Who exactly is Lauren blaming? Herself, her parents? No, it sounds like she is blaming, "the system." Of course athletes have to mold their body to their sport! Silliness. Do football players not have to add extra muscle? Any elite sport honing the body is part of it. No one forced her to diet. She chose to so she could excel and make money in her sport. She needs to get over herself.
14
Ballet offers the same demands upon girls with like outcomes.
Undernourished girls and women are going to be at higher risks for poor health throughout their lives.
For some reason our culture just cannot integrate the importance of healthy and strong bones and muscles with overall health. Medical professionals look at lab tests and don’t concern themselves with strength, mobility, agility, and stamina.
Women do not bulk up with exercise as do men but to achieve their highest potentials still requires strong bones and the most developed muscles that they can achieve.
3
Thank you for this clear, well written article, it’s warnings and feasible broad suggestions for needed changes which could, and would, protect athletes of all ages, genders and gender identities, and other characteristics, from being transmuted into commodities to be exploited and profited from.
Thank you for your semantic- ‘invitation” to contribute to making a needed difference that can make a difference of equitable types, levels, and qualities of wellbeing and health in their broadest senses and dimensions.
There is a need to “run-down” toxic complacency about...and complicity in...by all too many. All around US!
There is a need to organize Marathons for Menschlichkeit. All around!
5
Back in the mid-80s, I was a D1 basketball and volleyball player. My freshman year, as in high school, weight and nutrition never discussed. Team meals consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, and spaghetti with sauce and meatballs. You could eat as much as you wished without any monitoring. A new coach was hired my sophomore year. Team meals did not change probably because she didn't know what was being served, but, after calling a number of players "Thunder Thighs," she told all the players we would be expected to follow a strict diet. This diet was not individualized or based on height or weight. The first week I strictly adhered to the diet. My weight, prior to starting this diet, was 150 lbs., a completely normal weight for my 5'10" height. At my weigh-in, conducted in the coach's office with assistant coaches (all women) present, I was congratulated for losing 10 pounds. Later at practice, I was held up as an example of a dedicated athlete. I later confronted the coaches stating that losing 10 pounds in a week was not good and that I would no longer follow their prescribed diet. Two weeks later, I was back to my normal weight. The coach was not happy. A few weeks after that the coach hired a hypnotist to work on the "teams' losing attitude." A week or so after that I quit. This coach is still the coach at the university I attended. Hopefully she has moderated her attitude.
3
Losing weight, holding in abeyance it’s known and unknown outcomes for a specific person at a given time and place in their life, is not the same as losing-“moderating” one’s beliefs.
Your former coach, and the minions of others, with their convictions and certitudes are/may still BE ever-present. Violating with impunity.
Thank you Lauren for sharing your story! Immense respect to all of the women speaking out about this.
3
Doing what everybody else does ends in mediocrity (the blender effect).
Here’s a thought, instead of pleasing the coach, only accept a coach that pleases you, he’s not running, you are. Athletes are the reason he has a job.
Refuse to step on the scale, what’s Coach Bubba going to do, fire his best runners?
2
Thank you, Lauren for your candid response. I have read some of the comments already and I think a lot of people think that Lauren is blaming male coaches for this problem. However, she is not naming the gender of the coaches. I believe she implies that female coaches can be equally culpable. What Lauren is saying is that people expect female athletes to project on the same trajectory as male athletes. Biologically, due to our hormonal differences, this is just not possible. She is saying that some female athletes, including distance runners, feel pressured to diet and restrict their eating to continue improving. And she is saying that some coaches either ignore or promote these unhealthy practices is their athletes, due to a "win at all costs mentality."
The problem is that the costs of an eating disorder to the athlete, male or female, are huge.
Someone earlier commented that anorexia nervosa is a mental health disorder listed in the DSM. You are right it is and like any health problem there can be biological or environmental factors that can contribute to a person's development of the disorder. What Lauren is saying is completely true, there is a culture in female distance running, and other sports, that promotes eating disorders. So these would be considered ENVIRONMENTAL factors. Someone can develop a disorder solely based on these environmental factors. You do not have to have people in your family who have had eating disorders to develop one yourself.
4
My daughter played club soccer and rowed crew in high school. Her rowing coach was a female Olympian who emphasized competition but never focused on weight; in fact, parents were told we needed to make sure our athletes got adequate calories, as a single rowing practice could burn 2,000 calories. I’m grateful my daughter was coached with body positivity.
The problem came from her PE teachers and PE program at her public high school (and from the CA Department of Education). In 9th grade, all students were forced to do public weigh-ins and pass a BMI test. Students whose BMIs were above the cut-off were forced to continue repeating the PE class until they passed the BMI test. I cannot tell you how much torture the public weigh-ins inflicted and how much depression and anxiety the BMI test produced in my daughter and her friends, many of them dancers and athletes who knew they would fail the test because they had added muscle to their frames through their sports practices (in addition to having a healthy, natural amount of fat on their developing bodies). Not only is the BMI index flawed, but so is a system that punishes young people for whatever kind of bodies they have (except for one kind of body) and sets the stage for disordered eating. This is state-sanctioned emotional abuse.
9
Thee is one more aspect to address. Kara Goucher tweeted about Yoder Begley's shaming "I was weak and relieved to be the “favorite” and I am so sorry." This is just so sad and troubling. Mary was young and that is a different case, however Goucher was older and yet there was this high school like need to be the favourite that ruled over sticking up for a teammate. As women we HAVE to instill in little girls from a young age that they need to support each other and stop seeing one another as competition.
Women can be the worst when it comes to hurtful comments around looks and weight. We have to look inward and keep away from a victim mindset. If we bring up strong girls and women who can speak up for themselves and for their fellow women then the toxic culture starts to die otherwise it is a lost cause.
2
Many commenters are missing key points:
1) This is an opinion piece, not a science or health article based on research
2) Ms. Fleshman presents us with anecdotal evidence that has been corroborated by like athletes, and pivots off the recent OpEd by Mary Cain
3) This piece is specifically about FEMALE athletes, not male athletes. Ms. Fleshman makes no claims that male athletes do not endure bad coaching or physical abuses.
4) This is specific to female biology and physiology because those things are different than their male counterparts (duh). Therefore, as Ms. Fleshman points out, when female athletes are coached, trained, judged, etc., according to a male paradigm, even if well meaning, dangerous health consequences are seen. This is a systemic problem.
As Ms. Fleshman points out female distance runners develop on a different curve than their male counter parts. From what I've seen, middle and high school, prepubescent female runners often show great promise. Compared to boys, a disproportionate number of 8th and 9th grade girls run fast enough to make state and national events. But as puberty changes their bodies (it seems they have to re-learn how to run) their performances flatten and even reverse in some cases. I can't imagine what sort of psychological toll this might take on girls at such a critical time in their personal and emotional development.
Thanks for sharing your story, Ms. Fleshman. I hope this conversation continues to gain attention.
13
Well done, many are hopeful you'll find your place and pace in the change for women athletes because your argument makes plainly, simply, profound sense.
2
We live in a world of maximum efficiency. Or at least culturally that's what we have been exponentially conditioned towards. Everything is min-max'd in our world, and athletes are and athletics is no different.
This isn't a story about a poor system that is failing young and adult women. This is a story about horrible people. If you're a coach, and you're demanding your athlete eat next to nothing for a short-term performance boost at the expense of long-term health, you're a horrible person, plain and simple.
The system doesn't need changing, and frankly, it *isn't* going to change because we're in that min-max world. What can change, at the individual level, is greater understanding and ability to disassociate ourselves from the horrible people that may otherwise have too great a control and influence over us. That can happen right now, by encouraging our athletes, men and women, to demonstrate greater courage in calling out the horrible people around them and demanding they be held accountable for being horrible people.
Because at the end of the day, only we ourselves are responsible for our bodies and only we ourselves are responsible for choosing the people we trust.
1
The writer makes some great points. On the same track, we need to overhaul the sports system for young men as well. I’ve been through it several times with my kids. The coaches and even the administration of my kids private school has been “football happy” to the point of stupidity. I think it’s a cultural thing. It stinks. The entire phys ed system seems straight out of the 1960s. Semesters that include yoga, ballet, pilates and similar would be great for all genders.
Also, we need physical education programs and specialized coaching for older folks like myself, who enjoy triathlons and running into their 60s and beyond.
No offense to the 30 and 40 year old tri coaches, but until you personally understand what the human body is like at age 60, you can’t coach it effectively, in my opinion.
High level men/boy athletes do this all the time. Why should it be different for women/girl athletes?
I am simply baffled by the large number of readers who missed the point of this well-written article.
5
women and most people will do anything to fit in and then are upset and ashamed after the fact. she could have quit and her parent should have protected her and did the right thing. we see it here and we see it with all of Trump's supporters and enablers
1
Huh? What is training but a process of changing the body and mind?
The one thing I know is that a woman’s body needs some fat to produce hormones necessary to protect bone health, as well as reproductive health. Where is the fat in these women’s diets? And women need a different diet than men!
2
It's all about the money. Wow, didn't see that one coming.
1
Just because something is does not mean that it should be. Modern sports (as opposed to what the Greeks did over two thousand years ago) dates only to the 19th century--where the idea was to "toughen up" scholars because, according to the current thinking too much study made a man soft and effeminate. The movement was known as "muscular Christianity" and it was supposed to be limited to rich amateurs, which is why we have so many rules trying to keep it from turning into a profession.
Professional sports are a failure. They promote bad morals (wining at all costs) bad health and corruption. They turn human beings in to over specialized freaks--one trick ponies who will pay for their moment of glory with bad health as they grow older.
By all means play games, run swim etc. just don't do it for money. Money corrupts everything.
3
If a strong healthy young woman is performing faster, higher, stronger, etc than anyone else, then who is deciding she should stop doing what is working? Stop nourishing her body and taking care of herself?
Talk about misogyny at its worst. We don't want successful female athletes so we suddenly insist they undermine their own performance.
2
No woman should have to doubt her physicality or be subjected to any line of thought that would cause her to become anorexic or bullimic. But this is one of those few stories that men read and question just how on earth did you think men were doing this all these years?
Good God, have you ever met wrestlers trying to make a weight class? Or a boxer? They pass out from lack of food and get nosebleeds through lack of nutrition. Or how about football player who was told to go on steroids and to eat more and beef up? Men have been subjected to body stigma in the name of sports for about a century now. But as has always been the double standard, men are not given the space to complain about it, lest they be deemed whiny and weak and therefore excluded.
I do agree that women should be able to define and adhere to their own sports code but by pretending this is yet another system wherein the dominant male subjugates women to standards that don’t apply to them is more than a self-invented myth. It’s a pity party.
4
Oh well, and men build up their muscles into grotesque knots.
Better by far to read books. We might end up with a more enlightened electorate.
5
Athletes, parents, teachers, abusive behavior needs to be called out loudly and clearly. Stand your ground. Name names.
Silence allowed Alberto Salazar to damage athletes unchecked for too long.
Speak out.
Blaming men for amateur female-sports health problems is inaccurate, unfair, and incomplete. Moreover, expecting the high school coach brain-trust to yield a cutting-edge understanding of biology is naive. High school coaches know how to coach high school athletics. Blaming coaches for health issues is like blaming teachers for unemployment.
Male influence is no less to blame for amateur athletic culture than female influence or female passivity to shaping the culture. Blaming men is convenient, male jocks make wonderful blame-targets (right, Duke lacrosse team?).
If you think RED-S is a problem, try CTE on for size. Or football players' worthless post-college knees. Health issues and body damage are every bit as problematic and endemic in male amateur sports as in female sports.
It's time to quit blaming men for it.
2
Thank you for this amazing article!!!!
This is really a funny article. Does the author think that 'abuse' in sports training is reserved for girls ? Boys do the same thing. Bulking up for sports like football. Carrying way more weight than their frame was designed to. Taking steroids to get that little something extra. Go figure that most of these guys break down and are out of the game in their 20s. Look at how colleges abuse these kids. Give them a scholarship, cakewalk 'classes', just because thew can run fast, shoot the 3, hit the big HR. Then they get hurt and it's all over. It;s win at all costs. No points for coming in second. It's the great American way. For ALL young wannabe athletes.
4
The number of times I have read the phrase "lost my period" in this comment section tells me all I need to know.
3
How about starting with this: female athletes should be coached by females; male athletes should be coached by males. How about some symmetry here? How often do we see women coaching boys or men? Never? It seems pretty basic: stop allowing men to coach girls and women.
4
It just blows my mind how seriously people take competitive sports. I mean really, who cares? If you're having fun, great. If you're training for months/years, and living your entire life around it, well, that's just wacky and perverted.
1
My daughter, in high school, was a dual sport competitive athlete. In softball, her hs and travel ball coach was always insisting she needed to bulk up while her cross country coach preferred thin wire builds. She was the number 2 runner on her team yet both coaches and spectators seemed surprised she ran so fast as they thought her build was more like a soccer player. She managed to push past the weight issue and successfully went on to running for pleasure. The thing that got to me was she is 5'6" and weighs 115, certainly not too heavy for running and not too thin for softball in which she was recruited to play in college. All her coaches were male; perhaps it is time for more women to coach.
47
I ran cross country and track throughout high school and my coach was one of the worst people I knew. I ended up quitting because his energy (often negative) ruined the fun of the sport. He was the win by any means necessary type which included policing what we ate. I was already a vegetarian so my diet was restricted anyways and my coach did not help. I ran about 8 miles everyday and then lift afterwards and that makes you understandable hungry. My coach however pushed us to always choose “healthy” options, which was usually fruit, veggies and nuts (maybe). A person can’t live on foods like that without the close supervision of a nutritionist and my 16 year old self was not very nutrition savvy. I got really sick, lost my period, and started eating meat again. Even at that point I wasn’t putting nearly enough food into my body because I wanted to optimize my performance and lose weight. I was above average height and a very healthy weight when I was that age but I was not noticeably thin like my teammates and myself and my coach blamed my at times mediocre performances on this. I know now that this is obviously wrong, but no one told me or my teammates otherwise back then. I had teammates who wouldn’t eat the day of races, and would eat tiny amounts of food if they knew we had a tough work out. I’m in college and I see the affects of this lingering in myself and in my former teammates, many of them have eating disorders. Coaches can ruin lives and they need to do better
36
@C I think everyone on this thread can learn from the wise commenter above: "The ignorance of people in authority will not stop at the edge of the track." Understanding this will not just help people realize when they are engaging in unhealthy behaviors, but also could save our country and the world.
2
I was recruited to play Division 1 soccer at a top ten program, a reality which had been a dream of mine since I was a little girl.
Trying earn the starting position as a freshman, I dove headlong into the weight training program where football trainers had the women's soccer team doing power cleans and deadlifts, and I watched my small arms try to lift twenty-five pound dumbbells in each hand.
By the time it was all said and done, I had gained close to 40 pounds of muscle on my natural frame of 115 because people convinced me I was too small for Big Twelve soccer. That my body "did not belong."
Afterward, my body didn't feel like mine anymore. It felt like it had been taken away from me, and I developed an eating disorder when I tried to lose the weight.
And lose it I did--at my lowest I was approximately 94 pounds at 5'4". Now, as a 37 year old woman, I have a much healthier relationship with food and my body. But it never really goes away. The struggle follows you, and it generally starts when high-achieving female athletes are in the quest to please and to exceed.
35
@Ashley My daughter developed an eating disorder at 14, when it became evident that she would have curves and a solid build rather than the straight, thin, hip-less build popular in the early 2000s. She also played college soccer. She's in her 30s now and still struggles. It took 2 years to recover her health and almost 10 to recover herself. Eating disorders are serious, and they are discounted as "psychological," "hysterical" and something mostly women suffer from. Thank you for this honest post.
7
@Katz
Thank you for your words. Please tell your daughter, if she is not aware, that there is someone who understands what she is going through (and has gone through) in a deep, personal way.
It is always good to know and remember that those who have been struck by such a thing, both the individuals and also the loved ones of those individuals, have a familial support, even in the form of strangers. If I could put a heart emoji on here, I would.
9
I was a division 1 swimmer, a sport for which to my knowledge there is no clear relationship between body fat and performance. Despite this, we were subjected to “marshmallow meetings” in which we sat in our bathing suits in the locker room and one-by-one each team member was publicly assigned 1, 2 or 3 marshmallows depending on her size. This abuse was delivered by our coach, who was, incidentally, female.
I believe every member of that team exhibited some degree of disordered eating. Some of us have detectable psychological impact decades later. I highly doubt that our performance in the pool was improved.
I have heard enough stories about public weigh-ins, body composition testing, and other forms of public weight shaming to believe that this abuse is systemic in our collegiate women’s sports culture.
Lauren, you are right on that something has to change. I actually cried reading the part where you describe how your coach reinforced your positive body image. A great start would be if coaches of all genders were better informed on normal female physical development
52
When my daughter was in second (yes, second) grade, all the kids were given a lecture about the evils of obesity then had their BMI measured. She's always been very athletic and muscular. I can't remember the exact number, but the two girls she was next to in line had much lower numbers - they were the skinniest kids in the grade. She was upset about the number, despite that she was a normal healthy weight and excelled at sports. I have no idea what the school BMI mass measurement was supposed to achieve; kids should have regular physical exams by professional health care providers who can determine if weight is a health risk.
72
I was a cross country runner for a Division III high school in the early 2000s. I was competitive and captain of team my senior year. My coach exhibited the same behavior, the skinnier you are, the faster you will become. My weight was a constant battle and the more I trained, the more my times dropped. I developed a stress fracture in the leg which eliminated my chances of running in college. However this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I got to enjoy running at my own pace. I’m 37 and have run marathons and half marathons with competitive times for my age group. I continue to train and have many years of running ahead of me.
Since I was one of the fastest on my high school team, my coach was easier on me. But not so much on other girls who were less competitive. One girl joined the team to get in shape. She was a natural athlete and her father was a former professional football player. Our coach pushed her hard to be thinner - perhaps in his mind, he thought he was pushing her to be better. Of course she developed a severe eating disorder and was hospitalized the year after I graduated. She did recover but that attitude stole a year of her life.
We had no nutritional education or emotional support. This ‘awakening’ for women’s running is long overdue. I applaud all women, professional or not, sharing their stories. It makes me so hopeful for the next generation of runners.
109
@Meg
The classical idea of education as the development of the complete person has been lost.
2
A lot of commenters are missing her point about a performance dip. She is saying girls in late adolescence/early twenties are supposed to diet to fight their bodies and fight a natural performance dip, but this fight against their bodies sets them up for failure and shorter careers. If they were allowed to ride out the changes more naturally, they could go on to better careers in their later 20s.
130
@L Women in the USA are “allowed” to do as they please. But in competitive sports, most people have the goal of winning. It’s not intuitive-nor does the author suggest- how to set up a system in which woman and girls choose a competitive sport, but choose to forgo winning until their mid-twenties.
13
@patroklos
I imagine if women had the option of training to compete at the highest levels of a given sport in a way that respected their physical and emotional health for the years to come, they'd choose that. But what we're learning is that coaches prefer to drive younger women / girls to burn out rather than reaching their full potential.
If you read Mary Cain's story, she faithfully did all the harmful stuff her coach demanded. She went from the fastest girl in the world to a woman who couldn't compete because she hadn't nourished her mind and body adequately during the punishing and destructive training overseen by what appears to be a sadistic, narcissistic coach whose stupid ideas have shaped the sport.
If what you take from these stories is that the fruitless devastation wreaked on women's bodies is somehow necessary, you might want to re-read these pieces.
7
We don't expect peak performance from an automobile without gas in the tank, regular maintenance, good tires, and adequate coolant in the radiator. Why do we expect athletes to excel when we deprive them of the human equivalents?
138
@Jane Because the sports industry is built around marketing profitable sportswear and in some cases entertainment media contracts. Follow the money, and we see why "good looking" athletes are groomed and selected.
19
@Rocky - I'm confused - isn't it about winning?
@Jane
We don’t expect an automobile to race up cliffs no matter how well it is maintained. This is not what the female body is optimized for.
3
The runners aren't touching much. That's good.
Back in the early days before WWII, male long-distance runners elbowed each other so much some people had to just drop out and there were a lot of bloody guys at the finish line.
It never works for the advertising and imae people to manage athletes. It opens the door to a world of hurt.
How much money has the lamentably gullible Colin Kaepernick missed out on because someone more involved with outside causes got into his head and took it off of the game?
Horrifically terrible treatment of females! Shame on Nike and ‘the powers that be’ for brutalizing athletes.
1
Thank you! Thank you! Thanks you!!!!!
Serious running is ridiculous. That thinking should be ended my 6th grade when you want to see who's faster -- yourself or Johnny.
1
unfortunately, most of the answers absolve parents who pimp-out their girls and boys for some vicarious jollies. there will always be sick people in the world a la Nasser etc. but where are the parents pushing them to death so they can get their 5 mins of bragging rights.
Clearly, not eating seems to have some sort of benefit for women in running (not sure why that is). In any case, this is competitive sport for crying out loud. And what about male wrestlers? - you don't think they have similar issues making weight? And what about high school males who throw out their arms and ruin their knees? You don't think that over-training and pressure to perform is not already an issue broadly across the sports world? Stop abuse from coaches - I get it - but mid-long distance running is a an absolute meritocracy - win or go home already (because somebody else will train harder). If the author has a better way, then have at it. Let those with the "better" training and coaching methods decide the debate reap the spoils. Move along - nothing more to see here.
3
Simone Biles is the most accomplished gymnast ever. She's muscular and strong and soars like an eagle. Can you imagine anyone telling her she's too heavy?
We need to respect our female athletes in every sport and see them as the champions they are, not eye candy.
25
Girls in late adolescence naturally gain weight for the evolutionary imperative of carrying a first pregnancy at around that time. But, since women nowadays are athletes, students, and professionals in their late teens and early 20s - and NOT baby incubators - there's no particular reason they should put on extra fat at that point in their lives. As long as a girl/woman has enough weight and body fat percentage to maintain the hormones necessary for bone health (as demonstrated by a menstrual cycle), then it's perfectly fine and healthy to stay at the lower/leaner end of the spectrum.
Someone responded to a previous comment, stating that the young female runners in the photo should weigh more than they do. I'd counter that if their goal is maximal fertility, then yeah, they should each have an additional 5-10 pounds of fat on their frames. But if their goal is to be strong, competitive athletes, then they are all at very good weights. I don't see any emaciated, stick-thin people in this picture - they are lean, muscular, and strong appearing. As a woman, I love seeing strong and muscular women competing in sports.
2
I'm disappointed that the author chose to exclusively blame men for everything she sees wrong with her sport. If all of this starts with the younger age groups, where are the parents in this critique? Mysteriously absent. Are there no women coaches in women's running? Or is it that the women coaches are doing everything perfectly and only male coaches are being "abusive"? The answer isn't within.
I think this is an important issue, but it's far more complex, and there are other groups of people involved in creating or enabling sports culture, than the simplistic cause-and-effect stated here.
Otherwise, a well-written piece.
44
@J.C.
I don't think the author is suggesting that some women aren't complicit in the system they encounter, whether as athletes or coaches. But the system itself is male -- created and defined by men, for male bodies.
As in many other areas of our society, bucking the system takes insight and courage. Not every black NFL player joined Kap in kneeling. Though it was obvious to many of us that he was taking a righteous position -- not a stand -- many, many people were frightened. They are the conformists who defend existing structures, no matter how harmful.
19
@J.C.
Whenever anything bad happens to a woman, it is a man’s fault.
2
No women coaches? Perhaps because of treatment like this when they're young athletes. Face it, dude,sports are run mostly by men. Where's Nike and all their millions in all this?
1
The system that the author decries is a system that was built by feminism and Title IX. The system is built on the feminist premise that women can do anything men can do.
The author's argument against that system is very dangerous, because if young women are biologically different in athletics, and should accept different performance standards, why should we not acknowledge that young women are biologically different in non-athletic pursuits such as the workplace, and should accept different performance standards there?
I predict that as a result of this dangerous argument, the author -- not just her argument, but the author herself -- will be vilified, demonized, isolated and silenced.
9
You are entirely misconstruing her argument: she is not saying young women should be held to different performance standards- she is saying that their bodies need a different regimen of care than young men’s body’s at the same age in order to perform at their highest level. In other words, be able to compete at the highest levels of performance, adolescent girls’ fitness should not be assessed on the metrics of weight and thinness as these metrics set them up for injury and under-performance. The performance standards are the same, what needs to change is the approach to training.
44
@Elizabeth H. Your argument implies that coaches are incompetent and stupid. I doubt it. Coaches are paid for results, and they get results. They get results by injuring the female body. They do that because that's what gets results.
There are eating disorders and there is pressured weight loss. One is internal, the other external. The distinction needs to be made. People with eating disorders do not just decide one day that they are damaging their bodies and stop the behavior. They are unable to without treatment, and that treatment has a very low success rate. That is why it is recognized as an illness, not a choice. Mary did not refer to her experience as eating disorder, and that was a correct understanding. This writer is throwing around the term as if it were synonymous with being pressured to lose weight. Thus perpetuating the misunderstanding of a very complicated set of psychiatric disorders.
1
Okay, first, we go through a difficult and contentious period of educating men that girls ought to be treated exactly as boys, to the point of mandating, by law, equal treatment in college and high school sports programs. Expectations are raised for girls, performance improves and keeps improving. Now a backlash because the regimen - the male genderized regimen - doesn’t acknowledge the physical differences between girls and boys. Ok, fair enough, so it’s time to make some adjustments. But if it’s too hard in girls then maybe it’s too hard on boys, too. My son’s brutal regimen for rowing was over the top. Truly nuts. But understand that if we back off - and that’s ultimately what the author is demanding - performance will decline. So the bigger issue is whether we think it’s reasonable to keep pushing athletes beyond their perceived limits in order to squeeze out ever-better performance results. This isn’t a gender-specific issue and it goes to the very purpose of competitive sports.
8
@MWR
And “who” are pushing these young boys and girls to go way beyond their physical limits in the name of competition? Why?
Money? Fame? Power?
Well said, and long overdue. Coaches must put athletes and their health before everything else. If they don't, they shouldn't be in coaching.
Odd that anyone would prefer a salad over pasta the day before a race. What do they feed the runners before the Boston Marathon? Spaghetti. The salad should be on the side.
"We do not currently have a sports system built for girls." Agreed, and I would complete that sentence to read "We do not currently have a sports system built for girls and boys or most anyone" when by sports we are referring to highly competitive amateur and professional so-called "sports." There is nothing sporting about all this. I enjoy sports participation, but nothing like what seems to be involved with professional (including college and Olympic) sports today.
1
I am thankful for this article. I agree with the writer that sports culture makes a difference both in terms of health and competition. I was also a female runner in high school in the late 90s and college in the early 2000s. I was not even remotely as talented as the writer, and due to this and other factors I was not subjected to the same pressures. Still, on my own motivation, I decided to be underweight after my boyfriend at the time pointed out that I was probably slower than desired due to my weight. It definitely helped my performance to drop weight, but my coach and teammates picked up on the change. My coach actually told me he would kick me off the team unless I gained 15 pounds. Eventually I did, and when I captained the team I tried to model better body image and healthy eating for my teammates. While I was responsible for my own weight issues, I can see that my team’s culture significantly helped me, where as the alternative would have exacerbated the problem. This article is relevant for many athletes, not only female athletes. There are not easy answers, but awareness of the issue and efforts at wellness help. There are cookbooks for runners that encourage better energy balance, there are sports brands that encourage better body image, and there are coaches who look beyond just winning. I don’t have any sort of solution that can apply at the elite level, but wanted to highlight that there is also a lot of positivity in sports culture.
4
A number of responders to this article seem to equate low body weight and anorexia with better performance. I believe that is incorrect. The writer of this article and others point out, eating a salad for dinner the night before a race did NOT lead to winning, but a pasta dinner did. And female athletes who succumb to pressure to lose weight to the point of anorexia lose their menstrual periods, lose bone mass, lose energy, and lose races. They sustain bone fractures and other injuries related to osteoporosis which happens when there is no estrogen circulating in the body.
The main point is that women's bodies are very different from men's and therefore coaches should be aware of those differences when coaching and advising about nutrition, ideal weight, and performance curves.
The other point is that a diet culture in which underweight bodies are considered more attractive contributes to women developing anorexia nervosa, a very dangerous disease that not only destroys athletes' careers but can and does also lead to death. Yes men also develop the disorder, but they do not face the same level of cultural pressures women face to be super thin. So yes it is a women's issue, just as football injuries such as concussions and macho culture impact men primarily, anorexia and diet culture impact more women, on and off the running track.
18
The Athletic Dept measures a coach's success by how many medals the team wins. This season and last season. They cannot measure5 or 10 seasons in the future. The potential winning coach 10 seasons from now cannot be distinguished from the potential long term losing coach.
In WW2, the Army used COs as guinea pigs. The COs were fed very low calorie diets to imitate concentration camp diets. I imagine that the medical information, including the blood markers of too much caloric restriction, can be found.
If not, similar markers of women being treated for anorexia might be available. Test female athletes before meets for these markers. If evidence for extreme caloric restriction is found, the athlete does not compete and the coach is penalized separately. Since athletes are tested anyway (for illegal drugs) this would not necessarily require more from them.
Above a certain threshold, the coach would be banned.
This would even out the playing field, get rid of "win at all cost" coaches and protect the athletes' health.
1
I'm 89 years old and only played HS intramural and playground sports as a teen - plus tennis when older. Did lots of swimming and hiking. Interesting subject but I thought the article lacked focus and definition of terms. What is an eating disorder? Pasta was mentioned as a good food for runners. What's the basis for that idea? Why are African marathon winners so skinny? Do we know the answer to that one? Someone mentioned that the underlying problem is not gender or diet, but competitive sports itself. Better topic for an article than this one, I think. I thought the article raised more questions than it answered. Enjoying reader comments. Thank you.
8
@Thomas
Excuse me for saying so, but you seem out of touch. Indeed, not until the 1980s did this problem (eating disorders) become part of the national dialogue. Yet, any one who reads even a limited amount of sources woudl be aware of this terrible problem and how society undermines healthy esteem for all girls and women.
I'm going to expand this out a bit. I think we are seeing the results of an American obsession to win at all costs. "If people get chewed up in the process, so what? They obviously were not dedicated/ tough/ready/willing to sacrifice, it is only the winners who count." Many sports require both women and men to abuse their bodies to succeed. Ms. Cain & Ms Fleshman have documented the effects of running on young women, at the other end look and the long term survival of NFL Linemen at the end of their career. We have created a system that uses and discards people for our entertainment. Perhaps we should be looking at that as well.
15
@Bruce1253
At, yes. It's Americans.
No, really—‘cuz as we all know, football fans in England and elsewhere, upon losing a hard-fought game, simply sigh and say, “Too bad! Guess we’ll have to play better next time!” as they run over to hug the opposing team’s fans...
...cuz, you know, they’re not obsessed with winning, like Americans.
3
Its sad to see an otherwise well thought out piece sag into the usual “men bad, women victims” paradigm.
Male athletes are also forced into damaging their bodies to win at all costs. See: steroids and other drugs. See also: the entire sport of football.
Female athletes, like male athletes, have the right and duty to look out for themselves.
Coaches have the duty to help their athletes win, within the bounds of decency and ethics. Sometimes they don’t do that, whether they are male or female.
Maybe let’s try to to fix the problems in sports without the tiresome gender war language that just puts everyone in their corners and doesn’t help anyone.
17
I don’t see what’s tiresome about an issue not often enough discussed. Thank you for your insightful and personal take on an all consuming issue.
11
@Objectively Subjective I don't see it. The article doesn't promote gender warfare, it just points out that men and women have different needs and reforms are needed so coaches recognize that. Who can deny the evidence that one element of what has been wrong is that there are some men who abuse power? But the real point of the articles is that the incentives in women's sports programs are destructive due to a culture that can only be corrected by holding people accountable when they treat others poorly.
16
@Grac
Um, no—the fact that some girls succumb to the no doubt awful pressures of college athletics—and perhaps their own ambitions—is not, in the larger scheme of things, an “an all consuming issue”
...except perhaps for those intent on making everything fodder for the gender wars—and those people are indeed tiresome.
2
Thanks for this great article. It's high time this issue received the attention it deserves.
9
If we accept Ms. Fleshman's hypothesis that women peak in their late 20s and 30s, how do we square that with the high school-college-pro pipeline? The best (and usually thinnest) high school runners will get the college scholarships. The best (and usually thinnest) college runners may catch on with a team and continue training at a high level.They will live like college students and work at a running store, and either succeed or fail in a few years. Neither athletes nor teams will wait for a potentially fine runner to grow into her body at 26 or later.
1
No, very obviously not. But coaches and scouts will see talent and harbor it rather than encourage poor health.
5
@VinceInSeattle True enough Vince. So, who steps in? Do we adapt a system similar to one in Europe for models, to wit: you must have a certain B.M.I. to be a model?
More number of women coaches will perhaps solve this problem. I think American coaches are training their athletes in line with Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes, who are skinny. They are too thin on account of lack of plenty of facilities including necessary infrastructure and proper food even. Inspite of that it might be working out for them but not for Americans.
It’s onus upon the concerned coaches to arrange for nutritionists and psychologists to take care of their trainees properly.
1
Thank you Lauren for being an advocate of healthy training and healthy body image.
15
in my experience, some of the traits of anorexia are conducive to fast running. It's a horrible disease and an even worse death; nonetheless, often it's marked by obsessive exercise and dissociation from pain, as well as obvious diminished body weight.
fleshman is right: a coach who cultivates illness in his athletes is an abuser.
but it's nobody's fault that female athletes peak earlier than their male counterparts. similarly, it's just plain bad luck for everyone that extremely low body weight can provide a performance edge.
7
The article said the exact opposite - low weight creates ill health in female athletes and lack of energy to produce superior sports performance.
1
Keep talking, women. Men need to hear this -- all of it.
10
It will only get worse now that we are allowing trans athletes to compete as women, after almost 50 years of trying to get women to compete in sports we are now putting them a disadvantage they can hope to overcome leading to only more issues for female athletes
8
@EAH I was just going to snark that this article fails to recognize that gender is just a construct. One's right to present oneself in accordance to one's self image, and to be rendered the courtesy of recognition of that, does not extend to demanding that others deny that reality is deeper than self image.
3
As a former twelve-season NCAA III track and cross-country runner who developed an eating disorder my freshman year of college, I think it is imprudent not to discount other factors that lead to the onset of eating disorders. My desire to succeed in collegiate-level competition was merely a precipitating factor in the development of anorexia nervosa. Indeed, the groundwork for my condition was laid long before in childhood and adolescence by family dysfunction that affected my self-perception. This acknowledgment is not meant to imply that every athlete who develops an eating disorder has family issues that are at its root, but I do think it is important not to exclude in the discussion other factors as precursors to the onset of these serious conditions. The DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, 5th Edition) includes anorexia nervosa and related disorders because these are psychiatric illnesses that have many elements to their etiology.
5
What's fascinating to me is that women's bodies are perceived as a "problem" in too many societies. In some cultures, mostly religious, they must be covered up; women are blamed for men's reaction to their bodies and forced to suffer the consequences by making themselves less visible under veils, ghostly chadors, funereal scarves and ugly robes or prairie dresses or habits. In others, they can show their bodies, but those bodies are expected to be perfect. In most societies, women can only make peace with their bodies if men let them. We aren't there yet when young women are only just now being believed when they complain about abuse by team doctors, male coaches, and others.
18
Salazar is inexcusable, especially he suffered some health scare himself. However, Nancy Clark, the nutritional guru, has been well known within the running circle. So it is not like there is an informational vacuum out there.
Understandably, championship is a seduction. People do strange stuff to achieve it. A second here and a second there. Armstrong was suffering from cancer but yet he shot up designer hormone or whatever strange brew concocted in the lab.
Still, I am glad you and Mary have come through the other side. Perhaps a coach to a runner is like a guru to a devotee. However, sometimes we need to listen to reason. Nothing comes from nothing; you are what you eat. No matter what your coach said
1
It’s not grown women that dominate tennis and the other few high revenue women’s sports, and for every teenager that doesn’t want to sacrifice to win there is another who does and will. Unless you can change human nature, I don’t foresee how you change this.
5
Bravo, Ms. Fleshman, for speaking out about this! I hope that simple education, which has begun in your article, will help young women athletes and their parents better understand the best path to success, so that they can advocate for it with trainers and coaches.
4
Sorry, I don’t see how you put this on men. Men have their own difficulties achieving the upper crust of their sport also. Do they blame women?
10
@Rockaway Pete -- She isn't blaming men, she's pointing out a problem with a system that _does_ center on a male performance curve because it evolved at a time when women weren't commonly athletes, and she is saying _everyone_ needs to work together to fix it. You likely interpreted it as 'blaming men' because that's what you expected her to say, but that isn't the tone or content of her language.
23
@M. Toward the end she threw in something about the abuses of powerful men abusing their positions being a problem in women's sports, which some are reading as blaming men for all this. That's true, but misleading, because what she's saying is that the fact that the whole system is messed up allows those sorts of abuses and also this short sighted training. The incentives and the power balance are wrong and look what happens.
5
@M. Ehh? She says she wants to change the nature of athletics? Maybe, but what she wrote reads a lot more like going after men and blaming men. Or is that just the work of a headline writer?
Yes, a sympathetic reading of what she wrote can be taken as going after ignorance. Part of the issue is that the coaches are mainly men.
But part of this is about the overwhelming desire of the women athletes to please their coaches.
2
Excellent article and especially thoughtful comments. Thanks to all.
I’ll start at the easy end. Football is today’s gladiator sport, with no public concern for the players, other than the generally important and protected, star quarterbacks. No blood, no glory. And we like crashes.
From college to pro sports, when there is a moderately large gate receipt potential and/or alumni interest, (“That could be me down there!” , thinks the glory-deprived, insecure audience. No. Not. And why?) The financial reward way ahead of camaraderie and the scholarships become tools for “glory”. Does the human subconscious wish we had slaves to fight our proxy sports wars?
We seem to have continuing need for our military. Encourage your kids to join the army and protect democracy throughout the word, instead. Claim that glory. You can then be proud.
1
What medical qualifications are coaches required to have? If not why not? What qualified medical supervision is required? If not, why not ?
10
Are we to believe that near-great women runners could be great just by eating a little more, but that they and their coaches haven’t figured out this simple speed secret?
Distance running is a grind and being great requires talent as well as training right up to the edge of injury. Among the most talented high school athletes of either gender, success at the next level is often about capacity to train without injury as much as it is about talent. Individual stories of kids who flame out are as common as they are sad. There are lots of stories of college-aged men who flame out, and no intrigue as whether it was because of mistreatment due to gender. Rather than “I changed my body for my sport,” an article by one of those men would simply be titled “Elite distance running is really hard and not everyone’s body holds up”
15
Never doubt the claims of the male ego despite evidence to the contrary.
1
The exception does not prove the rule. For athletes in most sports, a high muscle:weight ratio is what you strive for due to the laws of physics. This is true whether you are male or female. Are there some cases where this will not be true - absolutely! And the cases of Fleshman and Cain may be two exceptions to this general rule. Unfortunately, one cannot at this time predict which athletes will be the exception. It is ultimately up to the athlete to decide what is best for them.
1
@Rob-Chemist -- I'm not sure I understand your comment, because the author isn't talking about an exception to change a rule. Her whole point is basically what you say -- that a high muscle:weight ratio is important -- but with the addition that female bodies develop on a different curve than male bodies, such that during late adolescence 'healthy' means a different ratio for a girl than for a boy. The author is suggesting that, all else being equal, this will inherently result in a different performance curve, such that a women's natural peak should be expected to be later in her career than a man's natural peak. But, because girls are trying to target ratios that were developed for male bodies of the same age during a key phase of development (when fat accumulates naturally in a female body due to hormonal changes, not lifestyle), many girl-runners are not eating in a way that allows them to build that muscle you mention. It's a perfectly logical point.
15
@M. My point is that more weight (i.e., lower muscle:fat ratio) may be beneficial for some girls, but not all. That almost all world class female runners have an extremely high muscle:fat ratio suggests, but certainly doesn't prove, that this is the optimal situation for both males and females.
I know these stories are supposed to be about gender but to me they are no different than the football concussion stories. Extreme sports culture is repulsive. Sports have no place in schools. Colleges should lead by eliminating football and terminating all athletic recruits. Lionel Messi was not forced to pretend to be a college student so he could play for Barcelona. The madness needs to stop.
17
@Ines you ignore the fact that the vast majority of students enjoy participating in sports. It's healthy play.
7
Healthy play is one thing, but these muscle-bound (or alternately, emaciated) athletes are neither healthy nor, at times, sportsmanlike.
College is for college. Let the kids play non-competitive games.
12
@Ines The Lionel Messi's of the football world enter into contractual obligations with teams at an early age and get no real education. Even the limited education obtained by US scholarship athletes is a lot more than these young men receive from professional soccer. Their system is also a huge pyramid that leave most entrants by the wayside if they are injured or do not measure up. At least scholarship athletes are allowed to continue in school if they are severely injured.
1
I think it would be helpful to post the height, weight and body fat percentages of successful women athletes. I heard a simple rule for women: 100 pounds plus 5 pounds per inch over 5 feet. That is, a healthy 5’6 athletic woman weighs about 130 pounds. I’m sure densely muscled weightlifters will have another 10-15 pounds. More detailed guidance should be available.
2
@David Doney
That equation is a very antiquated “rule” put in place by health insurance companies.
Every body is different. There is no simple weight/height ratio that equates to healthy.
8
@David Doney - a ‘simple’ rule, indeed. I’m 5’2” and have 102 lbs of lean body mass. That rule would put me at 110lbs, with only 8lbs of body fat, or 7% body fat. That is below the 11-14% body fat that is the minimum essential fat for women. At that level,of body fat, women lose their menstrual cycle and are prone to osteoporosis and at higher risk for cardiovascular disease. As a competitive swimmer in high school, a teammate got the idea she was ‘too fat’ and lost weight. She became very lean, and her performance got much, much worse. As an adult triathlete, I’ve talked with many age groupers who have found their performance is often best at a higher weight than when they were thinner. There is no universal rule for a ‘healthy’ weight, but rather coaches should help athletes find their own ideal, and recognize that thinner is not always faster.
7
College sports and professional sports are built by money, which has no gender.
15
@David Henry The particular professional sport in the current conversation - running - has very little money behind it. Semi-comfortable living wage for the top few dozen in the world, and much less for everyone else. The "Ogre" coaches themselves make not much money either. It's all build on ambition and chase for glory. It's a cruel game with very few seats for people to succeed, and harsh failure for everyone else. Them's are the stakes. That said - gender has little to do with it other than that women entered the arena more recently.
3
Thank you for writing, Lauren. Your experience is all too common, and important to be known.
In the recent articles on this topic, what strikes me is that none of the coaches involved in abusing the women athletes are women coaches.
It's lousy to generalize, but maybe this is a core reason of this problem. Let's change the culture of hiring men for coaching women. Maybe that will help correct this culture of abuse of our top woman athletes.
18
@Ed
I was a runner in the days before eating disorders and mental illness became common. I ate whatever I wanted and never thought about my normal healthy weight, and did well in competition. Perhaps this as because we had a female coach.
7
Winning at all costs leads to many compromises, including doing things to your body. Add muscle, lose weight, make weight on match day, develop muscles so they tear at the slightest provocation, eat strange things from the athletic food store, take PEDs, ignore the usual joys of development, and so on.
Men encourage it, women encourage it, boys and young men do it, girls and young women do it. Parents allow it to happen while their children are moving up the competition ladder. Athletes let it happen to them, though they are clearly in a very vulnerable position.
Simple answers like "it's all the fault of men oppressing women" will always be wrong and won't help solve the many problems. Lots of bad actors, some men some women.
17
These articles, and I say “these articles” because there have been several about female body image and running in the last week, make women seem weak and pathetic, when we are strong and defiant if necessary.
Where are the articles about male body image and sports? Some men gain 100 pounds to play football, others lose the equivalent to compete as runners. You don’t think male runners are skinny? Why aren’t they seeking sympathy in the media?
We want equal pay and claim we are not overly emotional when Elizabeth Warren is described as unhinged or unlikeable. Yet, we need multiple articles in the NYT telling us how vulnerable we can be?
Articles like this make women seem like delicate flowers. No progress will come until we stop complaining.
23
@Lauren Lauren,
Lauren,
I appreciate your response, but I do not understand why you seem to view the vulnerability in these articles as negative. Brene Brown, a passion advocate for being vulnerable, calls it strong. Not "weak." Certainly not "pathetic."
Women who express what has happened to them do not have to be “delicate flowers”; neither would I tell a man in sports who discussed a comparable issue that he was “less of a man.” I would say this kind of vulnerability is courageous—male, female, and all others who identify as someone else.
In a world, where strides are being made to assuage the hard lines of gender identity, we are unfortunately still defining ourselves by particular societal standards and stereotypes.
To me—though only my opinion—Lauren Fleshman and Mary Cain are strong women voicing a root problem that is pervasive to ALL athletes, which is how to passionately love the sport we were born to play on that field or court or track, what have you, in the midst of the detrimental effects that can attack our bodies inside the pressures of adhering to “what it takes” to be that good.
Football players, for instance, have spoken out about CTE and memory loss and what these things have done to their families. Does this mean they are seeking “sympathy” in the media, as you say about these women? Does this mean, as you also say about these women, that these men are “complaining”?
Perhaps they just want a voice. And that is not gender specific. That is brave.
14
@Lauren
Breathtakingly callous or obtuse?
The athletes writing "these stories" are retelling their experiences as adolescents and VERy young women.
Take a look at the power imbalances still in place with women like Gretchen Carlson and all the women working in the notoriously sexist finance industry. Or medicine. Or science. Hardly delicate flowers.
2
@Lauren what article did you read? I see an incredibly brave and strong woman who knows herself and is fighting for the next generation of female runners. She's inspirational and certainly has more guts than you seem have.
1
I think this attitude in the world of sports is just a distillation of the poison girls and women are fed by western society. Thinner is better, and curves are suspect. If you want to perform at a high level in your sport, you need to look like a teenaged boy. If you want to be fashionable, you must have a thigh gap. Although I was never a competitive athlete, I was an active, athletic young woman. I was also consistently underweight for about 20 years. I now have severe osteoporosis, and I crosses the line from osteopenia into osteoporosis before I reached age 50. You don’t get a second chance to build strong bones. Fair warning.
27
Thank you Ms. Fleshman for bringing this issue to attention of all NY times readers! This is very important information for all high school female and male runners and their parents/guardians. Eating disorders can be deadly, so parents need to be aware...track and cross country is very popular in high schools today for both boys and girls....they are growing sports...this information is extremely valuable to parents. PS I just got back from cheering on the CCS High School Division X-C Meet in sunny Belmont, CA. The famous Crystal Springs Course!! One of the best X-C courses in the country! What a fun meet, What a great sport!!! Thank you for being an advocate for all athletes!!!
7
Marvelous. Thanks for speaking out, and don't let anyone stop you, either in pursuing your dreams the way your body is meant to, or in expressing yourself.
9
It is hardly a secret that athletes have stretched their bodies all sorts of unnatural ways in order to squeeze out a few extra nanoseconds or microns of performance. That has been true since the first full moon after the summer solstice in 776 BCE that saw the first Olympics in honor of Zeus, and before.
Then the physician and philosopher Galen said of boxers that, “…when the athletes grow old, they creep, wrinkle and squint due to the severe blows; their eyes fill with catarrhal liquids, their teeth fall, and their bones become porotic and break easily.”
The competitive nature of elite athletics has always resulted in injuries through overuse or overtraining, playing through pain to help their team, concussion that leaves lasting brain damage, accidents on bars or slopes, or doping that increases health risks.
Face facts: So long as there are winners' podiums, and athletes try to achieve what none have achieved before them, that won't change, except at the margins. Is Fleshman prepared to make that trade?
Athletes have always been co-conspirators, if not the driving forces, in this process. It is really unpardonable for Fleshman to dumb down this story into clichés like "unequal power dynamics" or, even more vile and unfair, "powerful men" harming girls and women. The "victims," if that is what they are, are overwhelmingly boys and men.
16
Superior athletic performance is not determined by male dominance or abuse but by a combination of genetic selection and science. If an athlete is consistently overspending energy reserves in anaerobic metabolism then her training regimen is wrong and her performance will suffer. A quest for high performance in any sport will invariably produce a body that is somewhat different from the norm. According to a recent paper in the Journal of Human Kinetics, "successful young gymnasts are part of a highly select group in terms of specialized motor skills, body size and shape" and "in general, gymnasts are shorter (in height) than their peers of the same chronological age, reach their predicted target adult heights, and have appropriate body composition as well as body mass for their maturity status (biological age); however, their pubertal maturation is somewhat late". Circumstances in which an athlete is required to conform to a particular physiognomy rather than perform at the highest level are likely to be rare as they are inherently self-defeating and entirely contrary to a science-based training program.
1
I don't know when this changed, but when I was growing up (born in '57) EVERYONE ate pasta before a distance race. Even us kids knew that...long-term fuel.
That is not to say that it was OK to be overweight as a runner! You were supposed to be lean and fit.
Remember Joan Benoit winning the 1984 Olympic marathon? She was beautiful and fit, not anorexic.
Female sprinters today are definitely built strong.
If you don't like the training program you're in, quit and find one that is better. It's not all on the coaches. We are all responsible for what happens to us, by the situations we put ourselves in.
11
When I was 17, I was a member of the first women's junior nationals water polo team in New Mexico after Title IV was passed. This was in the early 70s. I have a muscular body, not one that is naturally thin. At that time, many girls strove toward thinness. I began to become what I felt was plump and dieted. My coaches (both male) didn't pressure me. After swimming and in college, I began running. I'm 5'7 and lost 20 pounds, eventually weighing 115. I lost my period for a year.
I wasn't a high school runner but I'm competitive and I felt better running when I was on the thinner side. I raced many half marathons and 10ks and was competitive in my age group. I never stopped running. I'm 64, and run about the same mileage as when I was in my 20s and race half marathons.
What I learned at one point was how to eat nutritional foods that fueled my body, and to treat myself to some fatty or sweet foods once in a while or even a little every day depending on how far I've run. I felt the difference in my running when I ate that way. I maintained a healthy weight (more or less), which for me was 135. My sister, who is also a long-time runner, became anorexic in her 20s but through a strong will, overcame it. She too lost her period.
Now, she and I talk about foods we love and running. The running road never ends. It's the joy in our bodies that I hope all women (and men) feel when they run.
1
It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that excess weight is an issue for anyone, male or female, who runs competitively. I was in a running club for 20 years. Gaining weight is not a problem when you run six to eight miles a day.
3
@Paul McBride -- The problem isn't about 'gaining weight'. During late adolescence (as I'm sure you know), a healthy female naturally tends to have a different muscle:fat ratio than a healthy male of the same weight and height, due to hormonal changes occuring -- independent of lifestyle or being thin. Girls trying to achieve muscle:fat targets developed for boys of the same age (with the expectation that their career performance should also follow the same linear trajectory with age) end up denying themselves the nutrition and caloric intake required to develop the muscle and have the energy they need to meet their performance goals. The author seems to suggest 2 things: (1) that anticipated career performance trajectories for women might be S-shaped instead of linear; (2) that girls and support communities need to be properly educated about how to care for their bodies when they are still developing in order to set reasonable expectations and eventually achieve their performance goals.
2
Male athletes are also expected to remold their bodies. However, a key difference is that men and boys are told to build their bodies up, to make their bodies bigger. Women are told to LOSE, to make their bodies smaller. Why is that? Why aren't women told to build muscle rather than lose weight?
12
Speaking from experience, eating disorders are hardly limited to female athletes. Much of what is addressed here speaks to a larger issue of adolescent female self-esteem and boundaries. Women would be well advised to develop both early and exercise the latter often. The ignorance of people in authority will not stop at the edge of the track.
4
Wow. I see a lot of people don't get it, even now, even with a premier athlete speaking truth.
I coached my daughter through high school wrestling. (Yes, for the hopelessly backwards out there, women doe wrestle, and some do it very, very well.) She was the first female wrestler in her high school, and it left a few scars. But she left positive impacts, notably being the first wrestler in over 40 years to place at state 3 times.
She is not skinny, taking after both sides of the family. She is strong, and had as much upper body strength as a lot of the guys she competed against. Yet she was militant about NOT adhering to the common routine of weight management in a sport where frankly too many boys damage themselves trying to lose just 5 more pounds. She took my experience a generation prior to heart, and recognized that although she COULD lose the weight she felt she was better off not worrying about that and concentrating on skill and outthinking opponents. And she did.
Amateur athletics are about more than wins. It's about time everyone recognizes that.
14
Good points, but this should probably be extended to include some male athletes in other sports. Many or most of them are amazingly huge and muscular. Unnaturally so, one suspects. Football players in some positions are also approaching sumo wrestler dimensions.
People who wish to reach the pinnacle of human athletic achievement often do so at the cost of their long term health. I am not sure what to do about this, but it doesn’t seem like a smart trade off and those of us who enjoy various sports should not encourage it.
It might be better, in fact, if most of us got off the couch and participated in athletic activities ourselves. In a safe, healthy amateur way, without starving ourselves or injecting various substances into our bodies.
6
Changing one's body for sport is hardly a sexist issue. Both men and women athletes have long histories of body abuse. For men in addition to extreme dieting to make weight in some sports, think of boxing or football and the attendant brutal lifetime deleterious affects on their bodies. Making this an issue of sexism is inaccurate, wrong, polarizing and counter productive.
18
Why don't the players in the N.B.A., N.F.L, and M.L.B. look like the owners?
Why don't the best in track and field running events field in America look like the owners in those sports? Instead of the players?
Why don't the players in the N.H.L. look like the players in those other sports?
Sports are a reflection of color aka race, ethnicity aka national origin lack of equal socioeconomic political educational opportunity in America.
2
This seems wholly unrealistic. The entire sports complex is based upon winning affecting women and men (ask any pro football player). For some and perhaps the majority, their bodies cannot succeed in creating a winner, hence long term damage, use of drugs, foregoing of education, etc. It's up to the individual when they are of age or their parents prior to that to make informed decisions. This shift toward victimhood and lack of personal responsibility places both blame and responsibility in the wrong place
3
"Majority" is an exponential understatement.
No one should be forced or coerced into damaging their bodies. Especially for something as unnecessary and fleeting as sports. The global obsession with athleticism (and their bodies) is messed up. Tens of thousands don't gather to cheer on scientists. non-performing artists, engineers, etc. That's always been weird to me. Worshiping someone because they can go fast, or move a ball across a field well? Silly, IMO. I've also never liked competition over cooperation, but that's a whole other thing.
But, your body is your property and I fully believe you're allowed to do whatever you want with it and to it, as long as you're not actively hurting anyone else.
It sounds like the 'rule-books' of competitive sports need to change to reflect more modern, and healthy views of the human body.
5
These athletic organizations need to be forced to hire OUTSIDE consultants / advocates ( MDs, nurse practitioners) who are solely focused on the individual athlete’s mental and physical health.
These young people are destroying their bodies so people like Alberto Salazar can be rich and famous.
This is America.
7
Great piece, Lauren. Sport reflects a culture in which frenzied competition often now begins with preschool admissions.
Despite enjoying less pressure regarding weight in the culture at-large, males who pursue sports like distance running and cycling are not immune to this madness. It is interesting to think how these activities might change if we adopted a handicapping system like that used in horse racing.
1
It's so interesting to be reading these welcome and necessary articles about the reality of female bodies in athletics in parallel with all of the articles about how "sex is a spectrum," no one can really say what male and female are, and transwomen have no inherent advantage over women in sports. While we are working to improve treatment of girls and women in athletics, how about we also work to keep sports fair for women and girls by retaining single-sex sports groupings.
6
The math doesn't add up for me. How are these athletes not perpetually operating at a calorie deficit?
5
@Leigh - - Some people can literally go all day on a hamburger.Yes, I AM jealous....
All of the young women visible in the photograph look strong, muscular, and healthy! It appears they were disregarding their errant coaches’ advice to strive for stick-thinness. Good for them!
3
@GBR This comment illustrates the degree to which our concept of normal has been adulterated by the imagery presented in the public forum. Most of these young women are almost certainly of lower body fat percent than would be considered healthy for normal female development.
7
@LCA
I mean, if your idea of healthy female development means “fertility goddess”/ maximizing reproductive capacity, then yes, they would probably benefit from adding another 10-15lbs each. But if your idea of healthy female development means being strong and lean with BMI and body fat percentage on the lower end of the “normal” range, then these young women have nailed it!
1
"[Runners] visible in the photograph look strong, muscular, and healthy!" This is the comment of an athleticism missionary: shed your humanity and becime a roadrunner, jackrabbit or puma.
The essence of sport is that most people need to change their bodies to one degree or another in order to succeed. The only ones who don’t may be the so-called “natural” athletes, though even these must fine-tune their bodies and physical abilities in order to reach elite status.
That is why there are so few fat runners who can beat thin runners, or fat high jumpers who can beat thin high jumpers, etc.
There are only a few sports where being fat confers an advantage: e.g., sumo, football centers, etc.
People of course come in all shapes and sizes; most successful athletes tend not to be fat. This phenomenon is not limited to the US; check out the competitors in the great majority of Olympic sports.
6
@Mon Ray The question is not about being fat. It is a question of being thin vs. being extremely and harmfully thin.
When I was running, I was hospitalized several times for malnutrition related problems. I know several NCAA level runners who have also been hospitalized due to caloric malnutrition.. If you do not have enough fat to convert to fuel your body will start to steal that energy from your bones and other vital systems. The consequences of this type of malnutrition last for a lifetime and increase risks of heart disease and osteoporosis later in life.
35
My almost 14 year old daughter is a talented runner. She loves running and would train obsessively without guidance. According to BMI calculators, she is toward the low end of a healthy weight. However, unlike the majority of her 8th grade classmates, she has not yet gotten her period. Has anyone written a book on how to properly train female runners, including nutrition and running regimen, to maximize performance while staying healthy?
5
Check out the book by Nancy Clark, The Sports Nutrition Guidebook. It’s a great resource!
3
@Cathleen Burgess Also, Roar, by Stacy Sims is an excellent resource for female athletes. She is an exercise physiologist who specifically studies women's physiology and exercise. It includes advice about training (including related to the menstrual cycle) and nutrition.
2
Girls can get their period anywhere from age 12 to 15. Families who have late bloomers in their history often have girls who get their menses late. If you’re concerned, your family doctor is the one to go to,since they can check hormone levels and get you nutrition education.
I remain confused about what the author is suggesting. At first she argues against the practice of encouraging girls to have an extremely low BMI, and gives anecdotal evidence of the virtues of carb-loading to buttress her case. Later she suggests that being thin can indeed confer an advantage, and advocates deferring that advantage until the mid-twenties.
Given that most participants in competitive sports compete to win, it’s not clear how women will measure their evolving or potential abilities until they reach the “appropriate” age. Rather than offering ideas about how to evolve the paradigm, she bashes and blames men.
13
@patroklos
Many commenters below have already summarized the arguments clearly.
The point is that coaches are mistaking the correlation "many women who run fast are thin" to mean that "all women must be thin to run fast". So they over-pressure young women to become thinner with bad results - physical breakdowns, eventual worse results and shortened careers.
The author's argument is that while dropping weight seems to produce a temporary gain in speed, forcing someone to be unnaturally thin leads to injuries and underperformance in the long run. She also states that all women post-adolescence put on some weight and may go through a period of "plateauing" in performance as their bodies change. Right now, coaches try to resist this, leading to injuries and shortened careers like Mary Cain's. The author argues that running at a healthy weight is best and performance rises again in the 20s and 30s when many runners peak.
That seems pretty straightforward - I'm not sure why so many people are not getting it.
4
Maybe someday we'll be able to acknowledge that people come in all shapes and sizes, and there is NOTHING wrong with a person who isn't thin. The real problem is that women need to believe this for themselves and stop pushing the unrealistic "uni-body" for women, whether they are runners, gymnasts, and weight lifters, or knitters, painters, and readers.
10
The US would be both a better educated and healthier nation if we ended competitive high school and college athletics (phys ed and intramurals are still a good idea). Let athletics, which are important for young people, reside in clubs with professional coaches. Governments and charities can offer support to allow the talented but poor to participate. The academic year and the ages of graduations from high school and college distort the training of athletes, who would otherwise be trained to reach their natural peaks on a calendar set by their bodies, not by a coach under pressure to win high school and college championships.
13
We keep reading articles that complain, complain without any proposed solutions.
Lauren shows us how effective the exact opposite can be!
Every coach and athletic director in America should be reading this over and over and taking notes. School directors should be asking the school coaching staff to report about their response to this now-obvious problem.
Let's email copies of this to any coaches, ADs and board members we know!
6
I was on my college's varsity gymnastics team. We were something of a joke, as we never won. But none the less, the locker room was full of the jock ethos of sacrificing for the team. I hurt my lower back and the athletic department's head of physical therapy suggested that I should sit out of the season, he definitely felt my gymnastics career wasn't worth damaging my back permanently.
It was the first time I'd heard that, although it was obviously true. I did do the required rest and my lower back, 40 years later, is fine.
The head of physical therapy had been a weight lifter or wrestler, over dieted and ended up with a metabolic disorder, so he understood the cost of "no pain, no gain" something that was common to see in gyms in those days.
11
I don't understand how this coaching strategy became a thing..... I mean, the primary goal of any coach is to bring out the _best_ athletic performance in any given athlete so that the individual/school/team wins.
If forcing athletes to maintain a particular body weight resulted in _poorer_ performance (because of recurrent injuries, development of mental health problems, etc etc), how on Earth did the practice perpetuate?
If athletes performed poorly under these coaches tutelage (which it sounds like they did!), wouldn't the coach quickly be replaced by a different coach whose strategy resulted in excellent athletic performance for the athletes?
8
@GBR
If each coach got a random sample of athletes to train, and trained the same athletes for their entire careers, then there'd be at least a chance of this rational feedback happening. A celebrity coach like Salazar, who goes along with the financial support of Nike, can for a long time draw the top athletes based on celebrity and money. If his pressure produces temporary short-term gains, as this article suggests, then he can maintain his reputation for awhile as a winning coach even if his runners burn out and end their careers early. The proper assessment of his coaching takes some time. What's happening with
Salazar now is that that assessment is finally happening.
This article revolves around the fundamental differences in the way nature uses male and female bodies to produce the next generation. It says there are real-world consequences based on these differences which we ignore at our peril. I can't help but wonder what a society that seeks to deny maleness and femaleness is giving up.
19
I am 70 and grew up in the golden age of football. I watched my peers injure themselves for the team while in high school and later in life watched young men gain way too much weight to play ball. I think, sooner than later, football will go the way of boxing (and horse racing, it seems) but that is not the message I care to share.
Young people--male and female--need to hear from adults--real adults, not people who have been given titles, like coach or consultant--even doctor. People who have witnessed ego driven madness.
The author's parents must have been so proud when their daughter was accepted at Stanford. I know the University offers so many elements of a great education. But...not every element. I find myself thinking more often about the childhood parable of the foolish King: The Emperor Has No Clothes.
We boomers are currently being called out for our excesses and obsolete points of view. But, we still have much to say and add to current culture. For example, your beautiful daughter is asked to cut weight, your son to pack it on, by a guy with a paunch and a stop watch. Why?
Speak to power? authority...expertise. It's everyone's job.
34
@michael - You bring up a male counterpart to the story of the female runners pressured to lose weight. This is the story of the male football players pressured to gain weight. I'm your age, and back in our era a "big" football player, even in the NFL, weighed 250 pounds. Today. most college offensive lines average over 300 pounds.
But for almost all of these players their football career is over at age 22, and you have to lug all this weight around for the rest of your days. One answer is to "detrain" to systematically take the weight off without it turning to flab, but should young people really have to do this?
@Jerry Schulz Jerry, I appreciate that the answer to your question is obvious. I really wasn't trying to make the point that the pressures for young people to either lose or gain weight is border-line insane.
I wished to point out that people of our age have the advantage of perspective and can offer common sense antidote to the pressure packed world of youth. It is difficult sometimes to realize how much these very talented young people DON'T know. The world of analytics, competition, public accomplishment, and single mindedness may not be for everyone. The coaches aren't going to point that out.
1
Another concern is that there may be long term negative effects of these practices that do not show immediate symptoms, such as osteoporosis.
27
An athlete at 27 will look completely different to one who is 18 male or female. Bone density is different, fuel loads are different. A salad is okay the night before a race as long as breakfast was high carb and dinner the night before was high in protein and carbs. The whole science is in storing enough energy to carry the weight over the distance in the fastest time without doing too much damage. Nike science involves selling things which is a different kettle of fish.
11
HS Wrestlers have been starving themselves into weight classes for a century or more. When my brother was captain of his HS wrestling team, my parents said he was forbidden to drop more than one weight class. He still retained his position as captain. Many other parents were hands-off, and skinny kids regularly tried to lose 20 lbs. to gain an advantage.
14
What really gets me about both this and the Mary Cain story is that these young women were logging probably a hundred miles of running a week. With this kind of exercise regimen it's hard to imagine they were carrying around a lot of excess weight! I can't believe any coach, male or female, would pressure them to also diet to lose weight.
Maybe a lot of good will come out of these two stories, which is that the new way-to-go for female (and male?) runners will be run like crazy, eat like crazy, compete like crazy, finish in whatever place that results in, and bask in the resulting joy.
25
Thank you, Lauren Fleshman, for this wonderful article.
I've been watching Atypical on Netflix. By the close of the third season, we see a high school junior track athlete agreeing to a taxing regimen in order to run well enough to be recruited by UCLA.
Her female coach presents her with a realistic list of things she'll need to sacrifice -- free time, complicated emotional involvements (boyfriend/girlfriend), junk food. That's a lot to ask of a teenager, but our heroine is up to it.
What the coach, so far, hasn't asked is for unrealistic and destructive training that involves starvation and excessive running. I hope we'll see the coach turn out to be knowledgeable and caring enough to help her charges reach peak performance for their age and gender in a healthy way.
7
Competitive sports are seen by parents as a way in which their young children may eventually earn college scholarships and therefore higher education without ruinous debt. Anything that encourages parents to seek out sports and coaching programs that encourage sound physical and mental health is therefore of great importance. This article should bring that issue necessary attention.
13
We should all sit down and have a discussion on the difference(s) between "sports" and "competitive sports".
That to me would be the place to begin because just like "being active" is different from "exercise(ing)", we need to focus on the positive aspects of sport (and being active) and perhaps leave out or otherwise modify all those features that make sport "competitive".
And there one might start with a nice discussion on being a respectful and honorable winner as well as losing gracefully.
Sport should not be a kill or be killed activity.
18
@DKM
Correct...what of "cooperative" sport? Don't we have way too much of competition in every aspect of modern life?
What if we learned to work together (co-oper-ate) as a species? Might actually not become extinct as soon...
Wrestling is a rare sport where men and boys develop eating disorders, suffer injuries, and sometimes die while trying to “make weight”. As such they have had to put rules in place to monitor young athletes weight pre-season and other precautionary measures to validate that they are not cutting too much weight for competition. It seems that perhaps similar rules need to be put into place for runners. It won’t eliminate the practices entirely, but monitoring might help curb the worst abuses.
12
@Jason
I'd add boxing to the list of sports in which weight, especially for boxers whose natural weight is halfway between weight classes, is a difficult subject.
Should a fighter try to add weight and go up a division, or lose weight and drop down one? Where is he strongest? At what weight is he most confident against the competition? Where is the bigger money?
I'm not talking just men. This applies to box sexes.
2
@Jason
Also ski jumping. So many male jumpers were becoming anorexic that they had to change the rules of the sport. Now your ski length is tied to your weight, to prevent people from trying to drop too much.
2
Lots of girls run cross country or marathons just because they want to or enjoy it and end up with irregular menstrual periods or the like. It's not always fair to blame track coaches.
9
Certainly, knowledge is power. Coaches should be deeply informed of the latest science and imbue their athletes with same. Having said that I would just add that competition at the highest levels is always subject to the most extreme strategies for gaining an edge, with all the risk inherent in that. Famously, Schumann made a device to increase his fingers flexibility at the piano,- that went awry and damaged his hands.
I’m not sure that extreme physical competition is ever really good for anyone over the long hall. You’d probably be better off being a vegetarian and engaging in just “friendly” level competitions, if you wanted to be the healthiest for the longest possible time. But no trophies and endorsements there. Did you see those women nyc marathoners burn down Lafayette Avenue a couple weeks back? At 5.30/mile for 26 miles? Sure they’re super human but they should also probably retire 5 yrs earlier than they do, to be healthy.
1
So, is the argument that training that treats female runners' bodies like men's bodies (already a binary that will rub many NYT readers the wrong way) leads to inferior performance ... or that the superior performance in a brief athletic career isn't worth the damage to the remainder of a life with more feminine goals?
If a more healthy "female" training regimen leads to inferior performance, expect an eventual reckoning with the increased dominance in women's sport of those on the sexual spectrum farther from cis female.
13
@Len Arends
I think it's about being realistic about physical development. Any training that causes menstrual cycles to cease is loudly proclaiming that there's a problem, and it isn't just restricted to runners. It's also common with gymnasts and probably other sports. It isn't inferior performance if females are competing against females who are all being supported appropriately, nutritionally and otherwise. It's only inferior if they're expected to be small men or if some are pushed to destroy their bodies for a few extra seconds, or fractions of a second, and for that event are ahead of those who are more balanced.
Your question about superior performance in a brief athletic career goes with the article about football in Marshall, Tx, in today's paper. Pushing kids and young adults to sacrifice their bodies for short-term gain for a town or school district is abusive, in my eyes. Because no one in that town or school district or college is going to pay for their future chronic pain and other deficits after their all-too-brief glory days are over.
12
@Kris
An interrupted menstrual cycle is a common outcome of birth control pills. Are those pills bad for you?
The human body is built to encourage survival, then breeding. An athletic woman will trick her body into a mode associated with environmental stress and famine. The body deprioritizes fertility in those conditions. That isn't necessarily pathogenic.
Training regimens aren't one-size-fits-all. A responsible regimen will still push each athlete to the edge of their capabilities. If there is heightened attention to where those limits are for each female athlete in elite venues, seems to me this will privilege those who identify as female but have male metabolisms even more than is already the case.
1
@Len Arends -Different physiology. A female on birth control pills is not estrogen deficient. A too-lean female dancer or long distance runner with amenorrhea has low estrogen, with the resultant risk of osteoporosis and other physical issues. See “female athlete triad” for information.
5
Wonderful article! This type of revision to the male paradigm so needed in many areas of life. Thank you for your voice and I hope to find ways to help support these changes.
29
Every musician knows there are bad music teachers out there who, through their own preconceived notion of what is the ‘right way’ to play music, end up destroying the musical ambitions of many ostensibly talented students. Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash throws some light on this quite well.
We live in a hyper-competitive, winner-take-all, do-whatever-it-takes society. This aspect of human nature is as old as humans themselves. However, I think one of the differences is that our modern economy punishes mediocrity. The difference in the fundamental livelihood of someone who is mediocre compared to someone who is exceptional is bigger than a canyon. The consequence is that any achievement less than exceptional is perceived as failure, and is treated as such in society. (In addition to the role of Instagram, this more fundamentally has something to do with well-quantified income inequality statistics that are only going to get worse because the rate of return on capital will always be greater than the rate of economic growth.)
To bring this back around, it is hard to identify the bad teachers because a price needs to be paid in order to become exceptional. You either pay it or decide to play music for the pure joy of it without any fortune or fame.
12
In wartime or another emergency, going with little food and too much physical exertion may be necessary for survival. Yet afterwards, survivors will remember their sacrifice and pain with pride.
Competitive athletics is not wartime or any kind of emergency. It is a hobby and a form of mass entertainment. The only reasons for the kind of sacrifices athletes face is a drive to show other people that you're better than they are, or money, or both. There can be accomplishments for which athletes can be proud, but the pride one obtains from participation in or association with competitive sports is no greater than the pride obtained from many other accomplishments which do not involve competition or athletics.
It may well be that undue pressure is placed on female athletes to subject themselves to practices that harm their bodies, but I submit that it is the practice of competitive athletics itself that us the true underlying problem.
8
This is an important article, but I can see from some confused, hostile commentators that she didn't convey her main point clearly. Here's what she is saying: Women in late adolescence naturally gain weight (in evolutionary preparation for pregnancy and lactation). Male coaches misunderstand this normal process and encourage their female athletes to diet, believing a thin runner is faster. For young men, this may work, but for young women, this backfires, gradually leading to a degradation in performance.
326
@Cyntha It therefore follows that a coach who does not harbor such a misunderstanding will be able to elicit superior performance from their runners, and we should look forward to the day when healthier athletes are regularly winning.
4
So important! The "freshman 15" is biologically expected and should be embraced,not denigrated. Take control ladies whether you are an athlete or not. My own daughter LOST 15 pounds her freshman year. I knew something was wrong but struggled to help her frame it as damaging. Cultural validation took over for a while. She is a long distance runner and has over several years uncoupled weight and body image alone from physical performance and is mentally healthier.
1
@Cyntha
Which and who 'she', 'women', 'females' and 'girls' are you writing about?
Same questions for 'boys', 'male' and 'men'?
Why doesn't she/he have a body like women/men from or with some black Sub-Saharan African biological DNA genetic heritage?
1
Virtually every athlete changes their body for their sport. Would Simone Biles body be like it does if Simone Biles were not the peerless gymnast she is?
The issue is not changing one's body. The specific issue is damaging one's body. And one's mind. And yes, no one, girl, boy, woman, man, should damage their body or mind for their sport. Or for any other reason. Plenty of non-athletes are shamed into doing damage to themselves in these ways.
7
@Robert Henry Eller Gymnastics is an early specialization and early age peaking sport. Running is not. they are both sports, but they are apples and oranges with regard to physical development. Canadian Sport for Life has excellent resources to explain the developmental science of youth sport.
6
@Robert Henry Eller : For years, the ideal gymnast has been short and thin. According to the book "Little Girls in Boxes," the coaches at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics were so paranoid about the girls' weight that they wouldn't let them out of the hotel in their off hours for fear they would...eat something besides salad. The male gymnasts were under no such restrictions and even sneaked food to their female team mates because they were so starved.
You mentioned Simone Biles. She is indeed short, and gymnasts pretty much have to be, but she is not underweight like many of the gymnasts of the past.
11
The system isn't actually built by and for men. It's built by and for money. Good luck with reforming love of money out of the sports industry -- or any other industry.
15
Is there a difference? Money in this capitalist culture is dominated by men, no?
2
Don't we have enough deciding what's best for everyone else going on in this country already?
How about letting athletes decide for themselves whether they are willing to make the sacrifice?
11
@Anne
I think the author's point is that the sacrifices they make end up stunting their careers. People are not listening to their bodies, and they're paying for it in poor performance. But then (because of the culture) they double down on getting thinner, thinking they're not thin enough, and then they really run into trouble.
Thanks, Ms. Fleshman.
43
@Anne
Plenty of supremely talented adolescent athletes are more than willing to make sacrifices to achieve ultimate glory. They also listen to their coaches for any and all advice to help them achieve. But, if the advice given is not the right or best advice, athletes suffer. And adolescent athletes are very dependent on their coaching staff for this advice - they in large part do not have the maturity to stand up to the coaches when they suspect something is not quite right. Stories like Mary Cain are obvious examples of this.
35
@Anne
This is a reasonable argument for adult athletes, but this author is talking about high school athletes.Elite athletes tend to want to please the people who are tasked with helping them achieve their elite goals.They often spend more waking hours with their coaches than anywhere else.The coach is king.There is no democracy in elite athletics. For many of them, their identity and their sport are inseparable.
12
I'm a 46 year-old woman who has competed in sprint triathlons - not remotely at an elite level, but I trained hard. I was diagnosed recently with osteopenia. My doctor told me it was probably tied to my English-Irish heritage (women in northern climates, I was told, have higher rates of osteoporosis). After reading the Times' story on Mary Cain, I'm now wondering if at least part of this diagnosis is tied to my diet and training. I haven't had a severely restricted diet and drink pretty crazy amounts of milk-based protein shakes but I do have a slender build and when I've been training hard, I'm definitely athletic.
Regardless, it's clear that we DO need better coaching for young women and some of us in middle age might be paying a toll for years of probably not being properly in tune with our bodies' needs.
9
I hope her message is heard by enough people to make a difference.
Substitute "politics" for "sports" in this column, and the same could apply to our government. Until we have a female-majority Senate, Congress, etc., we are still playing by rules created and enforced by men. As a feminist, my goal was not to see women in combat -- it was to end war!
11
This is the Western model: Apply increasing force until things are the way we think they should be. We apply this to people and to the planet with disastrous results.
23
@Chris A good comment but the West hardly has a monopoly over the use of coercion to achieve its ideals.
12
@Chris
Mind giving some examples of past empires that didn't succeed this way. Pretty sure China, the Mongols, the Aztecs, and the Bantus all followed a similar playbook.
2
@Chris
Before you start trashing the West, you should read today's article about China's crackdown on Muslims.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html
3
Don't forget the sport of dance, as athletic an endeavor as any.
17
@The F.A.D.
Modern dancers seem to have a better handle on body stuff than ballerinas. Seeing modern dance means watching a variety of body types, all very athletic and performing at high levels. It's a relief as a patron to be able to see this kind of beauty without having to imagine the abuse and deprivation behind it.
10
The irony is athletes always say the mental challenge of perseverance wins every time. Yet a healthy mind is not trained given what has been written.
1
Do women of different sports share such nutrition and health information? In principle, the demands on the body of swimmers cannot be so different than running, although specific parts of the body are involved. I wonder about women's bicyclists where the balance of weight and strength really does make a difference.
1
Running and swimming also depend on a muscle strength-to-weight ratio. Every extra bit of mass is more work (in the physics definition as well as the lay definition) to move the same distance, and therefor requires more strength to move. The possible complication in swimming is the buoyancy offered by the less dense lipids in fat tissue, but the overall principle remains the same even if the equation changes a bit.
Additionally, the author’s central premise is that girls and young women going through puberty experience hormonal changes that require increased adiposity. This is related to other sex differences, like that the estimated minimum body fat percentage for women is higher than for men thanks to things like breasts and different hormonal regulation of metabolism. Those don’t change from sport to sport, although the degree to which it impacts the characteristics necessary for success in that sport might. But the differences between running and cycling and swimming in this respect are minimal.
17
@gratis
Swimmers actually are supported by the water they swim in so the weight premium is far less than in other sports.
In cycling the demands are different depending on what kind of cycling you do. Weight is not very important if you are on the flat; it matters when you are fighting gravity going up. Top road racers must be thin, but track cyclists can look like weightlifters.
One of the biggest sports for creating eating disorders is, or was ... ski jumping. Basically jumpers want to look like kites, wide but very, very light. The pressure on jumpers to diet is so strong that the sports rules were changed to remove the weight advantage by tying allowable ski length to the athlete's weight. In this case the people with eating disorders were male.
13
@gratis
Add professional training in dance to the list of activities where being "thin" is desired even at an early age, and almost a requirement for being an adult professional. Also, ice skating.
I know the dance world has often pushed young female dancers to eat far less than was safe in order to stay thin. No personal knowledge of ice skating.
9
This is such a convincing article that it may help change the culture of coaching of young female athletes. It is written by a former runner, but has the tone of something put together by a lifelong expert in nutrition and sports medicine. Some comments, like the one about girls eating salads before an event and not doing as well as those who at carbs have good face validity, but I thought the value of carb loading is still controversial. I think the long term course of coaching of high school and college athletes may only be changed when incontrovertible studies are available to support the apparently sensible points made here. It all sounds correct, but we know there may be instances in which healthy body weight may not be the dominant factor. For example, the note about how girls may show a dip in performance at this age, and this dip should not be used to force starvation sounds very compelling. Is there scientific evidence for such a time course. If not it should be studied carefully.
11
@WHM I think the anecdote about the girls eating salads the evening before a race wasn’t offered to comment on pluses/minuses of carb loading but as an illustration that many girls were likely chronically under-feeding themselves - not just before race day.
44
salads before a race is a bad idea for a variety of reasons.
@WHM
Ironic that changing the sport's practices would require careful, sustained research when the way it's done now is based on nothing more than a coach's preference that female bodies look like boys.
1
The only criterion for winning in track is who finishes first. Why does appearance even enter into the equation?
13
@jaltman81
The encouragement to lose weight is not about appearance, it's built around the belief that a thinner runner is always a faster runner.
The problem is that there is often some increase in speed when weight loss begins, but if it continues, speed is lost, as well as endurance and both physical and mental health.
This author's info about the differences between male and female development in sport, which may take quite different paths over time, is extremely important.
137
Female athletes, like males, need testosterone to build muscle and perform athletically. When girls diet they are trying to increase their testosterone and decrease their estrogen to perform better. It is science and biology, not some social issue about females being slender.
Women, like men, need not engage is sports. Or they need not engage at highly competitive levels.
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@EWG
If it worked and didn't end young women's careers, as well as their physical and mental health, I don't think anyone would be arguing about this.
And last I checked, agreeing to engage in even high level competitive sport does not automatically mean a person has agreed to be treated abusively, to be bullied and denigrated and to have their health so badly damaged.
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Energy deficiency lowers testosterone levels. So neither female nor male athletes should be decreasing energy intake to increase testosterone, because it will have exactly the opposite effect. I’ll even reference an academic article: Energy Availability in Athletics: Health, Performance, and Physique. Malin et al, Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab 2019
More commonly, the emphasis on weight loss is related to the increased work required to move more mass the same distance. But decreasing energy intake doesn’t only affect fat loss, it impacts anabolic function in muscles and bones and decreases overall health and performance when taken to extremes.
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@EWG
The rules and standards of sports are not laws of nature. We invent them and we change them. Many sports have changed over time to protect athletes or update the sport. It's absurd to write off gifted athletes rather than dump obsolete or harmful practices.
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Don't aim to be the best if you don't want to do what it takes to attain it (within the rules of the sport). I am quite happy being a recreational athlete, and I don't see a reason to complain when others push themselves to the limit to achieve more.
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@Joshua -- I think you're missing the point. She's not talking about "pushing herself"--she's talking about the pressure on young women to starve themselves to try to fit a paradigm of athletic success that does not work for female adolescent physiology. The article's main point is that the "rules of the sport" were designed with only males in mind and that this needs to be rethought.
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What if the problem isn’t the “rules of the sport” but the shortsighted decisions of those who are coaching young athletes? Their complaint isn’t that a focus on times or distances is the problem. It’s that the methods being employed are detrimental to both health and performance. That’s not the same as the sports being bad or wrong
For example, there was a time in recent history when smoking tobacco was touted as healthy and beneficial to athletes. In the 1904 Olympics, trainers gave one runner strychnine and brandy to “improve his performance”. Of course it wasn’t effective and nearly killed him, but that was the athletic training wisdom of the day. Today, we’d consider that abusive and terrible. Our views and methods evolved with new evidence that our old methods were bad for athletes.
Along the same logic, if our current methods are detrimental to female athletes, shouldn’t we also reform them?
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This is not about people pushing themselves. This is about people being pushed.
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Welcome to industrialized sports. NFL players happily knock their brains out for millions. Climbers chew their fingers and hand up to get up impossibly difficulties routes. Skiers and kayakers do difficult routes that weren't even attempted a few years and often die doing them and few of those athletes make any money or even get cheap gear from sponsors. If you do something you'd better love it and be prepared to get hurt and not make a penny off it. If it's going to be your "job" and you're a professional you're in for the same regimen of other professionals. The system uses you and when it's done with you, you're on your own. Take up golf or baseball...
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@M I really appreciate your comment. The solution is not to punish competitiveness but to protect athletes. Pushing the former is impossible and is of no help in encouraging the latter.
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@M
I put myself thru a top engineered school and went to work for the number 3 oil company in the world. At 30 I left that and put myself thru med school. So yeah, you're right. I don't know anything about motivation or discipline or the corporate narrative. I do know that competition at the top doesn't care at all about you, so you'd better look out for yourself-and get an education first.
In my judgement, sports have become an addiction in the U.S., if not a cult. No one doubts the benefits of exercise and healthy eating, but I strongly believe we need to soberly examine the culture of sports in this country, and determine whether or not we should be subsidizing them with taxpayer dollars in our public schools. When young men and women's bodies and brains are being damaged, coaches are paid more than teachers, and scandals abound, I think there may be a larger pathology present here.
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@Steve Sports are incredibly important in youth education because sports teach vital life lessons: Teamwork; dealing with disappointments (losing); shame (flubbing it in front of your team); handling conflicts and difficult emotions with teammates; group dynamics including relating with authority figures; coping with high pressure high demand situations and more. Of course taxpayer dollars should subsidize sports in public schools!!! We also have decades of brain research showing that physical activity directly stimulates cognitive development.
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@christine : those lessons are also learned in choir, orchestra, band, and theater as well, and physical movement can happen at recess and in spontaneous play. Too bad many of these are less available than organized competitive sports.
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@christine All of the things you just described are true for being a member of theater, MUN, or playing video games on the side, as long as you take a run as well. They aren't exclusive to sports. Let's recognize when we push a singular model, we hurt some people.
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I am sure coaches like Alberto Salazar are toxic not only to girls and women but to boys and men too. Let’s change all coaching culture to prioritize the physical and mental health of the athletes in all cases.
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@Robert Epner
Right-O.
Alberto Salazar seems to know a lot about winning races. I doubt he knows that much about the mid-term impact of estrogen depletion.
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"We do not currently have a sports system built for girls. If we did, it would look very different — and it would benefit everyone."
Make no mistakes about it, the boy/male "Sport System" abuses their bodies too, and many of them involve eating disorders. Males bulk up, and therefore end up with weight gains that never leave them. Naturally thin/lean boys who try to make weight for the football team, overeat and alter their metabolism. Wrestlers trying to make weight, up or down, too often down, do the same, and for what? Most never compete in college, but take the altered metabolism into adulthood.
Add the impacts of contact sports, and the abuses of male athletes pileup. Add that most parents don't know squat about nutrition for themselves or their children in general, but a child-athlete adds more problems. "Just eat more/less" is not sound advice for a teen/young adult athlete. Add that most school coaches also are bereft of both nutritional and more current training knowledge (non-professional coaching staffs run too many school programs) and the whole team is at risk for minor and major mistakes in their health.
Basically, youth sports in the US is a mess! The exceptions are few. Standardized regulation is the only answer. Standardized training for all coaches. Professional sports related nutritional advice. PT staffs in every district. Or at least access to doctors contracted to protect the athletes not the team. Higher investment in equipment, fields of play,etc.
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And...the occurrence of body modification and type persists in most women’s sports. Gymnastics immediately comes to mind, but really all sports are subject to this. The Williams sisters get criticized for being “too muscular” or “too big”.
I think this is because of the male dominated management of all sport both so called a mature and professional. This hopefully if and when more women are included in the management of sport.
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@Anne Yes - I agree. This is the additional pressure of "marketability". Many professional athletes also depend on advertising dollars, and unfortunately there isn't much room in the public eye to deviate from our standard of aesthetics. Your image needs to sell things. If you want to sell running clothes, you have to look like a runner. The Williams sisters broke the mold in tennis. Thank goodness they never tried to contort to what a female tennis player should look like. They redefined it.
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@Anne
Serena Williams for president!
1
The politics of organized athletics aside, I would welcome the author’s advice on nutrition for active women as they grow and mature, based on her own experience. There is so much confusion! Help!
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Nearly 25 years ago the book "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes" told of the physical trauma that sports like gymnastics and figure skating inflicted on young women. It looks like things have not changed, and have actually gotten worse. The trauma is now much more targeted, trying to eek out every bit of performance despite the potential for injury. Given that the measure of success is often a single number, I'm not sure that there is a solution unless that number aligns with quality-of-life rather than some arbitrary measure of speed or distance.
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Thank you for this column. Anyone who is given the honor at the high school or college level to coach women runners should be given a required mandatory training on eating disorders. It should focus on understanding how Eds manifest and the high risks and lifelong harm caused by untreated eating disorders. A protocol should be established that requires referral to a qualified eating disorder treatment professional when a disorder is detected. And a stop to training. And Ms. Fleshman offers a powerful model of how to change the paradigm of running achievement.
Let's keep this conversation going!
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The sensibility of money governing sport allows dogs, horses and people to put in the meat grinder to keep the ratings up and the tills filled.
Until advocates for the health of the participants have equal weight, athletes when done are just dog meat.
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Please demand that all youth sports be rebuilt for the children and young adults participating - female and male.
The same pressures are doing harm on the male side - whether it's harmful habits of starvation and dehydration for wrestlers to make it down a weight class, to the long-term harms the pressure to bulk up causes in sports like football - that lead to heart damage, steroid addiction and sometimes the willful ignorance of concussion or other injury.
The problem with sports programs search for wins gives rise to ignoring or hiding horrors of abuse against athletes of both sexes, with far too many examples to list.
This is not to minimize the harms to girls from eating disorders and other damage the incessant pressure brings about, or even the disparity in pay between men's and women's professional sports (soccer, anyone?).
But please, all school sports need to be redone, so that they benefit the participants first and foremost.
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Women’s sports has fallen into the diet culture trap, promulgating the belief that thinness is the highest value and leading to eating disorders. I guess the question these young ladies may want to consider is whether they want to be champion runners now, or runners well into their sixties and seventies.
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The author is right to call for introspection and change within the culture of sport to find a more appropriate balance between peak performance,physiology, and long-term good health (both physical and psychological). My only quibble is that I don’t really see this a being particularly an issue of female athletes. Male athletes are routinely pushed very hard by coaches to shape their bodies to a pre-conceived ideal with no scientific basis to provide support nor context. This is particularly so for individual performance focused sports such as wrestling, gymnastics and running. So yes, youth sports needs some reinvention, where a much greater focus on professionally prescribed nutrition plans becomes standard practice within the context of achieving a balance approach to peak performance.
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Same goes for ballerinas. Dance is brutal punishment on the joints and feet. Hours and hours a day of demanding, hard work. You should what their feet look like when the toe shoes come off, and talk about skinny! I don't know how they do it. How can their bodies take that much punishment without sufficient nutrition? Many stop by age 30 if not before. I always wonder how many could keep going another 10 or 15 years if they ate more and kept their weight up.
The ballerina brings us incredible beauty and elegance that is unmatched anywhere. But that elegance requires tremendous strength and stress on the body. As with competitive sports, it's gone too far.
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@Bruce Rozenblit .
A few years ago at an antique store, I held a pair of 4"-long hand-embroidered cloth shoes. When I turned them over, there was wear on the soles.
I can't watch ballerinas en pointe anymore without thinking of that nameless woman who -- like 90% of Chinese women of her era -- walked in pain on bound, disfigured feet. Pointe ballet now looks as cruel, bizarre and unnatural to me as those tiny shoes.
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@Bruce Rozenblit Look at ballerinas pre-Balanchine. They were beautifully plump and NORMAL looking.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
It's certainly the toxic-male dance-culture that is at fault.
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Separate sports for college. While the author may have had hopes of the olympic team, most young athletes who overdo it and harm themselves do so because of the disproportionate importance of athletics in college admissions.
If most kids participated in sports for the fun of the game and the health benefits of moderate exercise, rather than because they felt their professional futures depended indirectly on it, the scope of these pressuresaand consequential damage would be much smaller.
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Should there be minimum weight requirements, adjusted for height, to discourage runners from starving themselves? Other sports like wrestling and boxing have maximum weight requirements.
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@Beliavsky The challenge with a “minimum” weight is that height is only part of a very complicated equation that includes bone mass, muscle mass and fat percentage. I think Lauren is on the right track: change the culture.
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@Beliavsky We don't want weight to be a factor in running. Wrestling and boxing have weight classifications to keep a 140 lb man from sparring with a 180 lb one. Running isn't a contact sport. Running is speed, strength, and endurance. While there may be an efficient weight, that varies from athlete to athlete, there isn't a single magical one. First one to the finish line wins. It might be the tall one with the long stride, or the short one with mighty power. The issue with a particular weight is that athletes chase the number at the expense of their fitness. Mary Cain was given the number 114. In order to meet that number, she sacrificed her health, while dulling the tools in her arsenal that made her a talented runner to begin with. If she, and other runners, both male and female, are given a number to chase, they loose sight of the ultimate goal. Running success is due to a fine balance of fuel and fitness.
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@Beliavsky
Wrestlers regularly have to sweat weight off to make a class. Not a particularly healthy regime.
Amen! Overdue! Administrators - school heads and principals - are ultimately responsible for monitoring athletic programs and hiring coaches. Fleshman's cogent article should be required reading for every one of them.
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This article should also have a discussion of another developing issue in women's sports.
What is the fair and appropriate way to handle the participation of individuals who were born as what is commonly understood as male ("XY") but now identify as female and wish to compete against individuals who were born as what is commonly understood as female ("XX")?
On the one hand, the gender identity one feels is very important.
On the other hand, the physiology of muscle mass and function, oxygen processing and other drivers of athletic performance are sharply different between men and women and give a strong advantage to men (see, eg, the difference in men's vs. women's running records). And these differences persist over time, even after medical procedures to refit physiology to gender identification.
Is there a solution that is fair to all different parties?
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@Stuck on a mountain Yes. The men's (aka 'open') category needs to be more welcoming to transgender athletes. Men can make the effort, they can work on their inclusiveness. Why is this something that women must accommodate, at a loss to themselves? Sport for XX athletes needs to be protected, for so many reasons. Lord knows women have fought hard enough to gain respect in sports.
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This is a terrific point and one that is all too rarely addressed — in fact, I’ve never seen it addressed in a mainstream forum. But perhaps it should be.
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@Stuck on a mountain
I think it needs to partly depend on when and whether hormone treatment is undertaken. For example, Jazz Jennings (a relative by marriage - she has books and a tv show) never developed her secondary sex characteristics because she started hormone therapy as soon as puberty started. So she would not have any hormonal advantage over an XX female. But someone who developed as male and then transitioned - or one who developed as female and then transitioned - should likely compete in their biologic group in order to be "fair". And, yet, that's also complicated because I'm sure it would be difficult for them psychologically when they are attempting to become a different gender. Not easy.
1