Cycling culture may be fuelling disordered eating 🚨

Plus three key recommendations on how to combat this.

‘You look like a proper cyclist now’: performance, health, bodies and eating cultures in competitive cycling

Study Details

This new study explored how food, body image and performance culture shape eating behaviours in competitive road cycling, through interviews with 11 competitive cyclists in Britain 🔍

Here are the key takeaways ⬇️

Key Findings

🚴 Performance optimisation was the dominant lens through which cyclists interpreted food, eating and their bodies

⚖️ Power-to-weight ratio was a major preoccupation, with lower body mass frequently viewed as a route to better climbing and race performance

🍽️ Some cyclists described deliberately under-fuelling, skipping meals or training fasted in attempts to reduce body weight

🧠 Body weight could remain mentally prominent even when athletes recognised that their relationship with it was difficult or unhealthy

🪞 Cyclists described pressure to look thin and lean in order to fit the image of a “proper cyclist”

💬 Comments about body weight from coaches, teammates and parents could have powerful and long-lasting effects on eating behaviour and body image

⚠️ In some cases, potentially harmful behaviours were normalised as signs of commitment, discipline and dedication to cycling

👥 Teammate eating behaviours strongly influenced individual choices, with some cyclists comparing portion sizes and using others as a reference for how much they felt permitted to eat

📉 Athletes sometimes felt uncomfortable eating more than teammates even when they had similar training or competition demands

🥗 Positive team cultures could have the opposite effect, with some cyclists describing teammates actively encouraging adequate eating and fuelling on the bike

📚 Access to qualified nutrition support was perceived as limited, particularly outside higher levels of competition

📊 Previous research found that more than half of 203 competitive cyclists reported receiving no organisational nutrition support and 88% had never consulted a dietitian or nutritionist

📱 In the absence of professional support, cyclists commonly relied on teammates, personal experience, social media, Google and increasingly AI for nutrition information

🤖 Several participants specifically reported using ChatGPT for nutrition and race-fuelling advice, which the authors identified as an emerging area requiring further research

🧩 The authors argue that disordered eating should not be viewed purely as an individual problem because behaviours are shaped and reinforced by the wider sporting culture

🏆 A strong “performance-first” culture may make health-compromising practices appear acceptable when they are perceived to improve performance

🧍 Cyclists who lost weight could receive social validation, reinforcing the idea that becoming leaner represented becoming a more authentic or serious cyclist

🧠 Participants also described disordered eating and poor mental health as prominent concerns within cycling

♂️ Male athletes may face additional stigma around disordered eating and mental health, potentially making disclosure and help-seeking more difficult

🤐 Some cyclists feared that admitting to mental-health or eating-related problems could threaten team selection or their position within the sport

Conclusion

There are three key recommendations from this paper…

1️⃣ Interventions need to target the culture around athletes, not simply educate individual cyclists about nutrition

2️⃣ Coaches, practitioners, teammates and parents should carefully consider how they talk about body weight, food and performance

3️⃣ Body-composition testing should only be used when there is a clear rationale and should be conducted within an ethical, health-focused framework

The key message is that cycling cultures should value health and wellbeing alongside performance, rather than rewarding leanness, restriction and under-fuelling as signs of being a “proper cyclist” ✅

Reference

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2159676X.2026.2715145

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