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NEDA TOOLKIT for Coaches and Trainers Running in the family: Together, a family fights eating disorders Talking with The Walker Family*: Athletes Emma and Sharon talk with their mother Laura about competition, eating disorders and how coaches can help athletes struggling with eating problems. Sisters Emma and Sharon Walker are both three- sport athletes. Both also battled eating disorders that began with their attempts to “eat healthy” in order to maximize their performances in running, cross-country, skiing and soccer. After Emma became concerned about slaughterhouse practices, cutting out meat was easy. Her weight loss was gradual and went undetected for many months. Emma, like many athletes, was “so competitive and perfectionistic,” she says, “that I didn’t want to do anything that was going to hurt my performance.” But her good intentions spiraled into self-starvation, amenorrhea and extreme fatigue. Eventually her running times began to suffer, and Emma would faint occasionally after races. Sharon became eating disordered later, ironically, as she tried to help her sister recover. She read books on nutrition and became overly careful about her own food intake. Laura didn’t notice the gradual changes in her daughters’ eating habits. First they cut out sweets, which she thought was healthy. Next, they cut out fats, and eventually reduced carbs and protein as well, until they were eating mostly fruits and vegetables. “The top runner on our team was extremely thin and I equated being thin with being fast,” explains Emma. She adds, “The biggest thing coaches need to know is that this doesn’t happen to athletes because they want to be skinny; they want to perform better.” She would like coaches to tell their athletes “that you don’t have to be stick thin to be a great athletes; proper nutrition is what is going to make you a strong athlete.” “It’s a psychological more than a physical thing,” Emma explains. The under-eating “starts to become normal to you, and you’re not even aware that there’s anything wrong.” What helped her was her coach’s emphasis on the need for her to become stronger by fueling herself properly. “He used the analogy of a car, and how if it doesn’t have gas in it, it’s not going to run. It was the same with an athlete, he said. If you don’t fuel properly, you’re not going to be able to compete at the level you want to. My motivation for recovering was mostly that I wanted to be able to compete well.” The Walker family suggests: Words for coaches to use in training athletes • • • • Being a great athlete is about being strong, not about being thin. Losing weight might initially make your times faster but the fatigue and weakness that result will eventually make your times fall apart. There are no “good foods” or “bad foods.” It’s fine to eat sugary foods in moderation. Missing regular periods is not acceptable. Approaches for coaches to take with athletes • • • • Focus on the performance decline resulting from weight loss, not the weight loss itself, which can encourage athletes to want to lose more. Educate athletes about the long-term consequences of amenorrhea. Use the athletes’ natural desire to compete and win as leverage to motivate them to recover from an eating disorder. Be vigilant in the off-season; eating-disordered athletes often have a harder time motivating themselves to eat enough when there is no sport they need to fuel for. * Names have been changed to protect anonymity. Page  | 48