Male Athletes With Eating Disorders WTF Boxer And Author Danny O'Conner

In Weight Class: A Fighter’s Life-or-Death Battle with an Eating Disorder (Bite Like A Man; February 17, 2026), former Olympic boxer and professional champion Danny O’Connor delivers a searing, deeply personal memoir that confronts one of sport’s most overlooked crises: eating disorders in male athletes. From high school wrestling to the 2008 U.S. Olympic Boxing Team and a decade-long professional career, O’Connor lived in a world where extreme weight-cutting—starvation, dehydration, purging and physical collapse—was common practice. What began as discipline slowly became self-destruction, culminating in a public failure to make weight for a world title fight and a private medical emergency that nearly cost him his life. Told with unflinching honesty, Weight Class traces O’Connor’s 20-year battle with an eating disorder fought largely in silence—hidden from coaches, fans and even family. His story challenges the misconception that eating disorders are a “female issue” and exposes how weight-regulated sports can reinforce dangerous behaviors when education and early intervention are absent. More than a sports memoir, Weight Class is a powerful account of survival and recovery. O’Connor examines the physical, mental and emotional toll of life on the scale, while also documenting the long, difficult work of reclaiming health, identity and purpose beyond competition. For parents, coaches and athletes entering weight-class sports, Weight Class serves as a necessary warning. For the millions of men and women struggling with eating disorders in silence, it offers something rarer: recognition, understanding and hope.Since retiring from professional boxing, Danny has become a leading advocate for awareness of eating disorders among men and athletes worldwide.