Eating disorders and athletic performance: what athletes should know

Originally published on February 17, 2021

Eating disorders can disrupt athletic performance long before the damage is obvious. In Episode 111 of the WHOOP Podcast, Allison Lynch, competitive runner and former Senior Marketing Manager of Running and Women’s Performance at WHOOP, joins Kristen Holmes, Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist at WHOOP, for a clear, specific conversation about anorexia, bulimia, low energy intake, bone health, sleep disruption, and the performance costs of treating food as the enemy.

Lynch speaks from lived experience, and Holmes keeps tying that experience back to coaching, physiology, and the patterns athletes often miss until training starts to unravel. This article breaks the conversation into six questions, from early warning signs to the role WHOOP data can play when recovery trends stop matching your habits.

To listen to episode 111 in full, head to the WHOOP Podcast on Spotify.

How common and serious are eating disorders in sport and everyday life?

Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses that can affect anyone, and their performance impact often starts before other people notice a visible change. Lynch grounds the discussion in the definition from the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, which describes eating disorders as life-threatening mental illnesses that affect eating behaviors, thoughts, and emotions across age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and background.

That broad framing matters in performance settings because athletes are often surrounded by praise for discipline, body composition, and hard training. Those signals can make dangerous behaviors look productive for a while. Lynch also stresses that appearance alone is a poor screening tool. Some people look visibly unwell, others do not, and both can still be dealing with severe internal strain.

Lynch makes the risk level hard to ignore with two data points she cited from ANAD.

"They affect 9% of the population worldwide. According to ANAD, 26% of those suffering from an eating disorder actually attempt suicide."

Holmes adds another useful frame. Eating disorders start as mental illness before they become an obvious physical disorder. For athletes, coaches, and parents, that means body comments, food rituals, secrecy, isolation, and compulsive thinking can be important warning signs even when performance has not dropped yet.

What you should take away

• Eating disorders are life-threatening mental illnesses, and Lynch cites ANAD data showing they affect 9% of the population worldwide.
• Appearance alone cannot confirm or rule out an eating disorder.
• Athletic structure can hide disordered eating for a period of time because harmful behaviors may still look disciplined from the outside.
• Early signs often show up in thoughts, routines, and secrecy before they show up in race results.

If you want to hear Lynch unpack the prevalence and mental health risk around eating disorders, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

How can puberty, praise for thinness, and sport culture shape disordered eating?

Those high-level numbers become more concrete in Lynch’s own story. She describes thinness as part of her identity from an early age, reinforced by comments about being tall, lean, and visibly athletic. When puberty changed her body, she did not have a framework for understanding that change as normal development. Instead, she interpreted it as a problem to solve.

Holmes connects that experience to a wider coaching gap. Girls often move through puberty without clear guidance on performance, body composition, menstruation, or how changing physiology affects training. Holmes specifically references researcher Stacy Sims when discussing why many young women leave sport during this stage. In some sports, including track and field, the pressure gets sharper because lighter bodies are often associated with speed, even though that belief can quickly become distorted and dangerous.

Lynch explains that this combination of body change, validation, and performance culture led her to restrict food aggressively while still training and studying at a high level.

"I was probably surviving off of maybe 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day, which for an athlete who is 16 years old, I probably should have been eating double that."

The mechanism here is simple and brutal. A young athlete can start with a performance goal, tie thinness to worth, and then build an entire daily routine around food restriction. Once that pattern is established, it can feel rational from the inside even when it is clearly destructive from the outside.

What you should take away

• Puberty can be a major trigger point when athletes do not get clear coaching about normal body changes.
• Praise for thinness can become part of identity, which makes restriction feel rewarding before it feels dangerous.
• Sport culture can intensify disordered eating when athletes start equating lower body weight with better performance.
• Under-fueling can begin as a performance strategy and turn into a mental health crisis.

If you want to hear Lynch go deeper on puberty, validation, and track culture, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

What can under-fueling do to performance, bone health, and long-term health?

Once restriction starts, the next issue is what the body can keep hiding. One of the most important ideas Holmes raises is that the body is remarkably resilient in the short term. That resilience can delay help-seeking because an athlete may still race well, hit personal bests, or get external praise while major physiological damage is building underneath.

That was exactly Lynch’s experience. She lost almost 30 pounds in about four months, dropped to about 98 pounds at 5 foot 8, and still ran some of her best high school times. The short-term result made the disorder easier to defend. The longer-term result was far more costly.

Later, after regaining enough weight to return to running, Lynch dealt with loss of her period, then stress fractures, then confirmation of low bone density on a bone scan.

"I did end up getting a bone density scan a few years later, and they did confirm that I had osteopenia in my wrist, my lower back, and I think my hip."

She also broke two metatarsals during a period when her training load was relatively modest. That is the performance lesson athletes often miss. The body can keep producing for a while, then present the bill later through injury, slower healing, hormone disruption, impaired fertility, and reduced ability to absorb training.

Holmes reinforces that athletes are often the last people to recognize when something is wrong. Continued performance can make denial easier. For that reason, conversations about nutrition, menstruation, stress fractures, and recovery trends need to happen before a season falls apart.

What you should take away

• Short-term performance can stay high even while an athlete is doing serious long-term harm.
• Loss of menstrual function, stress fractures, and osteopenia are major warning signs that under-fueling has gone beyond a food issue.
• Restriction can protect race times for a period and still weaken bone health and recovery capacity.
• Waiting for performance to collapse is a poor way to screen for serious nutrition problems.

How can WHOOP data reflect low energy intake and poor recovery?

Because the body can compensate for a while, athletes often need another lens. WHOOP does not diagnose an eating disorder, anemia, or thyroid disease, but it can surface patterns that tell you recovery is drifting in the wrong direction and deserves a closer look.

Lynch gives a later example from her late 20s, after she had moved far beyond the most acute phase of her eating disorder. She was training hard, trying to keep improving, and still dealing with anemia and thyroid issues that she believes were tied in part to not getting everything her body needed nutritionally. She and Holmes looked at her WHOOP patterns together and saw a consistent mismatch between good habits and poor recovery.

The specific signals Holmes called out were lower HRV, higher resting heart rate, and fragmented sleep. Those are the same types of trends discussed in the article on WHOOP Recovery and readiness, where recovery reflects how ready the body is to take on strain.

Lynch gives the clearest number from that period when she describes how far her resting heart rate had shifted.

"Normally it is like 41, 42, and it was like 50."

That kind of rise does not tell you the cause by itself. It does tell you the system is under more load than usual. When the pattern is paired with low HRV, frequent sleep disruption, heavy training, or persistent fatigue, it can help prompt the next step, which may be lab work, a conversation with a clinician, or a closer look at total energy intake.

What you should take away

• WHOOP can surface recovery patterns that suggest an athlete is not absorbing training well.
• A higher resting heart rate, lower HRV, and fragmented sleep can be useful prompts for further evaluation.
• Data trends are most useful when they are interpreted alongside behavior, symptoms, and clinical testing.
• WHOOP is a second opinion on stress and recovery, not a diagnosis.

If you want to hear Lynch unpack the HRV, resting heart rate, and sleep patterns that pushed her toward more testing, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

Which habits helped Allison Lynch rebuild a healthier relationship with food?

Data can flag change, but rebuilding requires daily behavior change. Lynch says her biggest shift came when recovery stopped being something other people forced on her and became a personal decision. She was tired of living inside a cycle of obsession, compensation, and self-punishment, and that gave her a stronger reason to protect her body than the old reason of shrinking it.

One of the practical tools she describes is long-term therapy with a strong cognitive behavioral component. When intrusive thoughts show up, she actively answers them instead of letting them run unchecked. She also changed the way she talks about food. Rather than treating food as a threat, she learned to associate meals with performance, recovery, and daily function.

Lynch also rejects constant calorie tracking for people who do not need a clinician-led nutrition plan. In her experience, excessive counting can quickly become another rule system for the disorder. What replaced it was a more intuitive framework: include fat, protein, and carbohydrates in meals, pay attention to cravings, and keep nutrient-dense foods accessible often enough that the body starts expecting them. That mindset lines up with broader nutrition conversations in Dr Hazel Wallace Talks Nutrition and Habit Formation, Nutrition Insights with Performance Chef Dan Churchill, and How Food Fuels Your Performance.

Holmes highlights the part of intuitive eating that athletes often miss. It is not a free-for-all. It is a form of self-awareness built over time.

"You are teaching your body what it should want and what it does need."

That sentence captures the whole section. Intuitive eating becomes more useful when the body is no longer trapped in cycles of restriction, guilt, and compensation. Then hunger, cravings, satisfaction, and performance all become easier to interpret.

What you should take away

• Recovery from disordered eating often requires therapy, self-awareness, and deliberate changes in self-talk.
• Constant calorie counting can become another route into obsessive behavior for some athletes.
• Intuitive eating works better when meals are structured enough to include carbohydrates, protein, and fat consistently.
• Reframing food as fuel, recovery support, and daily care can reduce fear around eating.

If you want to hear Lynch go deeper on self-talk, intuitive eating, and how she reframed food, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

How should coaches, parents, and programs talk about nutrition and body image?

Once Lynch had a healthier framework for herself, the conversation widened from personal recovery to prevention. Her argument is that young athletes need better language, better education, and more support before problems become clinical emergencies.

She starts with media and everyday comments. Health and fitness content aimed at young girls often pushes weight loss language that belongs in an entirely different context. At the same time, adults may keep reinforcing appearance by calling girls skinny, pretty, or tiny, which can turn body size into social currency. Lynch wants that language replaced with discussion of skills, character, effort, and actual health.

She also argues for stronger nutrition education inside high school and college sport, along with direct conversations about menstrual function, fertility, body image, and where athletes can go for help. One structural reason this matters, she notes, is that many young women still do not see enough female leadership around them.

"20% of collegiate coaches are women."

That statistic is one reason mentorship and culture matter so much. Holmes has made similar points in conversations about mental performance under pressure, where identity, purpose, and self-worth shape how athletes interpret pressure. The same principle applies here. If sport teaches athletes to tie value only to appearance or output, food becomes one more place where control can turn destructive.

What you should take away

• Prevention starts with language, and body-focused praise can be riskier than adults assume.
• Schools and teams need direct education on nutrition, menstrual health, body image, and access to trusted mentors.
• Young athletes benefit from environments that reinforce identity through skills, effort, and character instead of appearance.
• Programs that wait for a crisis miss earlier chances to support better health and performance.

The bottom line

• Eating disorders can damage performance, sleep, bone health, and recovery even when an athlete is still racing well.
• Lynch cites ANAD data showing eating disorders affect 9% of the population worldwide and carry a high suicide attempt rate.
• Puberty, praise for thinness, and sport cultures that reward leanness can all increase risk for disordered eating.
• Short-term resilience can hide long-term damage, which is why continued personal bests do not prove an athlete is healthy.
• Loss of menstrual function, stress fractures, and osteopenia are serious signs that low energy intake has become a broader health problem.
• WHOOP trends such as lower HRV, higher resting heart rate, and fragmented sleep can help flag when recovery is drifting and deeper evaluation is needed.
• Therapy, self-talk, intuitive eating, and a less restrictive approach to food helped Lynch rebuild a healthier relationship with training and nutrition.
• Coaches, parents, and programs shape risk through the language they use, the education they provide, and the support systems they build.

Frequently asked questions about things discussed in this episode

How does WHOOP help you spot recovery changes when nutrition may be off?

WHOOP helps surface recovery changes by tracking patterns such as HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, and Recovery over time. In this episode, Lynch describes a period when those signals moved in the wrong direction before the full picture became clear.

What does WHOOP measure that may reflect under-fueling?

WHOOP measures HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, and Recovery, which can all reflect system-wide strain when energy intake is too low for training demands. Those signals do not diagnose the cause, but they can show when the body is struggling to rebound.

How does WHOOP show the link between sleep and recovery in hard training periods?

WHOOP shows the link by pairing sleep data with next-day recovery signals such as HRV and resting heart rate. In Lynch’s example, fragmented sleep appeared alongside a higher resting heart rate and lower recovery trends.

What does WHOOP tell you if resting heart rate rises and HRV falls at the same time?

WHOOP shows that a rising resting heart rate and falling HRV often mean the body is carrying more stress than usual. The next step is to look at training load, illness, nutrition, sleep, and, when needed, clinical testing.

What does WHOOP do for athletes rebuilding training after a period of low energy intake?

WHOOP gives athletes a daily view of how their body is responding to strain, sleep, and recovery as training returns. That feedback can help confirm whether habits are supporting adaptation or whether the system still looks overloaded.

How should WHOOP members use recovery data if they suspect an eating disorder?

WHOOP members should use recovery data as a prompt for earlier action, not as a substitute for care. Patterns such as persistently poor Recovery, high resting heart rate, low HRV, irregular training response, or major sleep disruption deserve attention from a qualified clinician.

Used alongside honest conversations about nutrition, WHOOP data can help flag when high training load and low energy intake are starting to pull sleep, Recovery, and resting heart rate in the wrong direction.