Depression, dietary restraint, and binge eating in female runners

Abstract

Female runners (n = 174) were assessed on their levels of dietary restraint, depression, and binge eating, as well as a number of exercise variables. Thirty-eight (19%) of the women in the sample were found to meet diagnostic criteria for DSM-IIIR Bulimia Nervosa. The level of exercise was unassociated with any of the affective and eating variables as was the risk for meeting diagnostic criteria for bulimia nervosa. Severity scores for depression in bulimic runners were notably lower than in earlier nonexercising samples. The relationships between the variables were similar to those found in previous research, with dietary restraint, particularly in interaction with depression, predicting the severity of binge eating in both bulimic and nonbulimic runners. These data suggest that bulimia, rather than anorexia, may be the most prevalent eating problem in female runners.