysis predictors, like the strongest predictor is cognitive restraint.