Kicker who battles eating disorder off Penn State roster
Joey Julius, the Penn State kicker who went public last fall with his battle with an eating disorder, is no longer on the Nittany Lions roster.
Julius, who became a social media sensation for his big hits, said he had missed spring football while undergoing treatment, as he did last spring and summer, for a binge-eating disorder at a St. Louis facility.
“Just as an update I am doing well and the treatment is helping,” he wrote in May on Facebook. “There is light at the end of the tunnel. It is just a very long tunnel.”
Listed as five-foot-ten and 258 pounds, Julius, 22, said in October after opening up about his disorder “I was always calling myself fat, disgusting, lazy, ugly. My name is Joey Julius, I have an eating disorder.”
Increasing weight and depression caused him to seek treatment at McCallum Place, in St. Louis.
“My team physicians started to notice not only a change in my overall happiness, but also my performance as a normal human being,” he wrote. “Throughout this whole process I learned a lot about myself. I learned that for the last 11 years of my life I have suffered through a disorder known as binge eating disorder. Although I showed signs of bulimia through stints of purging from extreme anxiety placed on myself. I am certain that binge eating disorder is my true diagnosis thru extensive care this summer for about three months of treatment.”
Julius said he would eat salads with teammates, then binge privately until he became ill. “I would have to lay down to the point where I was so sick I couldn’t move and (I would) just, you know, lay there,” he said. “And there were some times I would cry.
“After, I think, I got the treatment, that’s when I was like: ‘You know what? If I would have continued down this path, you know, I might not be here right now,’” he said, “and that’s why I’m just blessed.”
In May he returned for treatment, saying he hoped to be back.
Monday, after news came out that he was no longer on the team, he tweeted his thanks “for the kind messages. Just so you don’t worry, I am in full recovery and have been discharged from treatment for a while.”