ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we discuss clinical eating disorders, but we have also included descriptions and discussions of other eating-related attitudes and behaviors that can affect an athlete’s health and performance. These have sometimes been described as subclinical, subthreshold, and subsyndromal, and have been given names such as anorexia athletica, disordered eating, muscle dysmorphia, and the female athlete triad. These conditions are of importance not only because of their deleterious effects on health and performance in their own right, but also because they can progress to clinical eating disorders if left untreated. The conditions discussed in this chapter are described in large part as if they were discrete and separate conditions primarily for purposes of illustration. In actuality, they tend to occur on a continuum or spectrum of eating-related difficulties, and individuals who experience them cross over from one condition to another (Tozzi et al., 2005).
