Female Athlete Triad

You may be experiencing Female Athlete Triad if you are an athlete who needs to reach a low weight necessary for competition. You may be working in the sports industry and over-exercise as a trainer or fitness instructor. You may be a dancer required to maintain a low weight for a performance. Or you may simply be someone who is anxious about your weight and you drive yourself to exercise almost daily.

The Female Athlete Triad is made of 3 interrelated conditions, that cascade like dominos – an energy deficit caused by disordered eating, which leads to menstrual disturbances and amenorrhea, and finally bone loss and osteoporosis.

You may be in a sport or career where there is pressure for you to be thin and a light weight. This can lead to poor body image and a high drive for thinness that cause you to either restrict the calories you consume, over-exercise or perform a purging behaviour either by vomiting or using laxatives. You may feel ashamed about your behaviours, feel guilty for performing them and feel stressed about hiding them.

The energy deficit from the excessive exercise and calorie restriction will cause your periods to become irregular or cease altogether. At this point you have severe disruption to your ovarian function causing menstrual disturbances and amenorrhea.

As your body’s nutrient deficiency and menstrual disturbances continue, you may notice that you start to get stress fractures whilst training in various high-stress parts of your body that are particular to your sport or training regime.

Treatment

For successful treatment for Female Athlete Triad we need to understand your sport or career so we can assess the pressures you are under from your perspective, and decide an optimal eating plan for you:

Our focus is to unearth what triggers cause you to binge eat, to help you build new ways of coping with the emotions these events bring, and to help you develop new thinking styles to deal with life in a positive and empowering way.

1. Find out about your Female Athlete Triad, how long you’ve had the symptoms, the requirements you have for any sport/career, and the disordered eating behaviours that exist
2. We will create a re-feeding programme for you that will be nutrient dense to allow regular menses to recommence, and will allow you to stay at an optimal weight for your sport/career
3. Together we will explore your thoughts and feelings about your body image and your desire to be thin, and how they relate to the exercise that you do
4. We will develop a recovery thought plan so that you think and behave in new healthier ways when faced with familiar situations or triggers
5. We will help you maximise your potential for optimal performance while at the same time nurturing your body and mind towards optimal health

Female Athlete Triad can be caused by immense feelings of pressure to be a certain shape and weight. It can also cause great feelings of shame, which mean you don’t ask for help until symptoms become severe.

Call us today on 020 7499 8922 and schedule a FREE 30 minute session with one of our Eating Therapists who understand Female Athlete Triad and can lead you on the road to recovery.