:: SportsSafety.org/articles/health-and-nutrition/
Nutritional Abuse
Author: Lyle Micheli, M.D.
The frequent over-emphasis on winning in sports may drive some young athletes to abuse their nutritional status, often with dangerous consequences. Taking steroids is the most blatant form of this abuse, but nutritional abuse is almost as serious. Some athletes starve themselves to “make weight” to qualify for a particular weight category or to make themselves look more attractive for sports where physical appearance is considered important (such as figure skating, gymnastics, or ballet), or overeat in order to "bulk up" to become a more imposing physical presence. For adults these practices are ill-advised, but for young athletes they can have disastrous consequences.
As many as a quarter million young American males starve themselves every year in order to make weight in wrestling. Undernourishment, dehydration, anorexia, and bulimia are just a few of the unnecessary occupational hazards of sports such as wrestling, gymnastics, figure skating and ballet, in which athletes try to control their weight. In the short term, these practices may interfere with normal growth and development. In the long term they may impair basic health.
Bulking up is frequently done by high school or junior high football players. They think that gorging on cola, french fries, and protein supplements will make them more effective on the field of play. Without nutritional counseling, the practice of bulking up is not only useless but dangerous. Weight that is gained without proper training is usually fat rather than muscle. Most often the dangerous practices of bulking up results in obesity and its associated problems.
