Need honest help: How to tell female collegiate runner to drop 5 - 10lbs

That is pretty good-sized, especially for a collegiate runner. I was 6' and weighed 145 and was like the heaviest guy on my x-country team. Losing 5 to 10 pounds would benefit her greatly but she could lose 20 easily. Does she do anything physically besides running?

Don't do it.

I don't care how much you want your team to be good, don't do it.

No. Emphasise healthy eating for the team, but that's it.

If her parents are bigger, than she is naturally big, and at the normal body weight for her.

Leave her alone.

I'd not say anything right now. Freshmen just made a major life transition. It's a tough time to have anything else thrown at them.

Focus discussions to the team on eating for fuel and optimal recovery. Take weight out of the equation.

Since she is motivated, i'm going to guess that given some time she will take matters into her own hands.

I have no idea. I was in college, was probably the 2nd shortest and 2nd heaviest at 5'8" and 138. I ran my marathon pr at 129. In hindsight, my coach would talk about other people's weight when he was really talking about me. On the women's team there was a girl who set the school recoRd in the mile freshman year and ate junk food till she was barely varsity cross. Another girl transfered in from a program where she couldn't hack it to back home, then she became anorexic and went from barely on our team to our top woman. She graduated before she had any stress fractures.

My biggest concern is that you could lose your job over saying anything.

I agree that a freshman probably doesn't need another stressor added to the things that are already drawing on her adaptation reserves. Just getting her through the season will be an accomplishment.

Looking farther (but not too far!) ahead, I would urge that after xc season you talk to her about aiming to get stronger: tell her that you can see she has potential, and that you feel increased strength will really help it come out. Don't discuss body weight at all; focus on strength. This will help her while she's a college athlete, but also the rest of her life: if she has big-person genetics, she needs strength to stay mobile in later years.

Again, this is probably not something to add in during her first college cross season. But once she's done with xc this fall, you could gradually phase in stuff like short hill sprints, running stairs, and/or accelerations (building to top speed) or flying 30m sprints on the flat. One or two sessions (on nonconsecutive days) per week should be plenty. Not only will these make her stronger; the high intensity may help make her leaner, as well.

If you get real winter weather in your locale, the winter months may be the time to move her to a whole-body weightlifting routine, with a focus on the "runner's protocol": heavy weights (*after an exercise is well-learned*), few reps, and limited sets. It's particularly important that the weight training include leg exercises.

You definitely should not say anything. Why did you recruit a fatty?

Having the team eat all their meals together may help a little. Once the culture is establish, athletes will encourage each other to stick to healthy food.

You should also add pool running and core work to the program and hope for the best.

Tell her she's too fat and that she needs to lose weight.

Avoid sugar, fat, caffeine, and most processed food.

Or, do Atkins.

This will sound kinda dumb and maybe a little counterintuitive if you're relying on her this XC season, but have her run her easy mileage slower. If she goes slow enough to rely only on free fatty acid instead of glycogen, she could burn some of that weight. It worked wonders for a woman on my team that came from a similar background (larger parents). Her easy mileage was in the 7:45-8:00 range, slowed it down to 8:30-8:45 for two easy runs a week this past summer and she was down about 15 pounds from this past school year. No major dietary change other than a little more focus on not fulfilling her sweet tooth. Just something to think about if you don't have to rely on her this Fall.

dfdfhdfh wrote:

Don't do it.

I don't care how much you want your team to be good, don't do it.

No. Emphasise healthy eating for the team, but that's it.

If her parents are bigger, than she is naturally big, and at the normal body weight for her.

Leave her alone.

How about subtly placing Richard Simmons' Sweating to the Oldies set in her locker?

I'd keep quiet this season. She is new to college and new to the team and probably feels insecure already. Once the season is over up her mileage. This will help a lot. If you really want to talk about weight talk to the whole team at once about healthy eating and the benefit of weight loss if your bmi is above 18 or whatever.

Email the coach at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. He simply calls them "fat pieces of sausage." and has been known to introduce them to former runners of his and then go on and on about how much they need to lose weight.

Oh and don't forget to add the weekly weigh ins of all your female runners to "monitor water lose and hydration" wink wink

Speak to the group.

Emphasise the importance of healthy eating vs wheat flour based foods, which have no nutrition value, but keeps you hungry, while gaining weight.

Then look at her.

You may be better off having a discussion about proper fueling with the team as a whole.

A lot of freshmen(and Americans/runners in general) are total boneheads about nutrition. They eat the traditional runner's diet and think I run this much I can eat whatever want. No one needs to eat multiple giant bowls of pasta, Americans eat too many refined carbs and too much sugar. I personally ran way faster and was much leaner when I stopped eating pasta and bread and focused more on quality fats and proteins.

You're overthinking the issue wrote:

Tell her she's too fat and that she needs to lose weight.

I really laughed after reading the sensible comments and then coming to this obvious one.

Thanks

Maybe you could frame it as a discussion about BMI? At least it isn't outright about weight that way. Although, her BMI would come in at 23.3, 'normal', so you might have to provide BMI of elites as a reference.

But, as others have said, I'd just try to emphasise strength.

Another option: We had an RD available to us in our athletic department, not sure if you have that option, but make the whole team schedule a visit. They usually make you keep a food diary for a week.

Have her lie on her back on the ground then have another girl trace her body outline with chalk. Like the police do with a murder victim. Then make her stare out it for 30 minutes.