eating disorders in college

My daughter had a teammate in high school who was bulimic and anorexic. The coach stopped letting her train for a period of time until she was no longer unhealthily thin. He caught a lot of flack from the athletic director, nurse, athletic trainer, and several other school officials for doing this. She got healthy but never returned to the same performance level(she wasn't very good to begin with but the year she lost a lot of weight she went from a very mediocre JV runner to a consistent varsity runner on a fairly competitive team).

Unfortunately there were 3 other girls in her class year that had some degree of eating disorder that went largely untreated and unrecognized. One of the girls recovered on her own but never ran well again, the other two continued to compete in college but with constant injuries. One ran decent as a freshmen but later gained a lot of weight and got substantially slower. The other has had a few really impressive performances (when healthy) but is probably thinner now as a college junior than she was as a high school sophomore.

oiuyft wrote:

Unfortunately there were 3 other girls in her class year that had some degree of eating disorder that went largely untreated and unrecognized. One of the girls recovered on her own but never ran well again, the other two continued to compete in college but with constant injuries. One ran decent as a freshmen but later gained a lot of weight and got substantially slower. The other has had a few really impressive performances (when healthy) but is probably thinner now as a college junior than she was as a high school sophomore.

I'm curious: does anyone know if anorexics are ever able to completely recover from their eating disorders to have a normally functioning body?

Let's Be Figurative wrote: You took up with an alky and got burned. You deserve it...

Here's another example of you jumping to absurd conclusions. In addition to your above assumption, you wrote in a previous post that you were sorry I had a bad experience with this alcoholic gal.

When, at any point, did I say it was a bad experience or that I got burned? It was never MY problem that she couldn't function without spiking her coffee or Sprite. We had a lot of fun together: We had common social interests, and the sex was frequent and fantastic. She clearly couldn't handle anything else going on in her life, but her booze problem had no ill effect on our casual relationship.

How's this: a girl on my team (that I KNOW did not eat more than 1 piece of fruit all day and had the fuzz on her arms) collapsed once on the sidewalk in the middle of her long run. We had a team meeting after that. About getting help for illnesses that can harm your body for life? NO, OUR MEETING WAS ABOUT NOT RUNNING BY YOURSELF SO THAT IF YOU PASS OUT, SOMEONE IS THERE WITH YOU. True story. We had weekly weigh ins and unfortunately that girl when she ran was one of our faster girls. Like mentioned before though, she did end up with quite a lot of injuries and never made it past college running.

Let's Be Literal wrote:]

Here's another example of you jumping to absurd conclusions. In addition to your above assumption, you wrote in a previous post that you were sorry I had a bad experience with this alcoholic gal.

When, at any point, did I say it was a bad experience or that I got burned?

You didn't need to -- it's been clear from the start that resentment has been fueling your wildly misguided claims about what does and doesn't constitute a mental disorder/eating disorder/whatever. You're free to sit there and scream and holler to your heart's content that this and that isn't a disease simply because you say so. Meanwhile, there's a whole medical community out there that understands differently.

Sure, people have more of a say in controlling the symptoms of anorexia and alcoholism than they do in diseases like Huntington's chorea -- but that doesn't mean these aren't also diseases.

In speculating that you left the relationship with the alky a bitter man, I was actually being charitable in giving you an excuse to sound ignorant here. Turns out you may just be a simpleton even at your emotional best. Oh well.

jus curious wrote:

I'm curious: does anyone know if anorexics are ever able to completely recover from their eating disorders to have a normally functioning body?

Full recovery and a normally functioning body is possible but it takes time, therapy, discipline, and true desire for recovery on the part of the eating disordered person. Most anorexics either end up in the hospital or end up bingeing (and sometimes purging). Their body is starved for calories and nutrients and they often find themselves bingeing uncontrollably. At first they probably respond by over exercising, inducing vomitting, abusing laxatives, fasting, or some combination in an effort to "undue" their binges, but eventually they can't completely compensate and they begin to gain much needed weight. Usually at this point, the anorexic and/ or bullimic, will feel shameful and desperate to stop the bingeing. They may seek help but often it is not effective because they are focused on stopping the bingeing so they can lose weight, not so that they can be healthy. For a friend it took gaining upwards of thirty pounds to finally accept that she had an eating disorder and needed to get help. Once she stopped focusing on the weight and started focusing on eating normally and exercising normally, she began to recover-and healthfully losing weight.

Females need to regain their menstrual period. This might take more than just eating enough and focus on maintaining and regaining bone health. Visits to specialists might be essential. While parents can't force a child to gain weight, they can insist they see an OBGYN-if a girl- and an endocrinologist, and get regular bone scans to hopefully manage the onset of osteoporosis. Often times anorexics will be receptive to this because it isn't forcing them to gain weight and if they just take a calcium supplement they can help prevent stress fractures--which would prevent them form exercising.

True Recovery is long and hard. My friend decided to stop running competitively because it was a toxic and unhealthy environment. SHe is however back to running on her own in road races and fully recovered, healthy, and the happiest she has ever been.

If it gets to the point where an anorexic ends up in the hospital, full recovery is harder, but still possible if the anorexic fully invests him/herself and comes to the decision on his/her own without being forced.

How's this: a girl on my team (that I KNOW did not eat more than 1 piece of fruit all day and had the fuzz on her arms) collapsed once on the sidewalk in the middle of her long run. We had a team meeting after that. About getting help for illnesses that can harm your body for life? NO, OUR MEETING WAS ABOUT NOT RUNNING BY YOURSELF SO THAT IF YOU PASS OUT, SOMEONE IS THERE WITH YOU. True story.

My team was like that too. there were several anorexic looking girls, including the captain,-often injured fuzzy arms amenorrea, the works. the captains decided to schedule a meeting with the athletic department nutritionists and when they compiled questions that were "important and relevant" they were about frivolous things like which is better- powerade zero or vitamin water zero? brown rice or whole wheat pasta before a race? coffee or tea? nothing about the overuse injuries, stress fractures, lack of menstraul periods, etc.

The captains and coach created a very harmful environment. The coach would talk behind girls backs to other girls on the team saying they needed to spend less time in the cafeteria or stop beefing up even when these girls were underweight or normal weight. He praised girls who last considerable weight who looked like pre-pubescent boys, and every bone in their body popping out and easily visible and who survived on about seven different supplements, coffee, protein powder, and lettuce. Before races he would comment on what girls were eating, often leading them to not eat dinner the night before a big race. He would follow girls around the grocery store when they stopped on trips and inspect everything they bought removing anything from their bags he didn't think they should eat. Girls would manage to spend twenty dollars on items that totaled up to less than one hundred calories. The coach would flick girls arms or poke their cheeks if he thought they were flabby or puffy in front of the whole group. When the meeting with the nutritionist was called he told the team that the meeting was being required by the athletic department but not to take any of the nutritionists advice because she was overweigh--she wasn't--and unfit to advise athletes. He told girls he thought needed to lose weight to talk to teammates who were clearly unhealthy and just eat like them--aka egg whites, proteing powder and greens. No one was surprised when everyone got thinner and half the team got injured. The coach just chocked it up to being out of shape and not trying hard enough and he upped everyones mileage...needless to say his strategy didn't work

On my team we had multiple levels of eating disorders. We had a girl who was a full-blown bulimic since the age of 12 who also had major alcohol issues. Unfortunately the coach knew of this when recruiting her and did so anyway because of her excellent times despite her already collapsing in high school races.

Then, we had a talented girl who gradually developed what I would call anorexia, but nobody would admit it, everyone called it "anxiety." I guess anxiety IS part of anorexia so I suppose that is somewhat true but it's beating around the bush. All she ate were salads and maybe a sandwich at lunch. She probably lost 30 pounds over 1- 1.5 years. She was very intelligent but claimed not to know what the female athlete triad was when teammates confronted her and acted totally clueless and snobbish about it. As her times dramatically improved, not much was done about the situation until she couldn't hack it anymore.

It was so frustrating to run and have those two be lauded while you tried to do things the right way. I would have good performances overlooked...I would have injuries ignored...seasons lost due to coach's ambition. Not saying I was perfect, I had a lot of maturing to do during college (but who doesn't?) as this opened my eyes quite a bit. I wish I was in a better environment, but it doesn't sound like there are too many great ones out there when you get a bunch of female runners together.

Then we had girls who ate junk or who only ate salads and oatmeal and had issues with anemia and dropping out of races (especially in the heat) due to lack of nutrition/hydration. They would wonder why this would occur after eating only a bagel all day and then racing a 10k at night.

The frustrating thing here is in almost all of these cases, I don't think the underlying cause was a desire to perform well, as many other aspects of their life (drinking, staying up late, etc) didn't match up. It made me wonder why you would put yourself through DI track with all the underlying issues and/or a desire to be thin. Pressures at home? I really don't have any answers.

The other thing was (and this seems to be a common trend) the coach always claimed that he could not know about these issues unless someone on the team came to him about it. But this was so hypocritical because he had full knowledge of these issues, well before many teammates had any idea. I know I was naive to it for a while.

All I know is I'm glad college xc/track is over...while it was an amazing time of racing and working hard...I would never want to relive all the moments I spent worrying about other people. I'm probably one of the few left running and racing and enjoying it more than ever.

I am still running too! 15 years later. It's awesome.

Wow, so much hatred for runners with eating disorders.

I'm sorry that you are so upset by people like me. But trust me, having an eating disorder sucks. At a certain point, you have no control over it. You WISH you could eat like a normal person but you can't. Being kicked off your team and labeled as a "cheater" by your teammates also sucks. But the worst is being told you're going to die every day. Consider yourself lucky.

My eating disorder was a result of my anxiety, and my doctors did allow me to return to running while I was still in the process if gaining weight. For me, it really helped me manage my stress and keep me focused on getting healthy. Everyone is different though.

I don't think we've been particularly critical of the people suffering from eating disorders. We understand that humans turn to all kinds of behavior--often unhealthy--to deal with their stress, pain, and anxiety. Who we're criticizing are the immoral coaches who enable this behavior. They turn a blind eye to it and "reward" the runner for his/her life-threatening choices, which is plain wrong.

As for my use of the word "cheating," surely you can understand that anorexia and bulimia as weight control is harmful to everyone involved? It's harmful to the sufferer, but and it's also damaging to the normal girls with appropriate breasts, hips and buttocks who get their periods like they should, but who have to compete against feather-weight waifs or be compared to them by stupid coaches? Sure, it may eventually catch up to the anorexics, but until it does they can run really well. And if they get injured, there are always a few more abnormally skinny girls waiting in the wings to take their place. It's like trying to be a clean biker competing against team Armstrong.

I see plenty of ignorance and irreverence, yes, but not hatred. Such input is par for the course in any emotionally charged Letsrun topic.

I agree with the thrust of this post, but I think you may have taken the idea that anorexics can often compete at a high level for a spell a little too far by seemingly framing this as a given. While there are anorexics who improve even as their pathology encroaches on the extreme, there are probably more who suffer both health problems and performance decline from the get-go.

I competed at a less-than-top-notch school for both men and women, and of the three women who "formally" became anorexic as freshmen during the time I competed (there was no secret about any of them; each stopped racing and one had to withdraw from school te get treatment), all of them went from low-19 5K types in high school to 20+ minute specimens who looked like death on two wobbly legs.

So while I agree that many of the the girls and women who don't fall prey to an ED look upon anorexics who are beating them with no small amount of consternation and in some cases perverse envy, I wouldn't label this the norm, and I sure as hell would not compare developing anorexia with using PEDs.

Also, I don't know if "immoral" is the word I would apply to (most) coaches who allow anorexics to compete while in the throes of obvious, serious problems; I'd again go with "ignorant" or "at a loss." Yet there are indeed coaches who are pretty diabolical when it comes to this, as "Training on " illustrates, but I like to think such coaches are a diminishing breed.

I didn't compare anorexics themselves with people using PED's, but rather the experience of competing against them as similar to the frustration of competing against athletes using PED's. You know it's wrong and harmful to do what they're doing and you don't want to do the same, but yet it's very hard to beat them. And as I said above, even if one waif crashes and burns somehow (on daughter's team they seem to get stress fractures), the problem is what I said above--there are always more of them waiting to fill in. Also, the same ones keep cycling back onto varsity once they are "managed" again. At last count, my daughter's team had 7 girls with confirmed disorders.

And yes, I know that if my daughter were more talented she'd be able to beat the waifs. I fully expect her to run better and longer due to being healthy. But the fruits of taking care of her body might not show up until a little too late, after her college career is over.

Also, I don't know if "immoral" is the word I would apply to (most) coaches who allow anorexics to compete while in the throes of obvious, serious problems; I'd again go with "ignorant" or "at a loss." Yet there are indeed coaches who are pretty diabolical when it comes to this, as "Training on " illustrates, but I like to think such coaches are a diminishing breed.[/quote]

knew a HS runner who dropped 6 min off her 5k time after developing serious anorexia. Coach gave her the "Most Improved" award

midwest guy wrote:

knew a HS runner who dropped 6 min off her 5k time after developing serious anorexia. Coach gave her the "Most Improved" award

Well, she probably was. Anyone who can improve by six minutes is pretty slow to start with...

So you don't think exploiting a young person's mental illness for personal gain or career advancement is immoral? I disagree.

But I can see how the coach's hands might be tied. Although he suspects or even knows something is wrong, he might not have proof. This is a secretive disease, so it's not like the runner is usually going to walk up to his/her coach and announce s/he's anorexic. All the same, couldn't schools establish a minimum BMI to be allowed to compete or something?

Is this plausible wrote:

While sports nutritionists may say otherwise. Why is it that people who seem to have eating disorders are so succesful in distance running. I have heard numerous stories of people who just starved themselves and are now all stars.

You don't get too many eating disorders amongst East African runners

As for stars, who

I can definitely attest to this. I ran about a minute faster in 5k by losing 20lbs, then fell into obsessing with weight and wanting to restrict more and more to lose more weight each year. Finally ended up bingeing and sought help to stop the bingeing and lose the weight again.

See part my journey here:

www.runninginsilence.com