College football star shares battle with eating disorder in powerful Facebook note

Joey Julius is a pretty tough guy. Just ask ESPN.com, which recently dubbed him "the hardest-hitting kicker in college football."

When most folks think "eating disorder," they likely don't picture a college football star. But Julius recently laid bare his own struggle in a personal, powerful Facebook post.

What's more, the Penn State kicker has even offered help to others.

"After a long consideration of not only myself, my family, and my team I have decided to go public about my absence from the team during spring ball of 2016 and thru out this summer," his Sunday post begins.

Julius goes on to say he was admitted in May to McCallum Place, a treatment center for people with eating disorders, after gaining weight as well as experiencing depression and anxiety.

"Throughout this whole process I learned a lot about myself," he writes. "I learned that for the last 11 years of my life I have suffered through a disorder known as binge eating disorder."

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, Binge Eating Disorder is a "severe, life-threatening and treatable" condition "characterized by recurrent episodes of eating large quantities of food (often very quickly and to the point of discomfort); a feeling of a loss of control during the binge; experiencing shame, distress or guilt afterwards; and not regularly using unhealthy compensatory measures (e.g., purging) to counter the binge eating."

Julius ends his post with an offer to help others who are dealing with similar circumstances: "If anyone and I mean anyone guy or girl is struggling with the the same or anything similar please message me as I will be in immediate contact to help in any way i can to provide information or insight on my struggles and I would love to help. Praise be to God and thank him for my ability to be honest about this."

Here's his full note.

Meanwhile, here's one of the hits that's helped Julius make a name for himself on the football field for Penn State. You just don't see stuff like this from place-kickers, well, pretty much ever.

After that candid Facebook note he posted Sunday, however, it's likely many will look up to Julius for reasons that have nothing to do with sports.