Eek about the weigh ins with the volley ball team!

I played soccer in college (wonderful, WONDERFUL experience) and the only time we were weighed was at the beginning and end of the practices in the heat of summer so that we didn't lose too much weight (in sweat), and so that the trainers could properly hydrate us. And all the numbers the coach got had to do with weight change during a practice, because how much we weighed was none of his Damned Business.

In any case, my eating/exercising habits haven't always been healthy. It starts out that way, but what happens is that if and when weight starts to drop off, society starts looking at you different. Suddenly people are giving you compliments on your appearance as you start to fit society's ideal. Losing weight gets very rewarding and it can be hard to step back and see what the difference is between what society wants women to look like and what's healthy for women to eat and weigh. It takes a lot of positive reinforcement for women (in sports or not) to be able to disregard society's ideals and to do what's really healthiest for them. And as we all know, positive reinforcement is not always forthcoming for women in most situations.

In any case, I think what I'm trying to say is that women in sports aren't really that different from women in general. It's just that they're in a situation where it's normal to lose a bit of weight and that it can be easy to be seduced into losing even more.

Very good story. I had a friend in High School many years ago that ran cross country, and died from an eating disorder. Very sad. There is way too much pressure on young people to exceed the limits.

With running in particular, it is often said that a 10% weight loss or a 10% increase in training mileage equals a 10% speed gain. Some runners see weight loss as easier than increasing mileage, or they might feel they have reached the limits their schedule or body will allow them to run but still feel the need to improve their times.

It's a problem for men's teams, too. They are obsessed with bulking up at the expense of health.

Sports teams can be great, but I shudder when I see female athletes running on the treadmill until they nearly pass out and male athletes who are so bulky they can't sit down at a desk properly, and can't cross their legs.

I agree completely. I also feel like I've seen an emphasis on working out as a way to become sexy/attractive--not doing it for health/recreation reasons, but because you'll be hot. That's just as dangerous as dieting to be sexy, and just as ready to disappoint you.

http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/stumptuousblog.php

Above is one of the best fitness sites that I know of. If nothing else, everyone should defiantly read the articles in the Inspiration section. Krista has written some great stuff on body image.

wow, you should do a little REAL research before writing.

i am an ultramarathoner, and have friends who are elite athletes of all kinds. sometimes, you lose your period. cycles don't have to come every 28 days. mine never has. that's a misconception, being "average" and oh yeah, the pills make people on 28 day cycles so people tend to think.

i have lost my period at many times throughout my running career. i am a very healthy athlete (i eat a ton of fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains, nuts, and yes, desserts too!) and am always monitoring my food to make sure i'm getting enough of the good stuff. losing my period is something that is between my doctor and me -- when i don't have it, we monitor it. it is not for someone to tell me i'm delusional.

i guess you wouldn't understand b/c you aren't an athlete, but when you have a love for the sport, you'll keep going. my guess is a lot of the women in the survey did not have eating disorders -- but their bodies were just being irregular.

I can definitely see how sports could contribute to disordered eating or obsession with the body. However, I also have to wonder, particularly in the case of the cross country runners, if perhaps there is a correlation where females with certain personality attributes which make them prone to anorexia also are more prone to participate in those type of activities. Or, perhaps already having a slightly unhealthy way of thinking about the body or attitude toward weight and food leads females to an activity like cross country running. I think there is some cause and effect going on but there may also be some correlations.

I played softball in college (a sport not really known for the smallness of its athletes...) and never felt pressured to lose lots of weight (by my coach or my teammates). We were encouraged to be healthy--training regimens and proper diet.

But I do remember hearing that some other female athletes felt pressure, but the reasons seemed to differ by sport.

Like I said, as a softball player, being very thin is not a competitive advantage, and most of the girls on the team were average size or bigger so there wasn't any peer pressure that way. I think the same was true of sports like basketball, hockey, and soccer.

Track and running athletes (as mentioned above) had pressure to be thin, but I think mostly that was because of performance issues.

But I noticed that the girls killing themselves for hours on the treadmill everyday were often lacrosse players. Interestingly enough, the lacrosse team was notorious for a) how hot they were, and b) the football players they were "dating." There seemed to be a lot of competition between the girls, and not about performance on the field.

Has anyone else noticed a difference in body image issues between sports?

It could have something to do with the uniforms too--i'd probably be self conscious of my appearance if I had to wear a tiny lacrosse kilt or running shorts, or spandex daisy dukes on a volleyball court.

I have had amenorrhea when I was running and when I wasn't. I have had perfectly "normal" periods as I trained for a marathon. Amenorrhea is often a gift.

Of course, runners try to be lighter; they run faster when they are lighter.

Bill C - I'm sorry about your friend :(
I ran cross country and track in middle school, varsity in high school and my freshman year of college - all in different places - and also went to several summer cross country camps. I have to agree with Courtney that food (and not eating it) and being skinny were usual topics of conversation among my female teammates. I was under weight then - 10 pounds lighter then than my currently healthy weight - but I constantly felt ashamed about my body because most of my teammates were skinner than me, yet they talked about being fat and picked at their food. I felt self conscious eating in front of them etc. On different teams and among different teammates, the topic dominated the conversations even more than talking about our actual sport of running and racing.

I never aspired to lose my period but I did for two years when I was at my skinniest - 15 pounds lighter than I am now - when I was age 13-14.

On my college team in northern CA, two of my teammates actually had to take time off the team at their doctor's orders because of their eating disorders and extremely unhealthy body weight. One of them talked to me about it and said how our coach had privately told her several times how good she looked and that she was the only one on the team who looked like a real runner. In college they made us wear "buns" or basically swimming suit bottoms, to race in and I hated them. That is actually one of about 10 reasons why I quit the team. Instead of thinking about my race, I was mortified at how my butt must look in the buns as I ran.

My college was near Stanford, which consistently has one of the top women's xc teams in the nation, and we heard rumors that the eating disorders among the women there were so great the coaches had to spray vitamins on their lettuce as that was primarily what they ate.

I agree with Cicada Nymph and I think that people who are serious runners tend to be perfectionists and many people with eating disorders are too, so it makes sense that there'd be overlap.

I'm not sure what we can do about it - but I did want to share some anecdotal evidence to say that I see it. As a runner who does 40 miles/week and several road races a year, I still feel fat for a runner even though I'm on the skinnier side of normal for a nonrunner.

Awareness is key.

Men have issues from competing in sports as well. NFL players are weighed, drug tested, given drugs so they can play through the pain of an injury that would otherwise have them on the sidelines. They are reliant on their bodies being in peek physical form for that particular sport, but, when they retire from it- what is that form good for? And the physical is just the tip of the iceberg as issues from that sport go.

Women in sports, dancers and entertainers make a choice to not look like or be in the average persons condition. They don't look like people who sit at a computer or in front of a screen all day, or in a car seat all day, becuase they don't.

I have a feeling if we scrutinized the bodies and body/mind images of those who are sedentary (most people) we'd find more health issues.

This is coming from a former dancer/ athlete who sits on her ever expanding ass most of the day now- at a computer. It's not healthier, it's different.

I'm not a Volleyball coach. I have not done the research or witnessed the sport enough to know what it takes to have a winning team- if lithe, powerful, more muscle thant fat women are what it takes, then the coach is going to ask for that.
If a woman doesn't like it, she doesn't have to play.
It's a choice.

I think sports are amazing for girls and women. So often our only relationship with our body is one of loathing because we only value it for its physical appearance (and thus, only see our flaws). Sports and other physical activities have allowed me to take pride in the things my body can do and how I can shape it. I also think that while it's absolutely true that there are eating disorders and body image problems in sports, a college level athlete may hold themselves to standards that seem extreme in the real world. They expose themselves to possible physical injury simply by playing sports and for many the possible complications relating to low body fat is worth the performance benefit. Just as a football player assumes the risk of having a serious injury from a hard hit, a female cross country runner has the right to decide to maintain her body fat at a lower than average level. Honestly, I'd rather see dietary control/exercise as part of a competitive performance goal than as a way to meet society's beauty ideal.

Yes, I think coaches and trainers should advise their athletes on the healthiest way to achieve their physical peak. And I THINK MANY OF THEM DO! But I think this is also true of male athletes. There are plenty of physical dangers that come from poor training in either sex. I feel like there is a double standard here. When a male athlete pushes his limits for athletic goals, he is dedicated. When a female athlete pushes it to extremes, she is just falling in the same trap as women who starve themselves to meet beauty ideals. I disagree with this idea.

Also, could you cite the specific survey the 70% figure came from, I'd be interested in reading it.

It's not natural for women to be so muscular and fat-free, but that is what produces the best runners. If you have modify your body so that your the best runner you can be, you probably will stop menstruating. Women are not built for huge feats of athleticism. Does that mean I think women should not play sports? No. But I think that by modifying our bodies to be more like men's, they may not work like before.

Several questions struck me immediately upon reading this.

1) Is there, in fact, any evidence linking menstruation dysfunction to other health issues in college athletes? I made a casual search for papers on this, but the only thing I found with any reference at all to athletes and menstruation implied that menstruation dysfunction could actually *help* athlete health, because one of the known problems female athletes have is iron deficiency from blood loss.

2) Do volleyball athletes suffer any competetitive disadvantage purely associated with weight (the way sprinters and horse riders do)? I would have guessed no, given that (purely from a spectator's viewpoint) the game seems to be as much about accuracy and arm strength as about jump height and speed. This question is important because it distinguishes between a competent but unethical coach pushing long-term health risks for short-term competetive gain and an incompetent coach pushing thin for the sake of thin. The former is very common (and I would suspect even more common among male athletes than female), but the latter implies a startling ignorance and female-specific prejudice in a professional coach, given that the main place where BMI is known to break down specifically is in athletes, and it is actually fairly common that up-and-coming athletes lose fat but gain weight as they put on muscle mass. (On the other hand, if a coach was using waist-hip measurements and pushing on any women passing 0.8, I'd back that entirely.)

3) As Lisa asked, where exactly did that 70% figure come from? I made a casual search for it as well, and couldn't find it.

4) (inspired by some comments) Is there actually a substantial competetive advantage among long-distance runners for being underweight? The comments I read to that effect really surprised me, because the successful female long-distance runners I knew in college were the ones that broke me of the "thin-is-athletic" meme in the first place. They were all very solid women that won because they just never seemed to get tired, but not a single one of them would have fit in with a stereotypical beauty contest. (On the other hand, the only winning male long-distance runner I've known was over 6 feet tall and looked like he might just disappear if you rotated him 90 degrees, so maybe I just don't know much about it.)

saraeanderson

my son is 6 ft. tall and weighs about 140lbs.
Men experience size issue bull shit too.
Dismissing it here wont change that.

Just as I am not dismissing the fact that women in our culture are expected to fit a certain ridiculous ideal.

But, I could not have accomplished what I did as an athlete with the body I have now, as a sedentary, average sized women.

I know nothing of Volley ball. I do know a retied NFL player and many retired dancers and acrobats.
So, I speak with that knowledge about training and body muscle to fat ratio.

pixiepie:
as for what is "Natural"

I call bull shit!

I am 40 lbs heavier than I was as a dancer because i sit on my ass all day. that is not anymore "Natural" than the training I did.

Who are you to decide what is natural?
Are you speaking of women who work in fields all day? in offices? As massage therapists and chiropractors? Gym teachers? Science teachers? Which ones are natural?
What is the "natural diet" according to you.
C'mon now,
lets allow people to be supreme athletes without judging them. Yes, be aware and be careful not to cross health lines, but, don't expect them to look like what you think is normal.

We all agree that eating disorders and use of steroids should not be encouraged- but, we can't expect them to act and look average if they are going to excel.

OFF-TOPIC:

I am sick of female athletes always stripping down naked (or half-naked) for men's magazines. It makes me so mad and uncomfortable, like theyre belittling female athletes AND their bodies.

Does anybody else feel this way, too? I was seriously annoyed how when Danica Patrick won the Indy Race (or something), there were bikini photos of her passing around by the media. Fucking great.

A big problem in high school sports is that many teenage girls don't understand what puberty will do to their bodies and how that will affect their sport. My cross country coach sat us all down one day with a copy of the "County's Best" article of the newspaper. He showed us that most of the top male athletes were juniors or seniors--they'd worked hard, put on some muscle, and gotten better. Then he showed us that most of the girls were freshmen and sophomores. He explained that widening hips and a change in fat distribution made girls awkward runners and he emphasized that it was frustrating but temporary. Later, I read articles (like this one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091501153.html ) saying the same thing. Unfortunately, most girls think they're just getting fat and so will do dangerous things to try and look like a little girl again, instead of keeping at their sport until their bodies acclimate.

Losing your period isn't dangerous in and of itself. It's not a disease or a condition. It's a symptom of one. You lose your period because your body isn't healthy enough to support a pregnancy. Sometimes an illness causes this; sometimes it is the result of your body receiving too few CALORIES and nutrients to support its activity level. Other symptoms of the latter are a loss of bone density and damage to internal organs. Not something to be taken lightly.

Re: long-distance runners. Elite runners are often quite thin, though they're not skin-and-bones--more like muslce-and-skin-and-bones. When we see them, they're at a training peak. They've been running a hundred or more miles a week. Of course they're going to be thin, but it's more of a side effect of training. Of course, the same person with the same level of training will run faster if s/he loses twenty pounds of fat. It's just not really possible or helpful to compare weights among different people.

I was a runner for 6 years - 4 in high school and two in college. I ran at NCAA 1 & 2 level schools in college. I was very happy and joyous to run in high school. Although I did have a severe case of iron deficiency anemia in which I have half of the blood in my body that I needed to be alive. For instance, during this time when I was this sick I would walk up a flight of stairs and my heart rate would go instantly to 180-190 bpm. I could of had a heart attack. I could have also given up running which I did not do. I decided to heal and move forward.

So I ran in college for two years. Ultimately because of the intensity of collegiate cross country and track I developed an eating disorder. I had many runner friends in high school and in college who had eating disorders and I thought I would never develop one. I quit running in 2002 and it took me up until about this time last year to fully heal. I started to get really particular about foods in my second year of college. Woman in athletics are obsessed with weight to but I try not to let it influence me and to love my body. Despite this I became sick. When I quit running the worse began. My life was at a loss with out running and my confidence shattered to pieces. I was on a severe path of self destruction and self hate. During my eating disorder I would seek help for awhile and then push it away. I am healed now and very grateful to be.

Menstruating is one of the first signals of a healthy female body at the college age.

Can you explain and/or give me some data? Because from everything I've read -- and granted, that isn't a ton, as I am no scientist -- menstruation isn't necessarily The Healthy Thing To Do.

I agree that it's a little fucked to aspire in particular to lose one's period, but I'm having trouble swallowing that quote above.

How does wanting to stop your period equal delusion instead of, for example, annoyance with an unnecessary function that interrupts your life for a week every month (or worse)? I don't know anyone who thinks that menstruating for a quarter of the year sounds like a good time, and I thought science decided that the 'bleeding is necessary' theory was inaccurate.

I have difficulty with the idea that 70% these women participate in their various activities or diets for the sole purpose of losing their periods. Maybe it is true for some, and perhaps that's how the study sold the numbers.. but that's an awful lot of work for a goal with much faster and easier solutions. This sounds like they probably see it as an added bonus to be gained on the way, and if some can do it healthily, I support that.

On a related note, this article in the NY Times exploring girls' and women's sports injuries is very interesting.

Can we please get a source on the 70% figure? I've been trying to find it online with no luck.

I am a professor in physical education and my research examines health-compromising behaviors in sport and exercise, particularly in women. What follows is section from a piece a colleague and I wrote.

"The power and performance model, especially common in men’s sport, focuses on strength and power to dominate others, views opponents as enemies, uses a hierarchical authority structure, and regards the body as a weapon or machine (Coakley, 2004; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003; Messner, 2002). The power and performance model has become a standard against which all sports are compared. With this ideal in mind, the public frequently considers female athletes as inferior to male athletes because often they do not measure up to this standard. Considering the increased number of women playing sport and the wide acceptance of the power and performance model of sport, feminist sport scholars realize that women’s sport is at a crossroads. On one hand, it may be necessary for female athletes to adopt the power and performance sport model to increase acceptance and gain equality in the athletic arena. On the other hand, there are serious consequences of this model including health-compromising behaviors (e.g., performance-enhancing drugs, disordered eating, overtraining). Thus, some feminist sport scholars question the uncritical acceptance of this model by female athletes, particularly concerning its emphasis on aggression and domination (e.g., Hall, 1996; Theberge, 2003). We offer a conceptual framework to explain why some female athletes appear to adopt the power and performance approach to sport and engage in health-compromising behaviors while pursuing their sport goals. Women are edging closer and closer to the “center of sport” and the recognition of being “real” athletes (Messner, 2002); thus, now more than ever, they may be likely to engage in health-compromising behaviors in return for athletic acceptance."

As a high school dancer, I've also noticed this obsession with weight.
Of course, in my ballet classes it is better to be lighter- ballerinas have to be easy to lift. However, I've noticed this weight obsession spreading to other types of dance- ones where it is not so strictly beneficial to be skinny.
One of the studios in my area is actually famous for their bulimic dancers- it is rumored that they have to replace the pipes in the bathrooms every year because all the acid in the poor dancers' vomit corrodes the metal.
There is a very fine line between being in peak physical condition, and having a disorder. It is often hard to find the limit between healthy dieting and body monitoring, and unhealthy obsessing.
Without proper resources, many girls get caught up with dieting and weight-watching, and my studio has to let go of one or two girls a year due to patterns of disordered eating or other conditions.

However, I just started running with the cross-country team at my high school, in preparation for a marathon next year, and I've noticed that they are all very healthy. The top runner isn't the skinniest girl, and the skinniest girl is one of the worst runners. Almost all of them have very healthy attitudes toward food, and in fact I hear less "calorie talk" from them than I do from my other friends.

I played rugby at my old university, and I think the only time we were weighed was at the start of the season, because provincial registration requires your height and weight. Our coach insisted on fitness, yeah, but insisting on weight loss is sort of counter-productive in a game like rugby.

We did, however, hear horror stories from the volleyball and basketball players, of weigh-ins and shuttle-runs-until-you-drop. All I could think was "Thank god I've never been good at either of those sports" - I quit ballet and rhythmic gymnastics to play rugby, at least in part because of my build and the pressure to be thin, and have never regretted the decision.

its always the women that think that they have big butt and do not have one. Women need to get a grip and be happy with their body unless they are whay overweight.

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