Dealing with eating disorders on a team is a puzzle, but I have some advice based on experiences I've had with teammates.
1. Cut the gossip. One of our top runners in college had a clear ED and the whole team recognized it. But she had that short term bump and it looked like she was super fast. We were a pretty healthy team before this happened but EDs are contagious. Suddenly the team was split into two camps. One was deeply concerned, saw the elephant in the room and was alarmed. The other saw this runner's sudden success and slowly started to copy her habits. Either way, everyone was whispering about her, but no one wanted to confront her directly or talk to a coach about it. It was irresponsible and did her no favors. She ended up leaving the team later that year with an injury, and it was such a shame.
2. Coaches: L-I-S-T-E-N. Educate yourself! BECOME the "trusted adult" that so many are advised to go to. So...I went to my coach about the above issue. I finally felt like such a loser, wasting my time whispering and not acting. I sat down with him and brought my concerns. I brought up that the team had noticed and it was affecting them too. His answer? "Ohhh everyone wants to know why the fast girl is fast!" he said waving me off, casually. I was stunned. I brought my legitimate concerns to him and told him I was worried about a teammate and he's...accusing me, and the entire team of being petty, and attempting to sabotage her???? The whole "find a trusted adult" thing only works if there IS an adult who can be trusted!!! My coach was a good person, but he had a blind spot when it came to ED. Coaches, it is your responsibility to educate yourself and look for the clear signs. It is your responsibility to RESPECT your athletes, especially female athletes that you spend every day with and have enough trust in them not to assume they are being Mean Girls if they come to you with concerns about a teammate. Like I said, this teammate had career ending injuries by the end of the year.
3. Sometimes it comes down to compassion. There was a book written by Amber Sayer, a former elite high school runner, (who btw was NOT the teammate I mentioned above, nor has she ever been my teammate at all) And I found her story incredibly touching. Amber struggled with severe anorexia. Her coaches tried everything. They threatened her, they kicked her off the team, they weighed her every week, they sent her to a psychiatrist. They were also lenient and pretended to ignore the issue. Amber spent most of her time either feeling like a criminal or feeling like she was getting away with it because no one noticed. Then, one summer she qualified for the Pan Am games and met a sports psychologist who she didn't realize at the time was a psychologist. This psychologist didn't bring up her eating disorder, but rather, tapped into what made her human, when everyone else was fixated on her running. He got to know her, discussing family, and other things besides running that were important to her, and got to know that she had a need to take care of others. He frequently complained of being hungry and so she would offer to go to town to get food for him. Then one day, after talking with him for a while and feeling lonely missing her family, she was finally able to start eating again. She had been feeling like making a change and breaking the disease before this, but having someone see her as a person and not a runner was helpful, and having someone really get to know her without feeling like she was being judged.
I wish the original post was available for review. I don’t know what the OP said with respect to knowing vs. thinking vs. wondering about his/her teammate’s eating behaviors. Did the teammate in question explicitly tell the OP that they had concerns about their own eating? Is OP a worrywort/know-it-all who thinks something like giving away one’s fries is “on obvious sign of anorexia”? Without having read the original post, everything in this thread comes across as virtue signaling.
Is this thread able to be pinned to the top? I'm not sure if these boards work like others, where very important threads can be put at the top, almost like a repository or a FAQ.
Nice to see mature, honest responses. No sarcasm, when LRC gets its act together and takes things seriously good things happen.
I know many runners who have eating disorders and my heart breaks for them. I can only empathize and listen--you have to know what you don't know, and know you can't fix everything but point them in a right direction and be a great friend/lend an ear. That may be what they need to help themselves.
So what advice do you all have on how to deal with such a situation?
Eating disorders are not something to be taken lightly, not at its start not at any weight/gender/etc. Nobody should struggle with the lifelong lasting implications that an eating disorder can leave someone with.
My advice? Share this information with a trusted adult who can make the appropriate judgement call and decision moving forward. If it is a teammate, that coach is obligated by law to notify a professional like a school counselor of the situation because it is considered life threatening and and endangerment to his/herself. That counselor and the other school authorities will then make the appropriate phone calls, contacts, and referrals necessary to deal with the situation. Then, it gets moved to a professional and the parents who can handle the situation. Hopefully it is early on in the situation and this hasn't been an an ongoing problem; eating disorders are a result of a need to control a situation and usually aren't born out of dissatisfaction with body image. But, when you lose yourself and get a warped perception of what you're worth that one thing you can control (food) becomes the weapon of choice in dealing with all of life's stresses.
Very few make it out alone and unassisted, a team of passionate health experts can help you get a better immediate physical recovery but the psychological relationship with food is something that needs to be more deeply looked into. With that, you have to figure out ways to handle and deal with stress and control in other ways that aren't abnormal or unhealthy food restrictions/binges/purges. Remember that a healthy body doesn't just produce a healthy athlete, but it produces a happy human. You can live to see your friends, family, kids, and anyone else grow up and physically move. If your bones are destroyed and your hunger cues obliterated from abuse, how can you ever grow physically able enough to see the small beautiful things in life?
My advice besides getting a team, letting someone who can HELP know what's going on, is to let what will happen happen with regards to athletics. They can't do their other passions and hobbies either if they're immobile or dead. What's worse? Having that guilt on your hands or having the confidence to speak up to protect someone?
For the person dealing with the eating disorder. Seek help. If you won't, ignore the scale and calories. Try to stick to a routine with eating like you do your training. That control of routine can replace the control of ignoring your body's nutritional needs. Make it the same goal you had before to continue with your eating disorder to nourish your body. And lastly, force yourself to have 1 thing you wouldn't normally consume once a week. I did this in recovery and it taught me a lot. A mountain dew at a Friday night football game, a snickers bar at the gas station, a slice of pizza after dinner because friends were still hungry. This taught me that life goes on, I don't have to control it all all the time, and that I didn't magically lose my athletic ability, I didn't spontaneously become obese, and I was still the same person people could love.
If you are struggling with an eating disorder, you need to talk to a mental health professional. If you’re a minor, you can ask for a referral from your pediatrician. A trusted school counselor may be able to help you find one. Your parents may be able to help you find one.
Your life will be better and your athletic performance will be better, if you take the first step of asking for help. This goes not only for eating disorders, but for depression, anxiety, OCD and other physical or psychological challenges. The hardest part is realizing you need help and asking for it.
As someone with OCD and anxiety, but not an eating disorder, it's helped me relate better to those who DO have eating disorders even if I don't have one myself. #empathy
Ugh. I'm in my low 40s now but I wish I could go back to senior year in high school and tell myself I look fine, stop worrying about being skinny. I was skinny enough and pretty, but I thought I wasn't. I wasted a decade and a half of my life with what started as anorexia then became bulimia. I thought being skinny would make me beautiful. And honestly, when I was really underweight I got a lot of male attention. Even though men like to say they like women with curves, a lot of men like skinny waifs.
But it was not worth the constant obsession that overtook my life from age 17 to my mid 30s. Then my eating disorder just went away for no apparent reason. Thank god. But I wasted almost 2 decades with this constant obsession. There's no way of describing it other than it's like having a drug addiction. I was like a fiend. Wake up and plan what I was going to eat, obsess about it all day.
I look at young healthy girls now and they look beautiful, whether they are skinny, healthy weight, or slightly pudgy. How did I not know that I was pretty simply by virtue of being youthful and healthy? I wish girls knew that.
Your body is going to be what it's going to be. Eat relatively healthy. Don't drink too much alcohol. And don't go down the rabbit hole of dieting and thinking you can radically remake your body into a waifs. It's not worth decades of anguish, I promise.
I depends on the situation. If then coaching staff is supportive and will keep things confidential then they would be a good choice for reporting.
If this is a college athlete it can be more complicated. A high school athlete usually has a lot more support in that someone can reach out more easily to the parents.
Ugh. I'm in my low 40s now but I wish I could go back to senior year in high school and tell myself I look fine, stop worrying about being skinny. I was skinny enough and pretty, but I thought I wasn't. I wasted a decade and a half of my life with what started as anorexia then became bulimia. I thought being skinny would make me beautiful. And honestly, when I was really underweight I got a lot of male attention. Even though men like to say they like women with curves, a lot of men like skinny waifs.
But it was not worth the constant obsession that overtook my life from age 17 to my mid 30s. Then my eating disorder just went away for no apparent reason. Thank god. But I wasted almost 2 decades with this constant obsession. There's no way of describing it other than it's like having a drug addiction. I was like a fiend. Wake up and plan what I was going to eat, obsess about it all day.
I look at young healthy girls now and they look beautiful, whether they are skinny, healthy weight, or slightly pudgy. How did I not know that I was pretty simply by virtue of being youthful and healthy? I wish girls knew that.
Your body is going to be what it's going to be. Eat relatively healthy. Don't drink too much alcohol. And don't go down the rabbit hole of dieting and thinking you can radically remake your body into a waifs. It's not worth decades of anguish, I promise.
Ugh. I'm in my low 40s now but I wish I could go back to senior year in high school and tell myself I look fine, stop worrying about being skinny. I was skinny enough and pretty, but I thought I wasn't. I wasted a decade and a half of my life with what started as anorexia then became bulimia. I thought being skinny would make me beautiful. And honestly, when I was really underweight I got a lot of male attention. Even though men like to say they like women with curves, a lot of men like skinny waifs.
But it was not worth the constant obsession that overtook my life from age 17 to my mid 30s. Then my eating disorder just went away for no apparent reason. Thank god. But I wasted almost 2 decades with this constant obsession. There's no way of describing it other than it's like having a drug addiction. I was like a fiend. Wake up and plan what I was going to eat, obsess about it all day.
I look at young healthy girls now and they look beautiful, whether they are skinny, healthy weight, or slightly pudgy. How did I not know that I was pretty simply by virtue of being youthful and healthy? I wish girls knew that.
Your body is going to be what it's going to be. Eat relatively healthy. Don't drink too much alcohol. And don't go down the rabbit hole of dieting and thinking you can radically remake your body into a waifs. It's not worth decades of anguish, I promise.
Great post, I'm glad you pulled through!
Glad you made it to the other side.
If you are in your low 40s we grew up at similar times. The push to be skinny was insurmountable growing up. All adults were talking about it. Pop culture had an unhealthy obsession with losing weight and the sentiment that skinny=valued.
I'm not one of those freaks who believe in "fat acceptance". Being obese is dangerous to your health, but none of the messaging around dieting and being skinny had anything to do with health! It was all about looking good. That's why when you watch TV from the 80s-00s there are so many waifs, and girls lapped that up not realizing that so many of them had eating disorders.
The way Taylor Swift described her eating disorder was probably the best way to put it. "I knew I had a problem. I knew it was wrong to count calories and make a list of everything I was eating in a day, but every diet blog tells you that's what you are supposed to do."
I'm glad we are slowly moving away from losing! weight! and moving towards being healthy for your health and well being.
but how fast is the teammate is the real question here? If we’re setting PRs and mom and dads happy what’s the fuss!?!? we all love Alberto Salazar remember!?!?!?
Multiple excellent posts in this thread. Should be required reading for coaches and athletes alike.
Eating disorders are serious, and should be taken seriously. So is disordered eating. Address it before it becomes an ED. Have the courage to do what you know is right and needed. Have the patience to listen.