We have a need to medicalize every aspect of life. Simple behaviors are categorized as mental disorder like OCD or a disease, or an addiction or condition.
Personal preference never seems to come up as a consideration.
We have a need to medicalize every aspect of life. Simple behaviors are categorized as mental disorder like OCD or a disease, or an addiction or condition.
Personal preference never seems to come up as a consideration.
This thread is Exhibit #854732 on why top runners in our sport wouldn't touch LRC.
Ghost of Jason Rexing's Trainers wrote:
This thread is Exhibit #854732 on why top runners in our sport wouldn't touch LRC.
Yes LRC is usually filled with some ugly stuff but this thread actually seems like some pretty real conversation that though uncomfortable to some, perhaps needs to be had. A lot of elite running is uglier than people like to admit and I wouldn't be surprised if all of the coddling is how the Molly Siedell situations happen in the first place.
TMADDDHASFNE wrote:
What's the difference between an eating disorder and disorder eating?
Is this only a First World problem?
What percentage of students who attend Notre Dame are Catholic?
If you tell a priest during confession about an eating disorder will he be trained to
point someone in the direction of a health specialist?
I sure wish Karen Carpenter would have gotten some help for her eating disorder.
I support any runner who brings attention to this problem.
We need healthy runners competing at their physical and mental best.
Great question. I did 3 months of medical volunteer work in northern Nepal between getting my nurse practitioner license and starting a new job. An interesting topic (and mind blowing for the locals) was explaining what diet pills were to the medical staff. They refused to believe that this was even a thing.
Eating disorders seem to mainly crop up in Type-A young women, usually from affluent families where the culture of success reigns supreme--in academics, sports, careers/professions, the rat race of getting into a good college, and the rat race of getting a good job after college. I think it has less to do with "looking a certain way" and more to do with "this is a way I'll live up to the success that's expected of me." Really sad and really rough. I'm glad she's making a recovery and best wishes to her.
"Four years ago, I could have competed in the Olympics. I could have signed a big sponsorship contract with a shoe company."
Is this true? I'd have to imagine some company would give her a sponsorship, but I'm not sure how big. The olympic bit though...was she a shoo-in for any event despite not even running the trials yet back in 2016?
NotPC wrote:
We have a need to medicalize every aspect of life. Simple behaviors are categorized as mental disorder like OCD or a disease, or an addiction or condition.
Personal preference never seems to come up as a consideration.
Uhh, OCD and other mental disorders, are not just simply behaviors. They are "medicalized" because they can be debilitating and terrible, and need medical treatment.
A simple behavior is you being an **** on an online message board.
Ugh.... wrote:
NotPC wrote:
We have a need to medicalize every aspect of life. Simple behaviors are categorized as mental disorder like OCD or a disease, or an addiction or condition.
Personal preference never seems to come up as a consideration.
Uhh, OCD and other mental disorders, are not just simply behaviors. They are "medicalized" because they can be debilitating and terrible, and need medical treatment.
A simple behavior is you being an **** on an online message board.
Great call. Can’t stand people being rude about mental health issues. There’s still such a stigma around them. As someone who’s suffered from addiction myself, I hate seeing people suffering treated with disrespect.
But even a rude person deserves respect and understanding because they also are who they are due to genetics and environment. Nobody chooses their parents or upbringing.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-a-psychopath-2017-8
act c wrote:
Some of your statements are false.
In the short run, unhealthy weight loss will not lead to success. Otherwise it would not be unhealthy. And body frames are way more similar than Americans want to admit. Look at skeletons of slim people and so called big boned ones and you would have a hard time identifying which woman weighed 110 and which one weighed 180.
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No, your logic is flawed. Plenty of unhealthy things lead to success in the short run: blood doping, taking uppers to manage a high stress job, and my example of being too thin for one's body type in distance running. The latter is one of the reasons why EDs are a problem in distance running. The higher than usual incidence of EDs, however, does not mean that all or most competitive women have these problems. My concern is that we hear the ED stories to the exclusion of stories about healthy athletes and that the end result may be normalizing rather than decreasing unhealthy behavior.
I recognize that people with the same body frame can be very different weights, but body frame is correlated with body weight. Another poster also mentioned that some women can sustain very low levels of body fat. This is true. Also, if you calculate the BMI of elite marathon runners, you'll find that most fall at the very bottom of the normal range or just below it (technically underweight BMI). My argument is that much of this is explained by the advantage that comes with having a small frame and a body predisposed to thinness. This seems obvious to me. We need to be able to acknowledge two things simultaneously: 1., naturally lean and small people tend to excel at distance running, and 2., consuming too few calories and being too thin can lead to improved performances before wrecking the body and causing a lot of misery.
Why are some of the most prominent media stories about women's running stories of pathology? Lots of women have benefitted from running, but the pathology stories are so common that many come to assume that a woman can't be competitive or run high mileage without being sick or suffering from amenorrhea. This is simply not true. I don't want to minimize EDs or suggest that people suffering with them don't deserve support. EDs are a logical risk in a sport where excellence and thinness go hand-in-hand. What I'm saying is that we should also highlight and encourage stories about healthy athletes. Otherwise we'll have girls walking around thinking EDs are a common part of being competitive or elite.
I disagree, short term weight loss that makes you faster is not unhealthy.
act c wrote:
75% of Americans have an eating disorder. 65% can't control their eating and 10% do the opposite. Eating disorders did not exist 75 years ago because people were not wealthy enough to have unlimited resources and unlimited time, both of which are required.
I had no idea.
Props to Molly for overcoming it...and competing at the Olympics. Just overcoming the ED is tough enough, but she overcame it, as well as OCD, anxiety and other things and still had to race professionally. I'm already hearing stories of runners I know who are inspired by her, and who are getting their kids to run b/c of her amazing story and bronze this year.
unending trauma wrote:
Eating disorders seem to mainly crop up in Type-A young women, usually from affluent families where the culture of success reigns supreme--in academics, sports, careers/professions, the rat race of getting into a good college, and the rat race of getting a good job after college. I think it has less to do with "looking a certain way" and more to do with "this is a way I'll live up to the success that's expected of me." Really sad and really rough. I'm glad she's making a recovery and best wishes to her.
Interesting observation; even Type-A men from rich backgrounds I knew (East of CLE, Hunting Valley, Orange, Chesterland, Chardon, Gates Mills), had things like this.
The "program" was this:
1) Be popular in HS, be liked, go places, make connections.
2) Get into college (4-year only, public Ivy or private) and do well.
3) Do a frat or a sorority.
4) Get a great internship, and a great job.
5) Graduate and live a happy, successful life with no issues...
That was the goal and you couldn't deviate from it. No military, no trade school, no alternative learning or taking time out to figure yourself out.
Anxiety and depression are things which can certainly set off an eating disorder. Generally the problem also stems from low self esteem and caring too much about what others think. An eating disorder is also a way to feel you have control over something if another aspect of your life seems beyond your control.
The thing with people who develop an eating disorder, many experienced some prior trauma in their life. Although they may overcome the eating disorder, this psychological trauma can also lie dormant and later lead to other problems.
This is hard to believe but a lot of people (mostly women as EDs are prevalent in women) who have an ED and overcome it will later become overweight or even obese as they sort of self sabotage once again and the pattern of damaging eating habits forms in the opposite direction. Same with those who are bulimic--all of this follows similar and predictable patterns. But you see, this is all a form of self sabotage/self harm which is predicated on low self worth. When someone has low self worth, sabotaging their body gives them a rush of dopamine and they subconsciously enjoy it because they feel they deserve emotional pain as it has come naturally to them over their lifetime.
The ones who recover from an ED and can stop or limit future emotional trauma based problems are the ones who have truly overcome what was once a problem for them. Sometimes intervention and therapy is the best route to pursue or else the emotional pain will be recurring in alternate ways. The catalyst of the problem is what needs to be tackled head on.
“Caring too much about what others think” is in general a problem in our world. There will always be people that will non constructively criticize you no matter what you do. So be yourself. That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard, eat a healthy diet, and socialize. But it does mean that your value does not come from those things.
It’s incredibly good that society is waking up to these realities. Molly’s story is in inspiration. Not just because she won an Olympic medal but because she knows her value is not in winning an Olympic medal.
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NotPC wrote:
Yeah, it's a woman thing.. I watch my wife and her friends do this all the time. It can be simple, go to starbucks and one orders a latte or whatever, the next orders a coffee -black only no sure no anything... the next is black only, but also DECAFF... the next orders hot water and only 1 tea bag... I fully expect the next order an empty cup.
Nope. Men just don't talk about it.
act c wrote:
75% of Americans have an eating disorder. 65% can't control their eating and 10% do the opposite. Eating disorders did not exist 75 years ago because people were not wealthy enough to have unlimited resources and unlimited time, both of which are required.
If 75% of a population has something, maybe it’s not a disorder but just part of the human order.