Excessive weight loss in athletes.

Because increasing numbers of young people are nowadays seriously committed to highly competitive sports programmes and as many coaches and athletes are aware of the advantages of reducing fatness for optimal performance in most sports there are risks that excessive voluntary weight reduction may ensue. The urge to minimise body fat may indeed lead to a pathological degree of food and fatness aversion. The degree of body wasting motivated by such starving athletes can be so severe as to satisfy the major diagnostic criteria of primary anorexia nervosa. However, its prevalence in athletes differs from that usually found in anorexia nervosa since both male and female athletes appear to be at equal risk.