Unleashed: Megan Goethals Is At Peace. Finally. She was under 100lbs!

best part of the article!!

Goethals is a self-described "track geek, definitely." She knows times of competitors across the nation, and will have a mental scouting report on the fields she faces in Boise Friday and Saturday. She devours all the running information she can.

That means she read disparaging internet comments inside the track community about her weight and her health when she first got to UW, and while she was idled. Critics wondered why UW ever signed her. They recklessly diagnosed her from afar with eating and emotional disorders.

They added more hurt onto an 18-year-old young woman who was already suffering internally.

"She just wasn't eating enough for all the training she was doing."

Now that Goethals is back up to 115 pounds on her way to Denfeld's goal for her of 120, back to stacking up national championship appearances in outdoor track, cross country and now this weekend at the NCAA indoor finals, I asked if a part of her screams "TAKE THAT!"--or worse -- to those cowards behind anonymous keyboards.

"I would like to say no. But, honestly, yes," she said, laughing.

"When I was having issues and such Coach Metcalf would come to me and say, `You've just got to use that stuff as ammunition. Kind of show them, `Look me now. I actually did it.'

Megan, I think we are all just happy to see you healthy. Your senior year of high school & freshman year of college a lot of people were very concerned. Please continue to take care of yourself & we'll all be cheering for you. You are young. Have fun, work hard, but take care of yourself because there is life outside of running after college & professionally & you deserve to enjoy it.

So she didn't have an eating disorder? WTF? According to the article she had a "caloric deficit" and OCD. I don't understand the diagnosis at all... The only time the article uses the phrase "eating disorder" is to say that people on message boards were "recklessly" saying she had an eating disorder.

I am glad she got help and has found her strength. But sheesh... this article seems like it was just another example of people avoiding the elephant in the room when it comes to eating disorders.

successful distance running...otherwise known as managed obsession.

The diagnosis seems very strange. But whatever works for her to get healthy is cool with me. Caloric deficit rehab, voodoo, bath salts, whatever.

What happened to Ashley Brasovan?

poiuygtgt wrote:

So she didn't have an eating disorder? WTF? According to the article she had a "caloric deficit" and OCD. I don't understand the diagnosis at all... The only time the article uses the phrase "eating disorder" is to say that people on message boards were "recklessly" saying she had an eating disorder.

I am glad she got help and has found her strength. But sheesh... this article seems like it was just another example of people avoiding the elephant in the room when it comes to eating disorders.

Just another example of misunderstanding eating disorders. The problem is that some still think people CHOOSE to have eating disorders, so saying someone has an eating disorder is seen as blaming that person. No, combine a condition such as OCD, depression, anxiety, etc. with diet and/or exercise. It is more common than we'd like to think, but if it's ignored or taboo to talk about, no one will be helped.

Anyway, whatever the case may be with Megan, it's great to see her happy and healthy!

What?

"Disordered eating". Probably an obsession with "trying to eat healthy" and consequently not getting enough calories to counter the training load. This is probably way more common than an actual eating disorder.

+1

poiuygtgt wrote:

So she didn't have an eating disorder? WTF? According to the article she had a "caloric deficit" and OCD. I don't understand the diagnosis at all... The only time the article uses the phrase "eating disorder" is to say that people on message boards were "recklessly" saying she had an eating disorder.

I am glad she got help and has found her strength. But sheesh... this article seems like it was just another example of people avoiding the elephant in the room when it comes to eating disorders.

Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that it took her breaking down in a race at less than 100 lbs for someone to do something? It's like Greg was just trying to use up that last bit he could get out of her before she went off the deep end, then he acts like he's pulling her out for her own well-being. He pulled her out because she was of no use to him any more. Schaaf probably left because it's an environment that encourages eating disorders. It'll be interesting to see if Katie Flood's recent weight loss goes that far.

I'm disturbed that anyone accepts "just not eating enough" as a valid excuse for being dangerously thin. Anyone who's run high mileage knows that "accidentally" eating too little is really hard - your body lets you know when you're undereating. Maybe you'll lose a couple of pounds, but you don't get into that dangerous region without working really hard at it.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Just another example of misunderstanding eating disorders. The problem is that some still think people CHOOSE to have eating disorders, so saying someone has an eating disorder is seen as blaming that person. No, combine a condition such as OCD, depression, anxiety, etc. with diet and/or exercise. It is more common than we'd like to think, but if it's ignored or taboo to talk about, no one will be helped.

Anyway, whatever the case may be with Megan, it's great to see her happy and healthy!

She has no control over what she does to herself. It's not her fault.

Whose fault was it?

As an anonymous coward, I found her to be an articulate and sweet girl.

Regardless of what is said out here, Keep up the great work, and know that your fans are pulling for you regardless of outcome!

She was in a position where everything came together in a bad way. She has a condition that makes her obsess about not eating too much, everyone had very high expectations for her performances so there a lot of pressure on her, and she's in a sport where weight affects performance. I think if blame is to be put anywhere, it should be on the fact that these things are not talked about, which the article perpetuates. The article insults the people on this site who had concerns about her in high school. Back then, we weren't throwing the words "eating disorder" willy nilly. We were expressing our concern that she was at an unhealthy weight and she needed help. And we were absolutely right. I don't see where they get off putting us down for that when it's something that everyone could plainly see but wanted to be hush hush about. I find it very hard to believe that her parents and coaches saw this http://www.atf-athlete.com/files/GoethalsFootLockerFinal08.JPG and didn't think there was a problem. More over, she was recruited and only made to sit out when she broke down in a race. I don't think blame is to be put on any one person. It should be put on this BS code of silence when it comes to talking about health. Let it be remembered that these "cowards behind anonymous keyboards" were the only people willing to talk about it.

Not knowing all the details, I'm not sure if it is the same thing, but I can relate my own similar story and perhaps shed some light onto how someone could be underweight and not have an "eating disorder".

Basically, I ate everything in sight when I was young, but I was always light because of my general bone structure. Neither of my parents ate heavily except for dinner, so what I was eating seemed normal to me, and I was perfectly healthy. I was about 5'6" and around 120-125 pounds in 9th grade (I'm male, not female).

I started running in 9th grade and by about 10th grade, not having changed my diet much (and never feeling hungry, and certainly not starving myself), I had dropped to about 105-110. Of course I was skinny but nobody though I was anorexic. I was very healthy and my doctors were always impressed with my health.

When I went to college (coincidentally UW), I started running harder and more miles. I was always feeling like total ass. Much of that can probably be attributed to overtraining, but I belive my inability to improve even at all may have had much to do with undernutrition. I was not a light eater (frequently put away a large pizza by myself) but I was never much of a breakfast (slept through) or lunch (maybe a light sandwich) person. I always ate a massive dinner and snacked throughout the day. I was constantly sick with cold/flu and found it difficult to train consistently. I never had a coach or doctor raise any concerns about my weight and looking at stats in Track and Field news, my height/weight was like an elite marathoner or 10k guy so I figured everything was normal.

Some years later, after quitting running and gaining weight to 150 lbs, I started running again, and after 6 months of consistent 70mpw very slow, I was already back to 115 pounds and eating everything I could not to lose more weight.

I could believe that a girl could eat what seemed to be enough, not knowing that the extra training would require a lot more calories. Just because she was underweight doesn't mean she had anorexia or was avoiding food.

Sorry for the long story but I can totally see not eating enough if you don't feel hungry and you're already eating like you always did before.

You were at what seemed to be a healthy weight but it turned out it wasn't a healthy weight for you personally. That's completely understandable. With her though, she was not at a healthy weight for anyone. No one could look at her back then and think that that was sustainable. That's why it's so hard to understand what took so long for her support structure to recognize there was a problem. I said before that blame shouldn't be put on anyone but I'm starting to rethink that. She said she would be exhausted after a 20 minute run. Was she doing this entirely on her own? Where was her coach? Her teammates? Were her parents communicating with her? Like you said, we don't know all the details so maybe there was some concern behind the scenes. But the article talks about it as if one day she just accidentally ended up below 100 pounds and there was no cause for concern before that.

The author of this story, the "director of writing" (whatever the hell that means) for the entire university, doesn't have a clue about his chosen subject.

She was running the 80-plus miles a week while eating just 3,000 calories a day. That's not low according to some recommended daily caloric intakes for normally active, 18-year-old women. But it was dangerously low given how fiendishly Goethals had been training for years to become the nation's elite girl distance runner.

I've seen women smaller than Megan put in higher mileage on much less (not that it's healthy, but it's possible).

This "Unleashed" dude is just a PR machine for a student-athlete and he clearly knows nothing about EDs. As a result of his knowledge deficits and lack of objectivity, little of what he writes here can be trusted. There is much that is plainly fishy about this story about an eating disorder that is actually not an eating disorder, but I won't say more than that and I wish Megan Goethals all the health and happiness in the world!

There isn't a thing any one can really tell someone with an eating disorder to change the way they do things until they are ready to accept the fact that they have a problem. Proud of Megan for finally recognizing she needed help and I hope she can continue to stay healthy. For someone with OCD, it can be hard to have a healthy relationship with running.