By: C Icart, Staff Writer
Content warning: descriptions of disordered eating.
Last year, I published one of the most vulnerable pieces I’ve ever written. It was an article on recovering from what I called a “fitness obsession.” In that article, I wrote: “I was going on runs more often than eating meals, and it was catching up to me. My anemia got so bad, I always felt like I was on the verge of fainting.” This week, my doctor told me my hemoglobin levels had normalized. It felt like such a win. But I can’t stop thinking about how common my story is. In 2016, one million Canadians had been diagnosed with an eating disorder.
Around the same time I was at my lowest point, one of my favourite professional runners, Allie Ostrander, announced “she entered treatment at the urging of Brooks Running and USA Track and Field.” Since then, she’s taken a break from professional running, returned to competition with a bang, and signed a contract with the athleisure brand NNormal to transition from long-distance to trail running.
Athletes often face increased risks of developing an eating disorder because of the pervasiveness of fatphobia in the industry, and the pressure to perform in athletic competitions. This affects even those who exercise recreationally. Among runners, there’s often a goal to hit a certain “racing weight” — meaning lighter is faster. While it might sound logical that carrying less weight makes it easier to run, losing too much weight can hinder performance and health. If you’re not fueling yourself on the inside, no matter how hard you train, you won’t experience consistent results when you run either. Restricting your caloric intake decreases your metabolic rate. So while you may be eating less, your body isn’t able to burn as many calories.
The obsession with thinness in running is not just a pursuit of performance. Unfortunately, body shaming is incredibly common in the sport. Even athletes at the top of the sport deal with comments from commentators, fans, and coaches. Sports nutritionist Jennifer Sygo says “in order to reverse the faster-is-thinner mentality, it has to start from the ground up.” Misinformation about sports nutrition needs to be countered with more education for both athletes and coaches. This applies not only to the training environment a coach and their athlete foster, but risk prevention. Both coaches and athletes should be taught how to identify potential warning signs and feel comfortable reaching out for support through their team or a trusted professional.
Disordered eating among runners remains an important problem, but it’s one that we can overcome. If this article resonated with you — know it isn’t easy, but working towards a better relationship with running, food, and your body is possible. The only weight you need to drop is the weight of pursuing unattainable body goals. That’s what I did, and now you can catch me lacing up and flying across a sidewalk near you.
