Running Magazines And Diet Culture

The last blog post I wrote started one way and veered in a completely different direction than I had intended. I had one subject in mind initially and, instead, switched course to focus on something else. Kill off your little darlings is good advice I didn't follow. My first topic had nothing to do with running, but it's something that has been gnawing at me for a while now. It actually ties back to what I mentioned, that certain people in a given group where I live are presenting themselves as something they're not. I'm not quite sure how to tackle the subject matter yet, so I'll have to save it for another post. 

Recently, I've spent some time criticizing running publications. In fact, the other day I called out Women's Running on Twitter for once again promoting weight loss by restricting food intake after just telling readers to eat intuitively. Don't worry about calories! It's not that weight loss is necessarily a bad thing; it's that these types of articles don't offer any guidelines or cautions about who "should" and who should not be losing weight, and there's no sensible suggestion to speak to your doctor about a weight-loss plan before considering one. These types of rags will promote nearly anything to get more readership, I mean money. 

Women's Running pretends to be concerned about the health and mental health of female athletes, but the reality is that its writers contradict themselves all the time. For example, despite using someone coached by a man as a standard of health after continually pushing the idea that women make better coaches for female athletes, which hasn't actually been proven, the publication's overall stance seems to be that we need more female coaches in order for women to be successful and remain safe and healthy. Note that being a good role model in this case is not the same thing as being an effective coach. Forget all the examples of successful, healthy female athletes coached by men or any cases of abusive female coaches. I've mentioned this before. Women are no better. 

Being a good coach isn't related to sex. Both men and women can be good coaches for female athletes, and both can be terrible at their jobs. On social media, writers associated with Women's Running have spent a lot of time addressing the topic of male coaches who create unhealthy environments that potentially encourage women to have eating disorders, but then they push garbage about weight loss without any disclaimers or cautions. In the same breath, they suggest being plus-sized isn't unhealthy and then suggest weight-loss tips. What does it say when they promote dieting (trigger warning because of all the numbers) and restricting intake after claiming being heavier is healthy?

Women have always had to walk a fine line in order to be accepted in society. Whether it's their weight, self-expression, or overall beliefs, any extreme quickly draws scorn, and scorn often comes anyway, even to those who appear to fall in line. This isn't a suggestion that women should be beyond reproach, though. Women cause harm, too, and those who are liars, abusive, grifters, careless, or manipulative should be called out. 

The Believe in Me film that was released on Amazon Prime recently addresses toxic environments that some athletes have endured. Alison Wade, founder of Fast Women, when she discovered that it was a female coach who was in charge at TCU when allegations of an unhealthy environment for runners there arose responded by immediately holding men responsible for any misconduct perpetuated by a woman. People who blame others for causing eating disorders don't understand the complexity of the illness, but blaming a man for an unhealthy situation a woman created is shameful. Toxic environments can contribute to the development of the disorders, but it takes more than stressors in the environment for someone to end up with one. If a female coach is contributing to an unhealthy setting, though,  by all means, hold her accountable. 

Trail Runner is no better when it comes to the mixed messages they send around weight and diet, though more and more, they have avoided directly suggesting runners lose weight. Still, writers there have told us that excess weight is a disadvantage in running and have offered suggestions on how to lose those pounds, only to be followed by advice on ignoring the scale with no trigger warning about numbers mentioned in the form of BMI, even after mentioning how flawed using BMI as a guideline can be. Try to keep up with that! There was also an attempt to address body image issues in runners that misses the mark by linking to what's supposed to be an article listing the many causes of body image issues and, instead, lands the reader on an article with a focus on eating behavior in adolescents. 

The one time David Roche could mention something extreme regarding the risks of losing too much weight, he forgets all his previous hyperbolic chatter and simply suggests it could be bad, with no mention that disorders associated with body image dissatisfaction can actually lead to death. He also mentions tummy rolls and looking in the mirror without mentioning body dysmorphia, a separate disorder that has some overlap with eating disorders. Just like telling an anorexic person to eat isn't very helpful, neither is telling someone who has a more serious dislike of her body to just love it. Healing from this kind of body dissatisfaction takes more work than faking it until you make it, though it's not a terrible idea to incorporate some positive thinking in any recovery plan. What's more important than engaging in tactics that focus on the symptoms only, is understanding why these unpleasant feelings and an abnormal focus on the body have emerged. 

Then there's an article about eating disorders that suggests those who struggle can just eat and implies that those suffering would want to get well because otherwise they won't run as well. I will say this until I'm blue in the face: at its core, disordered eating is not about looks or gaining success. I understand the good intentions behind these types of articles, but this kind of advice is about as effective as telling someone addicted to smoking that they might get cancer and to just stop with the cigarettes already. While the article in the above link is better than many others relating to eating disorders, it still misses the point in a bad way about both why people struggle and the path to recovery by focusing on the symptoms instead of the deeper issues and the complexity of these illnesses. I appreciate that the author at least suggests to those who might have eating issues to seek help. 

And lastly, imagine how the "NO BODY TALK" crowd, those who insist that nobody should ever comment on a woman's body, would react if the adjectives used in this article were applied specifically to women. And why is nobody upset that this perpetuates the supposed myth that elite runners at the top are always lean? Doesn't the article start out by saying exactly that, and isn't body composition a taboo topic? It seems pretty obvious that individuals who write running-related articles that point to what other people do and eat as a general guideline are rarely registered dietitians and probably shouldn't be giving out dietary advice to anyone. 

Ultimately, running magazines are no better than any general fitness magazine trying to lure readers. Their target audience is anyone who will be attracted by a flashy headline. Deep down, their editors believe that weight loss is a topic that will draw in an audience, and it doesn't matter how susceptible their reader base might be to disordered eating. Careless advice can actually be dangerous when it comes to addressing anyone who's prone to developing an eating disorder. It's highly unlikely anything will change, though. Readers will still be bombarded by weight-loss suggestions, followed by encouraging articles that tell us to fuel up and eat what we want.