‘Putting someone on a scale every week doesn’t always tell a coach much if your metabolic rate slows down’ – The Telegraph

With the intention to encourage better sports performance, the culture of bullying and fat-shaming Britain’s leading female athletes has risen dramatically over the last few years. Quite frankly, some coaches have addressed the weight of sportswomen and paid lip service to the body image phenomenon.

A number of female athletes told The Daily Telegraph about the type of pressure they have been put under to lose weight, with many referring to the alleged conduct of Britain’s most senior coach, Charles van Commenee, during the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics. 

This surfaced after 23-year-old Mary Cain, an American middle-distance runner and former teenage prodigy, claimed last week that she was abused by Alberto Salazar’s coaching methods, which allegedly caused her to stop menstruating for three years and break five bones due to osteoporosis.

There are long term and sometimes irreversible consequences to pushing your body too far. But when sportswomen are told that the reason for a bad performance is because they are overweight, how are they to respond? We spoke to sports experts about this change in direction and where the line should be drawn. 

At elite level endurance sports, many athletes will carefully monitor their nutrition and their weight in order to optimise their performance at specific times of the year, because it can be compromised says lecturer in psychology within the context of sport, exercise and health Dr Carolyn Plateau.

“There’s an intricate relationship between weight and performance, particularly in sports where ‘leanness’ may be considered advantageous (such as endurance running).  However, being lighter doesn’t always lead to being faster, and sustaining a low body weight for extended periods of time can significantly and negatively impact an athletes health and performance.”

Plateau explained that “critical comments about weight have also been linked to an increased risk of eating disorder symptoms in athletes. However, in sport there can be a low level of awareness about the impact low weight can have on an athlete’s health. In females, the menstrual cycle can be a really good indicator of whether sufficient energy is being consumed, but discussing this can be difficult. It’s important for coaches and athletes to try to have more open and honest conversations, so it’s no longer a taboo subject.

“Understanding the signs and symptoms of under-fuelling is important for both coaches and athletes to be aware of. Generally, we need to try to get to a place where everyone is aware of the consequences of under-fuelling.”

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), a condition caused by low energy availability, where nutritional intake is insufficient to cover the energy demands of both exercise training and bodily processes is necessary to consider, according to both Plateau and Dr Nicola Keay.

Keay, an honorary research fellow in the department of sport and exercise sciences at Durham University says good health is fundamental and a basis on which to build performance. “Young female athletes during teenage years from a normal physiological standpoint increase weight slightly, or at the very least maintain weight. So encouraging weight loss in these young, already light weight female athletes is unacceptable and potentially dangerous from a medical point of view,” she adds.

The constant need to cut and reduce weight encourages under-fueling, and for women intervenes with some specific functions of the body, such as menstruation. 

“With females the menstrual cycle is a key thermometer for women and coaches to monitor. When young females don’t have menstrual cycles during their adolescence, it’s often that health issues will arise as a consequence that usually can’t be rectified in their adult years. As they lose a lot of estrogens which controls the bone health and mineral density, this can lead to long term irreversible consequences. But other issues are reversible, such as psychological health or adopting a healthy diet. Although trauma can be quite difficult to address,” says lecturer in physiology and programme director at Loughborough University, Richard Blagrove.

As an exercise physiologist and strength coach for distance runners, he also points out that “everyone has different body shapes and sizes. But at elite level sport, most body shapes are quite similar because of the type of training they all do. But genetic make up will determine how much weight is suitable for an athlete to carry and how quickly they can lose it. There shouldn’t be aggressive calorie restrictions.

“So putting someone on a scale every week doesn’t always tell a coach much. If your metabolic rate slows down, your body will overcompensate, meaning you aren’t losing much weight after all.” 

Ross Tucker a sports scientist and professor thinks its ideal to “draw a kind of distinction between the driver of disordered eating in an elite athlete who’s motivation is performance, and the non-elite athlete who is rarely motivated by performance, but much more by appearance,” when it comes to the pathology Mary Cain showed exists around body mass in female athletes.

“As for where you draw the line – the moment the athlete displays any ill-health effects, you have to bring them back to ‘homeostasis’ or balance. For instance, if they are undernourished and training, the first sign may be impaired training. They are tired, fatigued, aches and pains don’t go away. A good coach is monitoring the athlete all the time, and looking for those signs. But they can be difficult to spot, because athletes can hide them, and the body is amazingly resilient. Although by the time a young woman has stopped menstruating, it is quite late. At this point, the athlete needs to have someone that they can confide in.”

Martin Turner, a psychology expert at Manchester Metropolitan University specialising in human performance under pressure and adversity, adds that “some athletes are falling out of love with their sport, and that’s when well-being issues start to develop; when athletes attach their self-worth to external rewards it makes failure or falling short a lot harder to digest.

“I think a lot of coaches care more about turning female athletes into sporting machines with an ideal body composition in mind. We do have policies in place but it is not taken seriously.

“Females face different pressures compared to men. They are usually encouraged to be thinner, whilst males are encouraged to get bigger and increase their muscular mass. It’s strange and better spaces need to be created for more athletes to come forward.”