The purpose of our study was to study the prevalence of exercise dependence (EXD) among college students and to investigate the role of EXD and gender on exercise behavior and eating disorders. Excessive exercise can become an addiction known as exercise dependence. In our population of 517 college students, 3.3% were at risk for EXD and 8% were at risk for an eating disorder. We used Path analysis the simplest case of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to investigate the role of EXD and exercise behavior on eating disorders. We observed a small direct effect from gender to eating disorders. In females we observed significant direct effect between exercise behavior (r = −0.17, p = 0.009) and EXD (r = 0.34, p < 0.001) on eating pathology. We also observed an indirect effect of exercise behavior on eating pathology (r = 0.16) through EXD (r = 0.48, r2 = 0.23, p < 0.001). In females the total variance of eating pathology explained by the SEM model was 9%. In males we observed a direct effect between EXD (r = 0.23, p < 0.001) on eating pathology. We also observed indirect effect of exercise behavior on eating pathology (r = 0.11) through EXD (r = 0.49, r2 = 0.24, p < 0.001). In males the total variance of eating pathology explained by the SEM model was 5%.

Background. Excessive exercise can become an addiction known as exercise dependence (ED). -- Findings. We used the Exercise Scale Test (EDS-21) and the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26) to assess the prevalence of ED and eating disorders. We discovered that out of 520 participants, 3.3% could be characterized as at-risk for ED, 51.5% as nondependent-symptomatic, and 45.2% as nondependent-asymptomatic. The prevalence of being at-risk for eating disorders was approximately 8%. -- Conclusions. It seems that the prevalence of ED and eating disorders at Andrews University is similar to the general population.