My Thoughts and Experiences on Weight, Body Composition and Making Choices
First of all, I am a female athlete who has been running for 32 years. By nature I’m typically rather modest but after reading a few recent articles on the subjects that I’m going to discuss I want to give you some background on myself and my running credentials:
2x NY State HS Champion, 1500m
Foot Locker Cross Country National Finals, 5th place
5x NCAA Individual Champion, 3x NCAA Team Cross Country Champion
5x US National Champion
3x US Olympian
11x US World Team Member
US Masters (40+) Champion, 5k
US Masters (40+) Record Holder, 12k, 5000m
I was a professional athlete for over 20 years, and I have never missed a menstrual cycle.
Ok, do I have your attention now? Here we go.
I want to share my experiences of dealing with weight and body composition in my running career right now because, well, they’re positive ones. In this time of revelation of so much mistreatment of female athletes in the running world, I want people to know that it is possible for a female athlete to feel secure and supported at all levels of development. I excelled at running in high school, in college, and at the professional and masters level. I have never experienced fat shaming from a coach, male or female. Am I in the minority here? I don’t know, but I do know that there are good coaches out there and that it is possible to be a successful athlete without being in a system of abuse. I’m not denying or dismissing the pain that other athletes have experienced. But just as they are sharing their truths, I want to share mine.
Let me start with my college days. I went through what I feel is a normal transition from high school to college. The first half of my freshman year I ate my favorite chocolate glazed donut every morning, and went to parties every weekend without fail. By the end of the indoor season I found myself spending spring break alone in my dorm room while the rest of the team was competing at the NCAA Indoor Championships. I went to Villanova to be part of the incredible athletic tradition, and being left behind was not what I signed up for. I realized I had to make some changes if I wanted to resurrect my collegiate running career. Yep, I had put on about 12-15 lbs and was doing the bare minimum amount of training that was assigned, I was running about 25-30 miles per week (for anyone who isn’t a runner…this is not much training). I realized that my diet, partying and laziness were not getting me the results that I wanted. I started training a little harder, skipping the donuts and limiting the parties to weekends after big meets. No one shamed me into making these changes, I realized that the choices that I had been making were not leading to the outcome that I desired. I did lose some weight, and I did make a huge improvement the following season, finishing my sophomore year winning my first NCAA 5000m title. On the flip side there also would have been no shame in continuing down the same path that I was on; enjoying my donuts and parties, and running 25 miles a week. This path would not have led to the success that I went on to achieve in collegiate running, but there would have been nothing wrong with making this choice. Life is all about choices, and I think that learning this is part of growing up.
My success in college provided me with the opportunity to continue my career as a professional runner, and I went on to compete as a pro for over 20 years. Now, here’s an interesting fact, in all of my years of running (high school through the present time) I have never lost my menstrual cycle. I’m guessing that I have good genes in this area, but I also think that my lifestyle as an elite athlete had a lot to do with it too. My year was always divided into phases, starting with a 2-3 week break (no exercise) at the end of the track season. Following the break I would start back slowly and build into what I call base training season. This consists of running lots of mileage and starting back with organized workouts, but at much slower paces that in the competition season. This is a time where I wasn’t concerned with my diet and would just let the fitness come back naturally, without being too serious about anything. About 6-8 weeks before I planned to compete, I would begin to run workouts at race pace and pay a little more attention to what I was eating and drinking. As I entered competition season I would cut out most, but not all, of the junk food that remained in my diet (for me this was mostly desserts and the chocolate donuts mentioned above:). After the peak of the competition season, this cycle starts over. I believe that having these training phases kept me from feeling that I was depriving myself of foods that I enjoyed. Honestly, when I was excited about a championship race it never bothered me to pass on dessert, it just didn’t seem like a big deal if I was going to have it a few days or weeks later. I think that having these training phases helped keep me healthy, physically, mentally and emotionally. No one can be in peak form all year round, as athletes we need these cycles to rest, regroup and get ready to be at our best again.
I mentioned above that I have never experienced fat shaming during my athletic career. This doesn’t mean that I have never paid attention to my weight or body composition. For those that choose to be a professional athlete (and are of adult age) I have a strong opinion that body composition is not something that should be ignored. Pretending that it has no impact on performance doesn’t make any logical sense, it’s exercise physiology 101. I absolutely do agree with the athletes that have pointed out recently that weight or body composition should never be singled out as the sole factor to an athlete’s success, or as a source of shame. In addition to this behavior being destructive to the well being of the athlete, it also completely defies logic. Body composition should be accounted for as one part of an athlete’s overall program, along with running, strength training, flexibility, sports therapy, sports psychology, etc. In my experience over the years I have gathered lots of good information from monitoring body composition by getting regular dexa scans. I have also gathered lots of good data from VO2 max testing, functional movement screens, and strength tests in the gym - my program was not limited to monitoring body composition. One early season scan revealed that my body fat was already surprisingly low, which was great information because I still had 3 months of hard training before championships season, and I needed to up my caloric intake to make sure I maintained, or even gained some fat. Dexa scans are also useful for athletes and coaches to keep an eye on bone density, and whether an athlete is gaining or losing muscle in response to their strength training routine. If we simply assume that female athletes can’t handle dealing with this topic, I think that we’re selling ourselves short and setting ourselves up to miss out on a lot of helpful health data. A question I have is why does there always have to be an emotional component attached to weight? Do we have emotional reactions to the results of our blood work, or a one rep max test in the gym? It’s most likely that we don’t. There’s no reason that weight and body composition can’t be analyzed and discussed the same way that we discuss all other aspects of training. It is possible to view a number on the scale with the same amount of emotion that we view a time we ran on the track or a weight that we just did for squats in the gym. We have the power ourselves to choose whether we make this attachment. Let me clarify here that these are my thoughts on how to handle weight and body comp as a pro, which I view very differently than the high school or collegiate level.
The issues and abuse that have been exposed recently in the coaching of female runners is unacceptable, and I know that the athletes that suffered through these experiences will continue to fight to make sure the next generation doesn’t experience the same thing. I spoke at 4 high school running camps last summer, and I met many enthusiastic, caring coaches. I can’t deny that there are still coaches out there that need to be weeded out of the sport, but in my own observation I think that as a whole we are moving in the right direction. Although there are still some unethical people coaching, I think it’s important that we don’t scare coaches away from challenging an athlete when they need to address something that is important for the athlete’s development. Over the years I received some tough love from my parents and my coaches, both male and female. I believe that athletes still need people in their lives that will challenge them, but this challenge needs to come from a place of compassion and good intention. Sometimes we have to be uncomfortable, it facilitates change and helps us grow into the athletes and people that we aspire to be. I know that for myself, without these people and these challenging moments, I wouldn’t be the athlete, and more importantly the person that I am today.
My biggest motivation for writing all of this is that I want to express that it is possible to have positive experiences as a girl, and as a woman in sport. I’ve had plenty of peaks and valleys throughout my running career, but these past 30+ years have been one hell of a ride. And it’s a ride that I’d wish for every young girl to experience.