Eating Disorders - frustrated with adults not stepping in

oh my god I'm so sorry, that's unbelievably awful and wrong and you make a great point, sometimes the ED stems from the coaches themselves. It's all super messed up. I bet anyone who called you a wuss or snowflake are the kind of people who themselves do what your coach did. I'm sorry, and I hope you're doing better now.

Are college running coaches even allowed to weigh their athletes anymore?

My div I college coach was the coach of both the men's and women's programs. He only weighed the women, which was completely wrong. Looking back, I wish we collectively told him no.

How about Konstanze Klosterhalfen? (5'9", 98lbs) An eating disorder? but her carreer has been long and successful --she shows restrictive eating can be healthy in elite athletics. She’s transparent about optimizing nutrition for high-volume training maintaining muscle while staying lean for performance. I running health isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Yes. everything bad is Trump’s fault

Contacting the school nurse gets the coach out the loop. The nurse can then speak with the parents and request for them to purse professional help or even contact CPS.

Many LR coaches seem to have the conceit that they can somehow change the courses of their athletes lives but that’s not their job. They are not experts in treating anorexia and should let the professionals address the problem.

family friend developed an eating disorder when she was running track in HS. She is still struggling at age 42 because no one did a f'ing thing to help her. her parents are still alive and are complete idiots and her coach just enjoyed his team's success at the expense of this individual and one other who later committed suicide.

There are two threads about ED, likely both a result of her win and photos at that Festival. And you're the first person to say her name. Everyone else just talks about her without talking about her.

That's perhaps the problem. We're not comfortable talking about it.

Here's a question. Local runnning club has a hot shot runner in it, but she's like 12, grade 7. She's been skinny since Ive seen her race, two years probably. She's fast and wins most races she enters. I'm a parent of a different age kid. Same club.

Do eating disorders happen to kids in primary school? Or is she simply talented and thin?

At 12, she probably is naturally thin. If she still has her 12 year old body at 15 or 18, then she's deliberately not letting her body go through puberty. (Overexercising and under-eating) The US junior national cross country team a couple years back had a couple of 18 year old girls with the bodies of 12 year olds.

I'll just add for context I didn't actually know about that athlete until now. When I made the post I had some other runners in mind, who over the years I've seen go from a healthy weight to very sick :/

Great question. Eating disorders certainly happen among primary school kids (see Allie Ostrander's story for example) It's hard to tell at that age though for sure. I was a scrawny kid but once I got to high school I developed more. When I made this post I had in mind older athletes (HS juniors and seniors, college) who over the years went from a healthy weight to very sick

AL showed up on my FB feed, and anyone who said she had a problem got roasted.

If you look at a picture, it's hard to imagine she's well-fueled.

Coaching can be tough because on one hand, weight matters to running performance. I wish I would have dropped like 3-5 pounds in college. I think it would have helped me. But as a coach, especially if you coach girls, you can't encourage it. You're likely to do more harm than good. The best thing to do is educate and provide support. Mental health is more important than winning conference or whatever.

It is orders of magnitude worse to be a fat than to be a bit underweight (which is honestly very hard to do as a runner).

So, in "freaking 2025", once "ANY ADULTS" who can "very easily see their kids struggling" to keep off the pounds can call the kid out for being fat without fear of retribution, then and only then can we progress to the comparatively infinitesimally small issue of people being too skinny.

"Also, I know there’s probably not a straightforward answer here,
but why is it that some runners with eating disorders just not get injured, or
it takes years for injuries to catch up with them?" Because they don't have eating disorders (their eating cannot be disordered-- by definition-- if they aren't getting injured or slower. A super-majority of D1 female runners would be better if they lost weight).

I feel like over last few years, I’ve been seeing nasty injuries, mostly in young female runners who achieved success young (two females from the class of 22 come to mind), but have done nothing in college and have been injured. A lower leg or foot stress fracture is one thing, but the number of femoral stress fractures and even fractures in the BACK are serious signs of undereating. This isn’t limited to the top high school runners either; the “thin is fast” narrative is becoming popular again, and we’re seeing this issue in division 2 and 3 runners as well. The outcomes are never good and can cause lasting permanent damage on the body. I sincerely hope anyone who is struggling get the help they need.

So, from the ground up, everything you said was wrong. While yes, excess weight can be a hindrance to running performance, there are raw energy requirements to performing well. If you are always in a caloric deficit, your body will not recover. In particular, if you don't consume enough carbs, you won't have the glycogen stores for high intensity exercise. If you don't take in enough protein, muscles cannot rebuild themselves from each training session. If your body is starved, it is in survival mode. Lacking in nutrients will slowly wear away at your bones, causing stress fractures more easily.

If you are training at a high level, you will have high energy needs. Most runners who are carrying extra weight are doing so because they aren't training at a high level. Low mileage, low intensity. If you are running 60-100 miles per week, it's going to be a battle just to take in the amount of food you need to break even on calories. If you want to transform an athlete into having a more athletic build, give them proper training that suits their ability level and slowly progress them. They will slowly get fitter and their body will show it. At the same time, teach them how to fuel well so they can maximize their performance, rather than putting them on a weight loss diet, which will be far less healthy and miss the point of training.

Would love to know your demographic and I seriously hope you are not a coach and/or parent. I fear you have no idea what you're talking about and what you're saying is inflammatory, dangerous, and simply incorrect. Oh, and huge thanks for poking fun of my little grammatical errors on a message forum that I posted late at night, none of which have anything to do with the substance of what I'm saying. You can't edit once you post to Letsrun, apparently, so once I posted, it's posted. So be it.

Why are you even bringing up being "fat" particularly on a thread regarding collegiate distance runners, who are simply not fat? It's a complete non-issue.

We're not just talking about being a little "too skinny" - an eating disorder is a real and serious illness and can exist on a spectrum of intensity, rooted in mental distortions. You clearly have zero experience in this department and are reducing everything said here just being "a little too skinny."

Also, to say "their eating cannot be disordered -- by definition -- if they aren't getting injured or slower" is completely and utterly incorrect. What definition are you using? To say the outcome of "getting injured or slower" is the only measure of identifying an eating disorder is myopic and untrue. I suggest you read up on the topic.