The Dilemma of Appearance and Athletics

I remember attempts to shape my body into something other than what it was at an early age. I was a scrawny kid and the world felt free to comment on it. “Chicken legs,” my inappropriate middle school teacher said. “I think that girl is anorexic,” a stranger said to her daughter as she pointed at Elementary-school-aged me while we were in line for a milkshake at the fair. In my freshman year of high school, I tried to eat a lot to look like the other girls who were already more physically developed than I was.

I eventually caught up with the other girls and got my period, but when I did, I got frustrated that I felt a bit “fat.” I was not fat, but I did not like what hormones did to my body. The hormones did add some healthy fat to my frame, but not much, because I was a distance runner.

When I first got my period, my mom dropped me off at my dad’s house and said, “Here are some tampons,” before she hopped in her car and drove away. I read the box to sort out how to use them. There was no conversation about how this would change my body (in incredible ways) and how it would change how I think and move in the world. All I remember my mom saying about periods was that she did not get her period until even later in life than I did. I thought she was criticizing me for when my period arrived (as though I had some control over that) and I tried to eat less and exercise more to stop my period. Thankfully, that terrible idea of eating less and exercising more was not extreme enough to negatively affect my cycle (many women are not so lucky). My period has been quite regular with my cycle only getting a few days longer when I would train a lot in college, or go hungry when we were homeless. I never missed a period after that first year my period started (again, a lot of female distance runners are not this lucky).

I stayed quite small until my sophomore year of college. No one told me then that it is normal to go through a period of weight gain that negatively affects athletic performance (particularly in distance sports or any sport where being lean is an advantage). I was confused about the weight gain and again tried to fight it. I would eat less or try to exercise more, never getting much thinner. I had no idea women’s bodies were designed to hold onto fat during this time in our lives so that we could have healthy babies, even if we went through a period of food shortage.

In my senior year of college, I accidentally stumbled across the meth-like combination of cold medicine and caffeine. I was sick and had the combo on accident. I could not believe how easily I could avoid eating that day. I was not hungry all day, yet I could run without pain. I finally was able to get “lean.” Coaches complimented my figure, encouraging what someone more discerning might recognize as disordered eating.

I bombed a mile race a few months after I started the new cold medicine and caffeine combination. For some reason, that bad race shocked me enough to stop the cold medicine altogether. And it scared me into eating regularly again. I do not know exactly what happened in my brain, but it clicked that my behavior was not sustainable. Again, I was so lucky to have this awareness. I watched so many teammates suffer from debilitating eating disorders they could not “snap out of” after a bad race.

I went on to run faster times after I graduated, by listening to my body and eating when I was hungry. I would only experience an injury when I went through a food shortage due to the difficulty of supporting my mom and myself on my limited running store income. I still think the amount I trained was overly stressful for my body, but no one taught me what was too much.

As an athlete, I was surrounded by women who exercised for 2+ hours per day. At many universities, disordered eating was encouraged on top of overexercising. We only had four years to get fast, and if you spend some time letting your body do what it needs to do (gain weight), some of those four years are “wasted.”

Female athletes want to please their coaches and their parents and to have a feeling of control and discipline. They want to excel in their sport, but what is the cost? Many of my former teammates cannot run anymore because of their disordered eating and related injuries from collegiate competition.

It is hard to overcome an obsession with appearance because it is a deeply ingrained cultural issue, not just in sports. I hope that women support each other and speak up about their experiences. And I hope that by speaking up, we change the organizations that encourage or normalize the mistreatment of women’s bodies.

I hope teaching women how hormones affect their bodies becomes the new normal. I hope that together we can create changes that allow our daughters to grow up loving and caring for their bodies so that they can work hard on things they love, instead of trying to perfect their appearance for a sport or to fit in.

And, I hope I can be at peace with my body, too.