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Lead Stories: Sunday, July 20, 2008

Athletes with Eating Disorders: Tips for Coaches, Parents, Friends & Teammates

Posted March 14th, 2008 at 10:30 AM by Katie Drummond

Section: News & Results, Health & Fitness, Exercise, Weight Loss

Eating disorders can be devastating to not only teams but also to families. Coaches and parents alike want their athletes to eat well and be healthy. The struggling athletes just want people to stop policing their eating and exercise. The athletes have difficulty talking about why they struggle with food; they instead communicate unhappiness by starving or stuffing their bodies. This distracts them from the pain of feeling “not good enough” and other hard feelings.

Unfortunately, too many athletes struggle with food issues. A survey of more than 400 female collegiate athletes indicated they typically believed their bodies were not good enough and wanted to lose five pounds.

Read the rest of this entry at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com

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Exercise Bulimia: When working out becomes an obsession

Posted July 12th, 2007 at 6:30 PM by Katie Drummond

Section: Health & Fitness, Exercise

For many busy women, it can be a struggle just to fit in that recommended thirty-minute daily dose of physical activity. But for a growing number, an effort to get regular exercise has been replaced by an obsession with burning calories and fulfilling rigid workout quotas - to the point of skipped work, depression, and potentially fatal harms to physical health.

While a fit body needs activity, exercise bulimia – an obsessive illness with serious consequences for the body and the emotional psyche - is becoming increasingly common. Experts estimate that at least 4% of Americans struggle with excessive exercising, but the diagnosis of exercise bulimia is rare in a culture that celebrates trim physiques and a disciplined dedication to workouts. In fact, most sufferers from exercise bulimia aren’t diagnosed with any medical problem until symptoms of more common eating disorders, namely anorexia and bulimia, rear their heads. And unfortunately, they often do, as most of those who struggle with one of the three will battle the others at some point in their lives.

It can be easy for exercise bulimia to go on for years under the radar –

Read the rest of this entry at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com

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HAL’s Katie Drummond:
“My life as a runner began for all the wrong reasons”

Posted June 26th, 2007 at 4:07 PM by Katie Drummond

Section: Running & Training, Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Exercise, Weight Loss

In this column for our partner site, HerActiveLife.com, senior writer Katie Drummond writes about the tragic beginning to her running “career”, battling an eating disorder, turning her life around, and how running gave her the strength and determination to regain her health.

My life as a runner began for all the wrong reasons. Five years ago, at 16, I fell into the same trap as so many young girls, and my weight became equated with my self-worth. I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know why, but somehow I went to bed one night and woke up the next day with an absolute certainty that the number on the bathroom scale should naturally dictate how I felt about my body and my value as a partner, a student, a daughter, a woman.

It soon wasn’t enough that I was eating nothing but rice cakes spread with mustard for lunch or just skipping lunch (and breakfast, and dinner) entirely. When I couldn’t stand to keep starving myself and changed my tactics, the scale snidely informed me that, no, throwing up wouldn’t make me any better, prettier, or worthier either.

Fed up, I tried another means of self-improvement, and started forcing my exhausted teenaged body onto the family treadmill every night…

Read the rest of Katie’s entry at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS: Nutrition & Exercise

Posted June 21st, 2007 at 7:53 AM by Adam Jacobs

Section: Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Exercise

Here’s your chance to learn from two internationally known experts at this intensive workshop on Nutrition & Exercise. Sports nutritionist Nancy Clark MS, RD and exercise physiologist William Evans, PhD will be offering a 1.5 day program that is designed to help coaches, athletic trainers, exercise physiologists, sports nutritionists, sports medicine professionals as well as athletes themselves find answers to their questions about:

1. Eating for health, enhanced performance and longevity
2. Balancing carbs, protein and sports supplements
3. Managing weight and eating disorders.

Read the rest of this entry at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com

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Lean Dreams: Eating Disorders on NCAA Teams

Posted May 15th, 2007 at 9:43 AM by Adam Jacobs

Section: News & Results, Nutrition, Healthy Eating, SoundOFF, Columns, Health & Fitness, Injury & Rehab, Exercise, Weight Loss

We see her running at cross-country and track meets every season; we watch her as she propels her thin arms and legs, conspicuous ribs, hollow cheeks and eyes, bulging veins and concave stomach forward. The visible markers on her body shout that something is not right, as her drive for perfection pushes her towards a dangerous dance with death.

The prominence of professional sports in America places athletes on the highest pedestal of celebrity, praise and respect. This cultural phenomenon gets replicated in college athletics in the form of big time Division I athletic programs. Often times, these programs incite the same excitement and feverish fandom as professional sports do - sometimes even more so because of the appeal of an athlete’s amateur status to the American imagination, and the almost cultish following of the universities that these athletes represent. Without question, the enormous pressure to excel and win in NCAA Division I programs creates serious issues concerning the physical well being of its athletes.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Exercise Bulimia: When it’s gone too far

Posted December 1st, 2006 at 11:00 AM by Sarah Kaufman

Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Health & Fitness, Exercise

When you’re at the gym, you love running on the treadmill. You pump out five or six miles every time you go; sporadically varying the speed of your mile times to achieve the best possible work-out that your body can handle. You look beside you and see a woman who is also running on the treadmill. She’s running at the same speed; on her way to the same five or six miles.

But whether or not you’re able to realize it, there is something different about the two of you.

You feel amazing after your run. You feel empowered, you feel healthy, you feel unstoppable. But not her. She feels like she didn’t do enough for the day. Maybe she feels like she shouldn’t leave; not until she burns a few hundred extra calories (at least!).

We all know that exercise is good for you. It’s healthy. It allows you to live a longer, happier life. But when does exercise turn into an eating disorder? Read the rest of this entry »

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