NORMAN, Okla. - Corey Ivy attends the University of Oklahoma on an athletic scholarship. He is a linebacker - No. 43. He stands at 6-foot-1. He weighs 238 pounds. He is also a recovering bulimic.
Contrary to popular belief, dysfunctional eating habits are common in male athletes. Ivy is one of a number of males afflicted with an eating disorder. Conditions such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and compulsive overeating have expanded from the girls' bathrooms to the athletic arena.
"It's not something I pride myself on," said Ivy, a health and sports sciences junior. "I was real fat when I was little, and people made fun of me. I always had the craving to eat. When I get depressed, I eat."
It was only when Ivy reached a peak weight of 280 pounds that he decided to lose weight. But he tried to lose weight without changing his eating habits. Instead of dieting and exercising, he binged and purged. He overate, then forced himself to vomit. In effect, his body processed nothing, and his weight plummeted.
Despite its feminine, media-painted mask, the face of eating disorders is genderless, and experts said that it has long been an epidemic on college campuses nationwide.
"Five to 10 percent of anorexics, and 0.4 to 20 percent of the bulimic population, are men," said Dr. Donald Giddon, clinical professor of community health at Brown University Medical School.
"Female bulimics make up 20 percent of college campuses. Even though the number is not as high in men, their plight is still significant," Giddon said.
Among the University of Oklahoma's population of roughly 11,000 men and 9,000 women, no cases of men with eating disorders have been reported this year. However, 100 to 200 men and up to 2,000 women could have eating disorders, Giddon said.
In her five years at OU, clinical psychologist Julie Dupell has never treated a male athlete - and she is not surprised.
"Probability-wise, (male athletes with eating disorders) are here on campus," said Dupell, of Goddard's Counseling and Testing Services Center. "But, they have no logical reason to come forward. They think that if they give it up, their athletic performance will suffer.
For them, it's a greater payoff to have it than to address it."
For this reason, dysfunctional eating habits in males are consistently under-diagnosed, Dupell said. As a result, the media often solely present women as having disorders.
"The whole socialization of males is to not be weak, not need help, and to certainly not ask for emotional help from anyone," Dupell said. "In athletes, winning outweighs the punishment they inflict on their bodies."
Ivy's reasons for becoming bulimic are not uncommon. Cath's Links to Eating Disorders Resources on the Internet notes several reasons men develop eating problems. These include a history of being teased for being overweight, a desire to alter one's body image (less fat, more muscle), a need to make weight for a sport and a desire to increase attractiveness.
"(Bulimia)'s not a nutritional problem, but it causes nutritional damage," Norman dietitian Linda Eckel said. "It's first of all a psychological problem. You've got to get (the clients) to eat, to stop vomiting, before you get to the food issues."
For OU wrestlers, the food issues are simply to eat no food. As in other weight-oriented sports, wrestling dictates strict weight limits, putting wrestlers at a high-risk for eating problems. For this reason, lightweight athletes often walk the tightrope between exercising strict control of their food intake and the obsession to achieve peak performance, Dupell said.
"What I eat on a typical day of weigh-in is usually just a bagel or, if possible, something less," said OU wrestler Byron Tucker, a botany sophomore. "Usually, I''l have to eat everything that's in front of me because it'll cause mental breakdown if I don't. So, if I have a bagel, I'll eat a bagel. But if I can get something smaller, I'll get it. And that's just to get my metabolism going."
Some athletes said they know that their behavior endangers their health.
"I know it's not healthy," said Floyd Lorne, OU wrestler and public administration junior. "But it's something that's got to be done. That's the sport - responsibility, knowing how to maintain your weight and make the weight. That's what makes the sport really competitive."
It is this need to compete that makes the athletes reluctant to seek rehabilitation, Dupell said. By rationalizing that their athletic performance is improved, they start to believe that their health is irrelevant.
"I know that it can have some negative effects, but I don't agree that it's unhealthy," Tucker said. "My 20 pounds is a temporary loss. I would suggest it to another wrestler. I would not suggest it to a housewife who's trying to lose 20 pounds."
- Distributed by the University Wire.