Eating disorders encouraged?!?

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You are fat, I am not.

I am better than you.

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

5'5 and 110 is not fat.

D1 freshman wrote:

5'5 and 110 is not fat.

You're kinda small. Eat more.

My wife is 5'5" and 120. She works out, but is by no means a D1 runner.

Shouldn't you be a little more fit? I mean, the coach is hired to make sure you are setting yourself up to run fast, not be happy.

but I don't want to leave with like psychological problems. I kind of just want to get as fast as is reasonable. and I really don't believe that eating less will help me. I think training smarter might. But he just uses getting smaller as a cop out of giving us individualized workouts. He almost nearly gives everyone the same workout, and less developed runners, just try to survive workouts, where better runners aren't working hard enough. I was simply wondering if its normal for all distance runners to be restricting their eating all of the time?

Just eat lot of grains, veggies, fruits, lean meats, drinks lots of water, you'll be fine.

Don't transfer unless you're explicitly pressured to calorie cut.

themanontherun wrote:

Just eat lot of grains, veggies, fruits, lean meats, drinks lots of water, you'll be fine.

Don't transfer unless you're explicitly pressured to calorie cut.

Fun Fact: 30-40% of runners are pressured to calorie cut.

First of all, if you are 5'5 and 110, you are extremely thin. Second of all, 1200 calories is way too little to run well. That said, I can tell you that yes, particularly if you are a female, you will feel lots of pressure to restrict calories consumption in a D1 program. To some extent, clearly, you need to watch what you eat. Weight is important for a distance runner. That said, I can tell you that as a D1 collegian (female) I definitely restricted what I ate, probably to about 1600-1700 calories a day. I am 5'7 and weighed 120-125. Now, 5 years later, I eat 2500 calories a day, weigh the exact same, and am running MUCH better than I ran as a collegian. So, I think that for me, restriction wasn't a great idea.

WELCOME TO COLLEGE RUNNING!

So how are you liking Duke?

If you make healthy food choices, there is no risk to gaining unnecessary weight. Calorie counting should not be needed for runners. Eat when you are hungry, eat healthy, run. You have a healthy view on eating right now, keep it that way.

You have two choices as far as I see it:

Lie on your logs.

Tell your coach to shove it.

Try to keep weigh-in's to a minimum. Don't eat shit and drink alcohol. Eat healthy and as much as you want to.

BTW, this is coming from a former anorexic. I made weigh in's and got cut from the team because I was too slow.

seems like your coach wants his team thin and light so that they can glide over the course quicker. This theory was popular in the 1980's and most elites were weighed and told to eat less so that they would not have as much weight to push around the course and therefore win!

Produced many eating disorder athletes so beware.

Many coaches penalise runners who put weight on as a punishment for not following orders!eg training in weighted jackets or alone from the team.

Don't restrict your calories. 5ft 5 and 110 pounds is fine. Its a dangerous road to travel down when people start restricting their calories when they don't need to- its a recipe for burnout and overtraining. You may get faster for a little bit but in the end you will be much worse off.

I agree. The first school that came to mind was Duke.

To the OP, 5'5" and 110 lbs. is pretty much an ideal weight. Don't even think about going on a 1200 calorie diet. There can be long term consequences if you become anorexic - brittle bones and the inablility to have children. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to my sister, a former D-1 runner. Think of your long term health and don't allow a coach to pressure you. He/she doesn't have to live with the consequences, but will simply move on to his next crop of runners.

If you continue to be uncomfortable, I would transfer.

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

By my calculations, you need about 1600 just for normal living to maintain the 110. Add your mileage to that and you need to increase for the calories burned running. As a previous poster stated, she now eats 2500 and is running better than ever. Food is the fuel we need. Eat healthy, but eat enough. At 5'5 and 110 you seem fine.

a girl on my high school team went anorexic, she ran like a 25 minute 5k her sophomore year and ran 21 flat junior year. She had miserable track seasons after that XC season. The fastest she ran senior year was around 22:30 and her college times have all been around that or slower. its not a good plan for longevity. she also gained a lot of weight when she started eating normal again.

5'6" and 120lb. I am thin, and fairly well-muscled considering I'm a distance runner and skinny as hell. I'm not even a girl--meaning at the same height women are likely to weigh slightly more--and I'm running very well. So at an inch shorter and ten pounds lighter, there's no reason to lose weight. In fact, you could probably afford 4-6 pounds of muscle thrown on there if you're a middle distance type. Ignore the a-hole

If you are female stop restricting your diet. If you're male welcome to the world of everyone does it no one talks about it.