Green Bay Reporter

Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics biathlete Paul Schommer remembers tackling his eating disorder with the same vigor he has in rising to the top of his sport.

“I just remember stepping on the scale at that time, seeing the number and knowing where I was in the spring and how much weight I had lost to that point,” Schommer told WBay.com. “I had not weighed myself that entire summer. To see that was just kind of heartbreaking and I really didn’t know what to do at the time.”

It wasn’t long before Schommer had figured out what he needed to do if he was to ever get the result he most wanted.

“I started to realize that if I want to ski, I really need to be able to eat enough,” he said. “At that time it kind of gave me a reason to try even more."

With doctors ranking eating disorders as the deadliest of all mental illnesses, Schommer’s struggles seem far more common than many might think they are. While young women are the largest demographic, many young men like Schommer also often fall victim.

Heading into his sophomore year of high school, the 29-year-old Appleton native dropped around 15 pounds over one summer, leaving him weighing less than 100 pounds and questioning his status as an elite athlete.

Over time, Schommer’s mom took him to see a doctor because he wasn’t feeling well and in August 2007 he was diagnosed with anorexia athletica. A wrestler at the time at Kimberly High School, Schommer admitted he was restricting his eating and exercising constantly.

UW Health adolescent medicine physician Dr. Emily Ruedinger argues parents recognizing that the illness is not a choice is a step in the right direction.

“I have yet to meet a patient who chose to have an eating disorder,” he said.

In Schommer’s case, he came to spend more than 100 days at the Rogers Behavioral Health facility in Oconomowoc. His struggle adds to the approximately 30% of people dealing with eating disorders who are men.

“Boys and young men are underrepresented in the numbers and statistics because even some of the tools that we use to try to diagnose someone probably has some inherent bias toward the female population,” medical director of eating disorder recovery at Rogers Behavioral Health, Dr. Brad Smith said. “So, we may be under-representing the male population in our numbers that we have.”

Schommer said when he first started visiting Rogers he wasn’t sure what to expect, or even if he’d ever be able to live what he calls a normal life.

Now after finishing seventh in the mixed relays with his U.S. teammates in Beijing, he already has an eye on the 2026 Winter Games.