Warning — The content you are about to read discusses depression and various types of eating disorders.
At its best, NCAA and elite gymnastics can provide athletes with a sense of euphoria. Things like the feeling when a dismount is perfectly stuck, the opportunity to serve as role models to young gymnasts, NIL deals, being a part of a team, and performing on national and international stages make the hours of hard work feel worthwhile. At its lowest, the sport can cause athletes to suffer from depression, eating disorders, and delayed puberty.
Isabella Magnelli is a fifth-year gymnast at the University of Kentucky, earned first team All-America honors, and scored a 9.950 on beam at the NCAA championships last year. She also has over 25,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. For Magnelli, though the evolving reality surrounding social media and NIL has resulted in monetary gain, it’s also had negative repercussions on her mental health.
Eating Disorders, Anorexia, and Binge Eating
During Magnelli’s gymnastics career, she said she has had some struggles but finds importance in understanding her body.
“I went into college feeling amazing and strong. A couple months in, I ended up gaining about eight pounds of muscle due to an increase of lifting,” she said. “I did struggle with my body change here and there during my first year due to an increase in muscle mass. I don’t think it really hit me until the season was over when someone had brought it to my attention that my weight had increased. I never had any bad thoughts about the way I looked ever in my gymnastics career. I was always that person that never cared about how I looked. If I felt good, I looked good. But after freshman year, I struggled with keeping that mindset which resulted in changes in my eating habits. We are really lucky at Kentucky to have an incredible nutrition and strength and conditioning staff that help us navigate through these changes regardless of if the changes are positive or negative.”
“I do still struggle with it here and there. But having resources like our nutritionist has helped me combat those struggles. I think it’s hard being in this sport when you know our bodies are always being looked at each and every day. But understanding your body and really taking control of what your body needs, I think that’s really important,” said Magnelli.
Sophia Butler is a former three-time USA national team member. After tearing her ACL and undergoing three knee surgeries, she made the decision to retire from gymnastics, causing her to develop disordered eating habits.
“I tore my ACL doing a two-and-a-half on October 25,” Butler said. “I remember October 25, 2021 like it was yesterday because that was the day my entire life changed. I got on antidepressants. I was going through a mental health crisis during that time. My body was changing — I was not eating right.”
“My knee injury took a huge toll on me mentally, because I no longer looked like all of my friends,” Butler said. “Every other gymnast that was my age and all my friends all had these very slim, athletic bodies. And I had hips and curves, and that was a whole new ballpark for me.”
Butler then said this depression shifted into suffering from an extreme case of binge eating disorder.
“I was so mentally unwell,” Butler said. “I had this sense of like, I am nothing. I am not an athlete anymore. I thought no one cared about me. I already retired from elite [gymnastics], no one even cares about my injury. There was nothing that could be any worse? Doesn’t matter if I’m skinny, or fat or whatever, I’m just gonna do whatever I want, eat whatever I want. It was like that mindset. It was just horrible. It went from me not eating nearly enough to me binge eating.”
Another former USA national team member, Shanna Kennedy-Wiley, retired from elite gymnastics after ankle injuries took her out of the running for the 1988 Olympics. She went on to compete at Oklahoma. She, too, suffered from both anorexia and binge eating disorder.
“Throughout the sport my relationship with food was up and down,” Kennedy-Wiley said. “At the height of competing, I would live on a bowl of cottage cheese and pineapples. And when I say bowl, I mean a small bowl, and that was it,” Kennedy-Wiley said. “I was so afraid to be even a pound overweight. I would go through phases where you don’t eat for so long and you’re starving and then you go on this binge. So I kind of had the whole binging and anorexia thing going on, that was kind of my life for several years.”
Now a mother, Kennedy-Wiley said her former eating disorders caused some difficulties with her pregnancy.
“After I became married, I got pregnant with my son,” Kennedy-Wiley said. “My doctor told me that I did not have enough fat to carry a baby, and I had to start eating. Throughout my entire adult life, I can still have moments like that.”
The Dallas Nutritional Counseling Center sees between 3,000-4,000 hours worth of patient appointments on a yearly basis. Of those patients, 50% are current or former athletes. Of those 50%, roughly 10% are current or former gymnasts.
According to the National Library of Medicine, 16.3% of competitive gymnasts and 7.4% of non-competitive gymnasts indicate disordered eating behavior. Casey Bonano, RD, LD, CEDS-C, who owns Dallas Nutritional Counseling and is herself a former level-10 gymnast, doubts that number is accurate.
“I bet that number is actually much higher, because I guarantee there’s gymnasts that aren’t reporting it. I think anyone, especially athletes in general, probably report it less. And I do think those numbers are getting better because we’re having dieticians as a part of various teams. So I think we’re catching it. But, in a sport like gymnastics, if you have a coach that’s weighing you, you’re probably not going to report your eating disorder.”
McKayla Mazziotti, MS, RD, LD, a sports dietician specialist at Dallas Nutritional Counseling said sports like gymnastics often see a rise in eating disorders depending on how often athletes are being weighed in a public space by coaches.
“I’m very much against weekly weigh-ins,” Mazziotti said. “Because again, that athlete will, more often than not, just starve themselves to make that weigh-in and then that energy level is what their training is going to look like that day.”
Butler confirmed this, saying she often hid unfinished food under her bed on the night and morning before weigh-ins.
“I had an Eastern European coach at the time and their body standard was like, very tall, very slender,” Butler said. “I got weighed at practice. Every Saturday morning, I got weighed. And that lasted for a while. Up until I finally was I think 16 or 15. And I finally was finally old enough and comfortable enough to say, ‘this makes me uncomfortable.’”
Kennedy-Wiley had a similarly negative experience.
“I remember one coach in particular. I was on beam one day, I think I was 16 or 17 and she called me cakes,” Kennedy-Wiley said. “And I was like, ‘what?’” She goes ‘yeah, it looks like you’ve been eating a little too much, you got a little little cake there.’”
The Benefits and Challenges of Navigating NIL Deals and Social Media
Even though navigating nutrition, especially in the age of social media can be challenging, there are athletes who have tried to confront the problem head on. 2024 Michigan graduate Sierra Brooks was a three-time team captain, president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and recipient of the 2023 Female Big Ten Medal of Honor. She was also a member of the 2021 squad that won Michigan’s first national team title. This impressive resume, along with her 85,000 Instagram followers, opened the door to an NIL deal with the United Dairy Industry of Michigan. She chose this partnership specifically to make a positive impact on gymnasts suffering from negative relationships with food.
“My partnership involving milk products is something that I don’t take lightly,” Brooks said. “I know that there are other gymnasts and athletes out there who struggle with different types of eating disorders or just kind of navigating that relationship. It’s something I’m very proud of the fact that I’m able to speak about my healthy relationship with food. And just with myself as a whole, given the fact that not everyone can have that kind of relationship with fueling your body.”
Acquiring an NIL deal centered around an athlete’s social media presence comes with its share of challenges. There’s usually a schedule that outlines when to post content with an added pressure to keep gymnastics-specific content coming, said Brooks.
“Sometimes I do feel pressured to post. I know a lot of my followers are here because I’m a gymnast. So I’d say there is increased pressure to post about gymnastics, but there are other things that I do want to share,” Brooks said. “It does cause me to sometimes hesitate or even when you’re dealing with likes on Instagram, if I’m posting something that’s not gymnastics related, I’ll kind of prepare where I’m like, ‘Okay, this one won’t get much engagement, because that’s not what people want to see.’”
As the popularity of social media has continually increased, so too has the amount of time people spend on the apps and the likelihood that they will be influenced by what they see. As a team captain, Brooks made it a point to have discussions with her teammates about the potential negative repercussions of social media consumption.
“We talk about social media. We talk about the sense of where you don’t want to be too influenced by social media. To take everything with a grain of salt, just have a healthy relationship with it. And I think that’s something that is definitely needed. Just given our demographic, we’ve all grown up online to some degree where it’s second nature to go online and compare all these things. We do try to make sure that everyone can take a step back at times, so that it’s not something that hurts them,” Brooks said.
Social Media Opportunities – Turning a Negative into a Positive
NIL deals can help grow the social media followings of participating athletes. According to Magnelli, this larger fan base provides the opportunity for gymnasts to express themselves online and serve as role models to their followers.
“I think it’s just really important to allow these little girls to understand that female athletes are just as strong as male athletes and we can get just as much recognition as they do. And I feel like over the years we have. Having my social media be gymnastics but also be my personal life and allow people to truly know who I am outside of my sport is really important to me and I love when little girls see that part of my life,” Magnelli said. “I think the more recognition us women in sports get, those little girls will have motivation and determination getting into college and really wanting to push to that recognition.”
National team member and Oklahoma commit Izzy Stassi, who models for the leotard company Sylvia P, said her partnerships give her the ability to humanize herself on a larger scale to the followers she hasn’t met yet.
“I think everyone should be known for not only how good they are at their sport, but also their personality,” Stassi said. “People need to know who they are as a human rather than just their talent, because clearly they’re talented, but some people are also just amazing people. And I think it’s great that NIL has allowed them to profit off of that.”
One of the most visible athletes in this post-NIL era is fifth-year LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne. She’s the highest-valued female college athlete with an estimated NIL valuation of $3.9 million.
After Butler medically retired from gymnastics, she decided to attend LSU. She regularly attends gymnastics meets and said she admires Dunne for everything she has done for the sport.
“NIL in gymnastics is really prominent at LSU and I think it’s great,” Butler said. “I think it’s amazing. Honestly, if you can be a higher paid athlete than like, a five-star football player. Good for you. God has blessed you with having a beautiful face and beautiful body. Like, use that to your advantage. Everyone respects somebody that has a lot of confidence. And I feel that you’re beautiful on both the inside and out and you’re exuding that in your own personal branding, people are going to respect that.”
Magnelli, who used to train with Dunne, has partnerships with CVS and Gillette Razors and is signed with Athlete Advantage, an NIL sports management agency. She said that her NIL deals have increased both her internal and external confidence.
“I’m a big makeup, clothing girly. So I was super excited to start working with brands and having fun with it and having the opportunity to get money for my savings and my life after college,” Magnelli said. “Being able to have those partnerships with a bunch of brands and companies also help me to eventually be confident out of college to kind of put myself through doors that I wouldn’t be able to have the opportunity to do if I wasn’t able to get in contact with them now.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
For young athletes, social media can either be a stepping stone or a road block to successful NIL deals. Posting responsible content online, showcasing that you align with their brand values, and actively managing your online presence can help collegiate athletes maximize their NIL opportunities.
Add in a captivating personality and an expression of overcoming obstacles, and athletes and gymnasts alike can really begin to capitalize off their life experiences.
But, the added pressures of social media on gymnasts who choose to take NIL deals can clearly have repercussions — both mentally and physically.
However, multiple gymnasts also stated that no matter what they were going through mentally or physically, being able to plug in their emotions into their routines and online presence to express themselves only further emphasized their love for the sport.
The ability to finally profit off both their successes and hardships only adds to the benefit.
If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder, know you are not alone and that both help and support is available. Consider reaching out to NEDA or Dallas Nutritional Counseling.
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Article by Jennifer Streeter
Jennifer Streeter is an alum of Texas A&M University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is currently an NHL writer, editor, and publisher as well as a sports freelancer for various national publications. Writing about gymnastics is dear to her heart as she was a competitive gymnast growing up.
