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.
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