Eating disorders encouraged?!?

You could lose weight on 1200 calories with no running. A person your size/age burns about 1300-1400 calories a day just living.

If you run an hour a day you should be taking in about 2300-2500 calories to stay healthy and give your body the energy and nutrition it needs. If you're overweight, cut that down a touch to safely lose a few pounds (or run more).

You're probably a troll, but any coach that doesn't understand these basics is an idiot. What coaches don't like is runners that think that if they train hard they can binge drink on weekends and eat whatever they want without it affecting their running. Watching the diet is part of being an athlete in any sport.

I'm 5'9" and for round numbers sake 140lbs while currently logging 70 miles/week. After visiting TWO nutrionists (both who do extensive work with high caliber athletes), I recieved the same feedback: 3500-3800 calories/day. While this number applies to my situation you get the point.

Simple: food = fuel. Keep your car filled just above empty and it will run, but will not perform at optimal levels. Keep it filled with high-octane fuel and the oil changed regularly and the life of the car is extended exponentially. True, slender runners tote less weight which does make a difference. However, plenty of big runners have done just as well. Solinsky was a monster while at Madison and although slimmer now he did really well on the college scene. Webb himself sports an upper body hardly similar to that of Simon Bairu, and yet both have great credentials. Or the Aussie machine Craig Mottram to name another.

Failing to eat enough leads to a downward cycle. Hard workout depletes body's fuel - not enough fuel is replaced - body is underprepared for next effort - effort occurs - now the body is only deeper in caloric debt. While the human body was created to adapt and do amazing things, how long will it hold up in this cycle? It won't. Injury and sickness are waiting on the horizon. And if one is lucky enough to escape those results, you will NOT run pr's.

Plus, the diet habits we create now set the tone for the future. Do you want to face retirement as a healthy individual who takes care of your body's needs and can thus explore old age and stay active? Or will you create habits which will leave your body struggling to support itself past sixty-five (and thus leaving you with a crappy quality of life for the last twenty years here on earth)? Rocking climbing, beating the grandkids in a 5K, and travelling or running out of breath from the living room to the kitchen with worn out bones?

In summation, I suggest you keep eating high-quality foods: fresh fruits, fresh veggies, lean protein, grains, and foods with short ingridient lists. However, make sure you enjoy life by enjoying food. From time to time buy donuts and eat them around your teammates smiling and remarking, "This is soooo good" all the while.

Guest lecture finished.

dskgjfdklg wrote:

you should make an anonymous complaint to your athletic director. a coach should not be doing that.

Coach will know it was you when it gets back to him.

a great number of people would benefit from a healthier diet, including a good number who need to lose weight.

theres a reason why matt fitgerald, highly regarded in the field, wrote a book "racing weight: how to get LEAN for peak performance"

Your guest lecture is right on the mark.

tennis players are HOT wrote:

a great number of people would benefit from a healthier diet, including a good number who need to lose weight.

True, but someone who is 5'5 and 110 does not need to lose weight.

Runners with eating disorders never last, trust me. I know from experience. I was 5'7 and 110. I was fast for a while until my brittle bones caught up to me and I had several stress fractures. Not only that, but once I stopped/cut back on running because of the injuries, I gained a lot of weight fast because my metabolism was so messed up. The same thing happened to another girl I ran with, but I was in denial about myself for a long time.

Eating disorders are just that - a disorder! I think you got that, right!? So who wants a disorder. Ignore the peanut gallery and do what feels right for your body and makes you happy. Who cares if your coach wants you to log your food and get weighed. That's normal for a coach to do that and you should do it also as an athlete. Just because you weigh your self and write down what you eat doesn't mean you need to starve yourself.

Why would you transfer? Unless your coach tells you to starve yourself or restrict your calories. If you are one of the slower ones on the team, coach probably won't care that much and if you are fast, you can tell coach to f off and eat what you want because your times are good!

Thin, Hot and Fast wrote:

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

This is brilliant. All fatties should have this tattoed on their arm.

Is this seriously common behavior on many DI teams? I ran (using the term loosely) at a top-10 DI team recently and just about everybody there ate like a f***ing bear. At the end of dinner at the commons most of us would have 4-7 empty plates/bowls stacked up and would be going to to grab a handful of pretty good sized cookies to eat on the walk home.

Yeah coach was always ribbing us to lose weight, but the attitude was that if you wanted to lose weight you did it by running more, not by starving yourself.

Either tell your coach to f off, or nod say yes & ignore the mother

Well, I hope you are not a troll as this topic is a serious topic and there are many girls in your same situation. I used to be an Asst Coach for a D1 program. The head coach weighed the athletes weekly. I hated being a part of it as it caused almost every girl to become bullemic. He even weighed them in front of each other which made things worse. It was basically public humility.

What I learned over time was that the girls would run really well for about 16-18 months. They would begin to improve almost right away and times would come down for about a year. After that, the injuries started and never stopped. It was one injury after another. Lots of bone stuff (stress fractures). I can't remember a girl that made it to her Senior year.

Advice is hard to give in this case. First, I would stop eating around the other girls on the team. They will pay attention to what you're eating and report it to the coach. Second, I would eat natural foods; non-preserved, low in saturated fats, veggies, you know; traditional healthy foods. Skip DIET FOODS. Those are terrible for your body. If you don't know much about nutrition, take a course. It's your body. You should learn how to feed it properly. Third, I would ask the coach if he thinks there is a problem with your weight. If he says 'no,' then I would tell him that if he thinks there becomes a problem, ask him to bring it up again so you two can discuss it. I would leave it at that. If he says yes, ask him to set you up with a nutrition expert to develop a game plan. Restricting food (especially to 1200 calories per day) is not the answer to any person's weight problems.

Lastly, I would not even consider transferring. Is the only problem that he asked you to track your diet? Transferring seems like a pretty drastic step to take based on that. If you are on scholarship, you are being paid to run for the school. His job is to have a successful team (a fast one). He will most likely do anything to keep the girls fast. I would say his road map for ding that (if it's centered on weight loss) is misguided. It is probably the easiest way for a bad coach to look good temporarily. Your job is to run fast.....no matter what your weight is. If you are fast, he;lll leave you alone. If weight is discussed in a group setting on the team daily, then red flags are flying.

Hope that helps. Above all.....believe me....there are hundreds of girls in this same boat. You are not alone.

Don't even read the comments by the guys that say they eat 5,000 calories per day. Guys and girls are two different animals. So, do your best to ignore the comments by the 20 yr old college guys.

Agreed with unnamed coach above minus the idea of not even considering transferring. If you love to run and it is that important to you, then spending 80% of your college time immersed in an atmosphere with a psycho a$$hole of a coach and not even being able to trust your own teammates because of something like eating habits, that's miserable and you will not be happy there. That's going to permeate every aspect of your life. If the red flags are that bright and your gut says to get out, then do it. Wish I would have.

Go to the front page and read the Adam Goucher interview. That is what happens when you restrict calories. You start with a very talented athlete and end up with a near-cripple hobbling around for 3 years. It might seem like a good idea at the time, but you won't be competing post-collegiately. it will all catch up.

troll or not, good info in this thread

Look at Kenya. No one there count calories. No one is fat. They eat as much as they want, sometimes even more. They eat TONS of sugar - yes, plain, white sugar. Yet they are very, very skinny.

Why?

1. Average American got like 30% of calories from meat. Average Kenyan runner - around 3%

2. In Kenya, they don't eat fats. No oil, no butter, just very little milk (compared to USA consumption - almost nothing).

So, Kenyan diet is like 80% carbohydrates, 10% fats with very, very low saturated fat, 10% proteins, mostly from plant sources. No supplements, no anemia (one of the highest ferritin levels recorded for runners, and they are almost vegans), no fractures, no calcium deficiency. 1000 kcal from plants got MUCH more vitamins and minerals than 1000 kcal from meat or processed fats.

So, cut down all form of milk (like cheese, butter, yoghurt), cut down meat, cut down processed "food" like white bread, get tons of healthy carbohydrates like whole grain corn flour products - and you will be skinny, healthy and improve like damn animal, with no calory restriction.

It should be damn pinned here.

"Just eat a FINGIN Dorito".. :) Mr G.

THIS ^^^^

Same issues at my former d-1 school. We were consistently in the top 20 of the NCAA and had lots of girls with issues- whether it was out in the open or not, it was there. I am 5'8" and 145 lbs, I am not a tiny runner, and my coach always pressured me to lose weight. Eating disorders are contagious as hell- one girl does it..runs well for a season or two...some one else sees that...they do it....they run well...another girl does it...you get the idea.

Now that I look back I wonder if he was just asking me to eat BETTER rather than less- I did eat a lot of crap and I did drink almost every weekend, but I always took his talks about food as him telling me to lose weight. I eventually got fed up and told him to never talk to me about food again or I would leave the team- that seemed to work.

I maintained the same weight for the majority of my career but the funny part was that as soon as I started popping big PRs one season I got accused by several girls on the team of being anorexic. I had lost weight simply because I was in fantastic shape and peaking at the right time.

Usually when I sat down for dinner with the team and saw some girls picking away at iceberg lettuce and moving chickpeas around their plate, I would go back and get a 3rd, 4th, or 5th plate of food, then a few desserts. Food is fantastic and tastes even better when it pisses off the girls who aren't eating because they want to beat you.

As far as transferring goes, transferring is a pain in the ass and the situation will likely not be better at another top D1 program. When you put together a bunch of talented, driven, competitive, Type A female runners together you're bound to have trouble.

I got my RMR tested last year, if I was bedridden and doing nothing I would still need 1700 calories a day. You factor in all the normal things you do during the day- walking around campus, riding a bike somewhere, grocery shopping, freaking brushing your teeth...in addition to running, lifting, stretching, drills, etc etc etc....you need MUCH more than 1200 calories a day.

If you are not gaining weight without explanation at the time being, I wouldn't worry about what you weigh. If you are running D1 XC and Track, it will take care of itself. What's the quote "if the furnace it hot enough it will burn anything" ?

I agree with your post except for the guy/girl comparison. I was a D1 runner and the men were actually more preoccupied with eating/weight than the women. But only the women were weighed. Grossly wrong and unfair.

Also, I thought coaches weren't allowed to weigh athletes anymore?

Kenyan runners are skinny as hell because they train INCREDIBLY HARD, not because they eat mostly carbs. They also tend to get fat when they retire and not live very long.

This is a big misconception: you can get fat without eating fat! The body stores excess carbohydrates as fat. Eat less or train more and you'll lose weight.