Listen in as Opal’s Director of the Exercise + Sport program, Kara Bazzi, and Opal’s Movement Coach, Caitlin Jacobsen have a conversation about “Good for a Girl”, a newly released book written by former professional runner, coach and author, Lauren Fleshman. “Good for A Girl” is a memoir (and part manifesto) which follows Lauren’s distance running career to the upper echelons of elite levels of sport performance. Although the elite distance running world is exclusionary, and centers the white, thin, able bodied, cis-male experience, Lauren’s story highlights something that is relatable to a wider audience: how society’s toxic cultural messaging about who “belongs” is a driving factor for developing disordered eating and eating disorders. Kara and Caitlin draw from their identities as distance runners as well as clinicians working in the eating disorder treatment field, as they highlight important themes from the book. They also use this as an opportunity to encourage and inform listeners about eating disorder treatment, which was a topic not discussed in the book. This episode offers hope that specialized treatment does exist for the athlete!
**Check out our other Shifting Toxic Sport Culture episode here.
Links:
Lauren Fleshman + Link to her book “Good for a Girl”
Book: Girls Running
Connect with Opal:
Thank you to our team…
Editing by David Bazzi
Music by Aaron Davidson: https://soundcloud.com/diet75/
Sound engineering by Ayesha Ubayatilaka at Jack Straw Studios
Transcription by Rev.com
Lexi Giblin (00:05):
Welcome to the Appetite, a podcast brought to you by Opal Food and Body Wisdom, an eating disorder treatment clinic in Seattle, Washington. On this podcast, we talk about all things food, body movement, and mental health. I’m Dr. Lexi Giblin, co-founder and executive director at Opal and your host for today. And I have the pleasure of sitting with two amazing people today for the podcast. We have Kara Bazi, who is one of the co-founders and of Opal, as well as our exercise and sport director, clinical director as well. And we also have the pleasure of welcoming Caitlin Jacobson, who is one of our movement coaches at Opal, and also side note co-leads, R-O-D-B-T skills class with me and is here to have a conversation with us about this new book that we will talk about and some thoughts that have been coming up related. So Kara, do you want to start by just taking us into the context of this episode and what motivated you to do what we’re doing today?
Kara Bazzi (01:23):
Yes, well, I’m really excited to be having this conversation with Caitlin as well, given the work that we do together at Opal around exercise and sport and movement. And then Caitlin also has history and current relationship with sport herself as a distance, an ultra runner, and of course my history with distance running. So in our worlds, this book has brought about a lot of conversation in our circles. Good for a girl written by Lauren Fleshman. Lauren is somebody I’ve referenced before in the podcast as a former pro athlete and somebody who speaks a lot in the space of women, female empowerment, shifting sport culture, et cetera, and has done a lot of brave things in her lifetime to make change for the better. To give this episode a bit of context, I want to reference the listeners back to the episode we recorded in 2019 called Shifting Toxic Sport Culture.
(02:29):
When we reflected on Mary Kane’s article, who was also a phenom distance runner that came out with an op-ed piece exposing the Nike Organ project and exposed the culture of body shaming and eating disorder harm that was being done within the culture of sport and a company as big, as powerful as Nike. And that created, in my opinion, in the last few years, a lot more opportunity for people to be brave, come out and expose more of this problem. And for many of us continuing to find the work of what do we do, how do we make, what kind of meaningful changes are we going to make to actually shift this culture, not go beyond the identification of it, but how can we make meaningful change moving forward? And there are a lot of amazing things that have happened since Mary Kate’s story came out, one of which we referenced in this podcast before of Wildwood running, starting, which again, this is in the distance running context, but an organization that is committed to prevention efforts and educating female athletes about relative energy deficiency in sport periods, mental health, et cetera.
(03:51):
There is more, I would say, a lot more traction happening in the sport world around the importance of mental health related to COVID. That has also brought about a lot more exposure. So just seeing these different pockets within the sport world, recognizing these problems and making change. And I would say within the distance running sphere, we’re seeing a lot more traction. And most recently, a few books are coming out this past fall Good for a Girl that we’re going to be talking about today, running While Black by Allison Dezi, who we interviewed recently. And then we’re anticipating a book called The Longest Race by Kara Goucher, who is also an olympian runner. Each of these authors are making efforts towards inclusion in the sport and using their experience and their memoirs essentially to create an effect more change with their big platforms that all three of them hold. So I know that this, in some ways, these are all folks within the distance running community, yet I believe what they’re doing can be applied much more widely within the world of sport and athletics.
Lexi Giblin (05:05):
Yeah, that’s, appreciate you saying that because as a non runner but an athlete, I love hearing that the impact of these stories go beyond the running community, but this is making, I assume that there’s a lot of focus on the running community right now because these problems are particularly prevalent. Is that true?
Kara Bazzi (05:27):
Yeah, I think when we look at eating disorders in sport, it is not just an issue that affects runners, although I would say the sports that are more aesthetic focused, that are more focused, that there’s more energy are focused around weight and performance, have more prevalence of eating disorder issues, yet we know and we’ve seen at Opal in our practice that any athlete can have an eating disorder matter what their sport or their body shape or size. But I would say there is more commentary and acknowledgement within distance running. And actually when you look at people that are seeking treatment, we find that if you look across all sports, a lot of more distance runners tend to seek treatment than maybe folks from other sports. I’m not totally entirely sure why that is, but that is definitely something we found in our treatment center and when I’ve heard from other folks that do this kind of treatment in other parts of the country.
Lexi Giblin (06:31):
Okay. So cool that the stories are coming out recently and there’s the shift in the culture in the water, I guess. And I’m curious how as you hear these stories of runners sitting with the two of you who are runners, I’m wondering how these stories interface with your own lived experience, if there are places of particular resonance or difference that you would speak to?
Caitlin Jacobsen (06:59):
Sure. This is Caitlin speaking, and I really connected to Good For a Girl by Lauren Fleshman being a big fan of Lauren since junior high when I began running and I was about four years behind Lauren in school. And her experiences that she shared in the book felt so connecting to me, felt very validating, I think had this effect on me that made me feel so seen and that made me feel like, oh, these events that did occur within my running career as a high school athlete, as a collegiate athlete running Division iii, that these stories were real, that these things did happen to me. I have heard so many other runners in the community share experiencing similar feelings while reading the book that similar to the Me Too movement, so just, yes, it felt very connecting. I think especially the parts that Lauren gets into talking about body changes, my experience is mirrored Lauren’s developing a bit later and the fear of how body changes could affect my performance and because of the misunderstanding, miscommunication, lack of understanding by so many of my adult figures in my life, coaches and parents and the way that really led me to developing to the development of an eating disorder.
Kara Bazzi (08:22):
Yeah, Caitlin, I share that too, of having a lot of resonance of her story. I think for me, I certainly never went on to become a professional athlete, but when she details her experiences at Stanford, I was struck by some of the specificity of the stories she’s sharing and how it paralleled so closely to my experiences at the University of Washington. And I’ve said before that her and I were college runners at the same time. In fact, I raced against her in college. And so even some of her references that had to do with themes of those years, like the era of growing up in the, you can do anything motto, I definitely was raised with that belief system and very strongly by my father. So I also resonated with being a female athlete that I could do anything and that there wasn’t going to be any limitations on me.
(09:22):
And having that built in confidence of if you put your mind to it and with your effort, you can do anything. So I really resonated strongly with that piece. And of course I ran against her, but there’s a lot of things I didn’t know about her personal story. And so I was struck by the piece around her seeking love and attention from her dad and using sport to get that. And that was a big part of my own personal story of sport being the place that I knew I could grab my dad’s attention and how much of my drive for performance and achievement through the context of running was really to gain that approval and love and literal attention as a dad that was, there was a lot of absence in my younger childhood from him.
Lexi Giblin (10:10):
And could you say a little bit more, both of you about what your own eating disorder experience was like? Maybe an overview just as a listener. That’s what I’ve noticed. I’m wanting to hear more is what your story.
Caitlin Jacobsen (10:25):
Yeah. For me, I think about knowing as a mental health professional now that eating disorders are such a complex array of many different factors by all means sport and running specifically contributed deeply to the development of my eating disorder. But there are so many other factors at play from temperament, family of origin, growing up in a very fat phobic society and family and perfectionism. Yeah, a lot of traits that I would say made me a very successful distance runner also allowed me to be very good at having an eating disorder and to let that eating disorder thrive. So yes, I began running in junior high and then continued throughout high school and noticed, as Lauren speaks to in her book, I made direct comparisons between body sizes I saw of some women performing winning at Foot Locker, which was the national championship for high school runners back then and noticing body type, noticing girls in extremely thin bodies who maybe I had seen in different bodies the year before just blast past me.
(11:36):
And that contributed, I’d say largely to my own self-worth comparison thinking what body type? And I think that’s where representation is so important and matters and seeing who’s winning these races. And then I unfortunately also had, it was a bit of a perfect storm where I had coaches who also contributed so largely to this and encouraged us to do use a lot of unhealthy behaviors. There was no talk of taking care of your body, there was no talk of respecting your body, listening to it. It was very much just power through push through. And I was able to run throughout high school and then went to the Claremont Colleges for Running. And I largely chose that program because it was a division three powerhouse. And I think Lauren did bring this topic up in the book about values perhaps, or the way I read into it was hearing values and how does a young high school athlete runner specifically in the book choose a college program.
(12:39):
And a lot of that is chosen by rankings. And so I had this idea that I wanted to go to a small school, I wanted to run a vision three, but I wanted to be on a winning team. I wanted to be very competitive. And these values were of course instilled within me by my coaches, by parents that you want to win and winning at all costs. And so I went to this program that had a very toxic culture to it where eating disorder thrived. We had, my experience was feeling like we were disposable as humans and runners, and there was a new top performer each year or a new fresh class could come in. And it allowed us on paper to continue to perform very well and perform at the top of NCAA division three nationally. And it also just led to most of us and myself included, physically breaking under the pressure.
(13:32):
So by the time I got to my junior year, had spent most of my collegiate year injured and on crutches dealing with osteopenia with red s, it was called female athlete triad back then with disordered eating. Yeah, with stress fractures, multiple stress fractures, and all of that was just being minimized and normalized and pushed under the rug. There was a lot of me crying out for help and being told I felt like a lot of gaslighting, a lot of being told this was a meat issue, this is a problem with you, it’s not a problem of the system or the team yet. I was seeing girls just crack under the weight of all of it. So then I did take a break from running after my junior year, sought out recovery, went through my own recovery journey and have since returned to running after becoming a mother and after doing a lot of healing recovery work around it. So running is a big piece of my life and yet just one piece of it and what has led me to work in the space I do now as a movement coach to help people connect with their bodies and with movement in a way that is much more wholehearted.
Kara Bazzi (14:42):
I love hearing more of your story, Caitlin, and I am struck by just, and I think I felt this way reading the book too, of how many, many of us have a similar story and I think the heartbreak of that, and I’ve been recovered for nearly 20, well, probably 15 to 20 years, and I still have just so much emotion and tie to this grief and sadness of how many people have been impacted by this in our sport particularly. So I think some of the listeners have heard my story before. But yeah, I think for me, running was kind of a secondary sport. In high school I had hopes to become a collegiate basketball player, so I did not have in that part of my life, I had a free relationship with food, very natural relationship with food. I didn’t feel compelled to change my body because I was in a sport.
(15:47):
I actually, in basketball there was more pressure to be strong and I didn’t have any worries about my body shape at that point. But then got recruited to run at the University of Washington, and that was based on potential in genetics because I had an older relative that was on the University of Washington team and the coach had some belief that I could be a successful distance runner. And then similar to Caitlin, I have a lot of those temperamental traits that made me really coachable and I was highly competitive, and so I was just sort of willing to do whatever it took to be as fast as I could possibly be. And that took me down a path of disordered eating to an eating disorder. And I came into that with no education, no information about nutrition, really naive. And so I was pretty much just kind of falling suit with my teammates, doing what they were doing, not recognizing that there was a problematic nature to it as far as the restriction went.
(16:55):
And I was getting fast and I got really successful by my winter of my freshman year. And that’s just very seductive and enticing, finding that athletic success as a lot of runners share. And then my story goes at some point my body couldn’t handle all that restrictions, so I started to binge and got into a really bad binge restrict cycle. But the binging was what led me to be more upset and see more of the problem of what was going on, even though the restriction was more of the problem. And I didn’t seek help until my senior year and I actually didn’t have anyone sharing any amount of concern with what they noticed about what I was doing. So it was me actually finally seeking treatment and I didn’t recognize I had an eating disorder until my senior year, even though I’d had it for four years. And then my recovery story similarly to Caitlin is that I spent a lot of time and energy in healing and particularly healing my relationship to running, which was a high motivation to get into the field of mental health and do this work for others and ultimately was one of the pieces that led to developing Opal 12 years ago.
Lexi Giblin (18:14):
I really appreciate hearing both of your stories and it makes so much sense why this book is so powerful for both of you. It sounds like you share, this is a shared story while it’s about Lauren, it’s about you as well, right? So as mental health practitioners, what are you taking away from Lauren’s book?
Caitlin Jacobsen (18:36):
I think the main pieces that I took away from it was the importance of open dialogue and communication about body changes, especially during puberty, talking about periods, hormonal shifts, accepting understanding and embracing changes, body changes, and focusing on the long game both in sport and in life and the development of female athletes as whole humans rather than putting them in direct comparison with their male counterparts. That is, I think, where the gender piece comes in a lot. The subtitle being a woman running in a man’s world where Lauren depicts the story that both Karen and I connected to so strongly that body changes occur and puberty is going to happen. And when no one is talking about it and no one is recognizing it to the young female athlete, if you see a plateau or you see this non-linear trajection that your male counterparts because of testosterone surges during puberty for males, they have a much more linear trajection, whereas female counterparts, we just don’t experience that and plateaus are going to be normal. And when no one’s talking about that, it can make the young athlete feel like something is wrong with them. And then leads to disordered eating, eating disorders, manipulating one’s body or completely dropping out of the sport and just I think feeling in so many ways like a failure earlier.
Kara Bazzi (19:59):
Yeah, that’s really well said Caitlin. And the other part that I think is a key message that Lauren is getting across in the book is about her running identity and expanding that identity outside of performance, both within the context of running and outside of running and how that synced up and connected with her self-worth. And so she talks about shifting outside of her identity as an outcome oriented, just seeking that Olympic dream and all the ways that she was going to meaningfully be able to meaningfully make changes within the running community, through her activism and through using sport to get to some of this education about red S and helping female athletes understand better what is going on with their body and navigate those gender differences. So she also talks about starting her food-based business, which is picky bars and her writing and how those helped make her feel more well-rounded and aligned as a person.
(21:11):
And I think it’s funny because having our background in radically open dialectical behavior therapy, I think she makes a lot of references to that throughout the book, helping the author see that what kind of the emotional loneliness that comes when your life is fully centered by performance outcome. I actually wanted to read one of the small things she wrote, but it felt very RO to me, so I know that might be interesting to our listeners. So she writes, so much of my life had been spent trying to be better than other people to feel worthy and it had separated me from others and myself. So a simple statement, but very RO aligned.
Lexi Giblin (21:55):
Yeah, I appreciate that. Of course. I love RO and I think that’s, as I hear you all share your stories too, I do hear the loneliness. In your experience, you both mentioned red SA couple of times. Could you say a little bit about what that is?
Kara Bazzi (22:13):
Yeah, so red S is relative energy deficiency in sport and like Caitlin mentioned, this used to be called the female athlete triad back at least when we were athletes a while ago. Red S is an expansion of the female athlete triad to be more inclusive of all genders, and really it is describing both the physical and the physiological, physical and psychological impact of not having nutrition adequacy. So what happens to both of our bodily symptoms when we’re not having adequate nutrition as well as psychological?
Caitlin Jacobsen (22:52):
Yeah, low bone density can be signs of osteopenia, osteoporosis, early onset osteoporosis in teen ages.
Kara Bazzi (23:02):
Yeah, different heart and organ impacts. And then of course the psychological effects of irritability, depression, anxiety, fatigue,
Lexi Giblin (23:15):
Losing your period.
Kara Bazzi (23:17):
Yeah, losing your period would be one. But before with the female through tryout, it was just period bone and more geared towards female athletes. And so it’s really important that it has been expanded because athletes of all genders have red us and before it was seen more of a female problem and that was a myth. It wasn’t serving athletes well to have it be limited in that way.
Lexi Giblin (23:42):
Got it. Well, I’m thinking that because this story, Lauren’s story is so personal to your own experiences that there were particular times or particular passages that were particularly difficult to read. What were some of those moments in the book for both of you?
Caitlin Jacobsen (24:01):
Yes, as you alluded to, it was a really, I think there were lots of times while reading the book that I experienced a lot of discomfort. I noticed sensations arise within me similar to what might arise during a really hard therapy session because it was calling to mind such vivid memories that paralleled Lauren’s paralleled my own experiences, especially within college. The one passage that I think struck me the hardest because the comparison felt so similar was when she was at Stanford and her coach sat the women’s team down following a particularly disappointing in the coach’s eyes and the team’s eyes, a disappointing performance, I think it was at conference. And the coach said our women’s team had an integrity problem. And Lauren later wrote in the book, after reflecting on this experience, she said, what makes me cringe now is VINs and my inclination to place blame on the women without any acknowledgement of the forces at play for us, the outcomes he described eating disorders predictably show up on teams all over the world, but instead of asking why we shake our heads and frustration and continue to blame the women, these behaviors look like personal choices, but they’re choices made within a particular sporting environment that women had to fight to get access to but did not get a chance to create.
(25:26):
Yes. And I think this passage just felt so powerful because my experience as a young athlete also was this blame blaming ourself wondering what is wrong with us? Why can’t we fix this?
Lexi Giblin (25:39):
And by us you mean obviously yourself, but then your teammates as well.
Caitlin Jacobsen (25:44):
Yes.
Lexi Giblin (25:44):
What’s wrong with you? And so I’m thinking about how distancing that would be to be disappointed in your teammate and how alienating everyone would feel alienated.
Kara Bazzi (25:57):
Yeah.
Lexi Giblin (25:58):
Carrie, what about you?
Kara Bazzi (25:59):
Yeah, I’m still taking that one in. I mean, there’s a lot of things she wrote that are really powerful to be revisiting like Caitlin said, and which is why I think there’s so many people talking about this book right now, the specific passage that, well, I have a couple answers to this, but one of the specific passages that stood out to me, again, going back to some vivid experiences in imagery, she talks about on her recruiting trips, and she references this a few times of what the meal times look like with a group of distance runners. And it’s so sad and kind of haunting to be reading her particulars and talking about this. So I’ll read this passage. This is again, reminds me of most of my meal experiences with my team for four years. So on my last night in Boulder. So she went on a recruiting trip to Boulder before she chose to go to Stanford.
(27:04):
And my last night in Boulder, a bunch of girls showed up for a dinner at a bar and grill. And as I listened to their sharp wit and laughter, I thought maybe this could work. But when the food arrived, I felt the weight of their stairs at my burger and fries. A quick scan of the table revealed that the team meal was a salad with dressing on the side. When I held a fry up to my mouth, I was watched so intensely by one woman, I checked to see if there was something gross on it. A couple of my prospective teammates ate their lettuce gingerly like it might contain bones. Whatever conversation was happening on the plates was creating static for the conversation and connection above. I didn’t know for sure these were eating disorders, but it looked exhausting. Again, she references a couple of experiences like that throughout the book of what those team meals were like.
(27:48):
And again, I can’t tell you how many meal experiences that I had on my team that were parallel to that. And I think reading the book now, I have a sophomore daughter who’s a distance runner who does want to run in college. And this is obviously a different time in life than when I was going through that process, but it just makes me wonder how many teams have that similar experience currently and how many teams have shifted I guess, in that way. So that one gave me a lot of pause. And then the other piece, and maybe this could start to change our conversation a bit, but this part of her passage bothered me, I would say coming from the mental health side of it, she talks about her experience running with an Australian runner, I believe, who was a great mentor to her. But in referencing this mentor, she does talk about it in relationship to a health professional or mental health professional I guess is how I was reading it.
(29:00):
And so she writes, Kim, Kim, who’s the athlete, gave me a concrete role model with healthy relationship with food and body. And her real talk was what made the biggest difference in challenging the beliefs I had internalized. She called me out and build me up in the process. She got through to me in a way a health professional never could because she was in the arena after what Ken did for me. I fully understood the power role model Ken have in this minefield if she’s willing to say it straight. And I’d go on to do this repeatedly for others, so I understand what she’s saying. I think it’s really important to have role models. I think in the 20 years I’ve been in this field, I’m looking for role models of people that are doing their sport and modeling a relationship with food and body that has freedom. So I’m not trying to deny that, but I think I had a hard time with saying that a role model was going to get through to her more than a health professional could. I think it was a subtle way of minimizing the impact that a health professional can have. And of course my bias is in being a mental health professional who’s been in the arena, not on the professional level, but been in the arena as a distance runner. I just thought that was a little shortsighted.
Lexi Giblin (30:12):
Yeah. I’m wondering if there are other places or other areas that you think Lauren missed in her book or maybe doesn’t yet understand or left out.
Caitlin Jacobsen (30:24):
Yeah, I really appreciate that question, Lexi, and that is something I was thinking about after finishing the book and while reading it, noticing with so much respect for Lauren and the acknowledgement that this was a very raw, emotional, vulnerable book for her to read. And yet, I think sitting back, I finished it within a few days, and so sitting back for a few weeks now and reflecting on it, thinking, okay, what if this book book was trying to do a lot? And I think even the way Lauren has phrased that it’s part memoir, part manifesto, it is I think began as a memoir. And so the pieces that I felt I was just waiting for her to get more into, were not necessarily offering solutions, but perhaps highlighting that there are options, there are options out there to get treatment, to seek help. There are options out there for athletes where it isn’t just as that passage spoke having a good teammate or having a good mentor who’s in the arena because I think the three of us and others out there do know there are specific eating disorder treatment centers and professionals who work with athletes and who have entire exercise and sport programs like Opal does.
(31:41):
And just seeing and experiencing the value of that, it made me wonder how much perhaps unconscious bias or stigma still exists. That came out through some of Lauren’s writing and some of the passages towards seeking treatment. And I fear how the miss of that, how that could continue to minimize and perpetuate these problems, especially within the female, well within the sports culture, made me think of the questions of who does seek out treatment, who is allowed to, who is treatment for? And I know there is unfortunately still so much stigma around seeking treatment and getting help.
Kara Bazzi (32:23):
Yeah, very well said, Caitlin. I think that would be my critique of it as well. And again, we have a lot of respect for what Lauren’s doing and some of the other powerful ways she is using her story, using her voice, using activism, using change in marketing. There’s a lot of things she is doing to be part of the solution, but I really found that gap as well of the mental health side and having an opportunity to reduce a barrier with her large platform. I think someone like her to endorse seeking mental health treatment would’ve been really powerful. And I’m curious kind of what has happened since releasing the book. I know she’s in conversation with a lot of athletes, so I just find myself really curious of what are people asking and seeking? I’m imagining a lot of people are coming out with their eating disorder.
(33:13):
I also was thinking about if someone has a current eating disorder reading this book, how are they experiencing these details? How are they experiencing this story? I know for our clients that are in treatment, a lot of these specifics could be really hard to hear. And so I think I found myself pretty aware and wanting desiring the athletes that are reading this to know where to go for help, especially if this was helping them to not minimize their problem and recognizing that they have an issue that a problem that they want to receive support and to change.
Lexi Giblin (33:56):
Yeah, I can see that. So in her story, she did not receive full mental health treatment in her recovery.
Kara Bazzi (34:04):
We don’t know, but it does not talk about that. It talks about sports psychology. And during her time at Nike, she did work with Darren Treasure, who later we find out he didn’t have credentials for his work, but she did sports psychology work and did talk about the help of developing mantras, working kind of on that cognitive side of changing negative thoughts. But as we know in the mental health world, that’s very different than sports psychology. And it makes me wonder how much does the general public know about those differences? What are the resources with mental health treatment? What’s the difference between sports psychology and what Opal does? What are the different levels of care? So I think it would be helpful maybe for us to talk about that because part of me wonders if people even know,
Lexi Giblin (34:55):
I think it would be really helpful. It seems like Lauren’s book opens up this big, it’s connecting with a lot of people and their personal stories, yet that is a gap in at least the description of her experiences, mental health and how there’s help out there.
Kara Bazzi (35:13):
Yeah, I think I would, and Caitlin just alluded to this, but I think think framing some of what I’ve seen to be those challenges in the last 20 years of doing this work for athletes specifically to seek treatment. One, there’s access issues for treatment just generally from the cost perspective, availability within any given city or location. And some of that access has gotten better with telehealth. So some of those barriers have been reduced, but we know that there are just general barriers for receiving treatment, and I think that’s important to acknowledge that are systemic barriers yet for an athlete. I think some of the barriers that can be challenged that are more within one’s control is said this, but the shame aspect that comes with this of sort of that sense of it’s my fault, the turning against oneself versus seeing it as a systemic issue that people are a part of.
(36:11):
And when you feel shame, you want to hide and you are, it might be very difficult to say, I actually need help, but rather I just need to fix and solve this problem. I mean, I did that for four years, I have to fix, or three years I have to fix this problem of my binging. I can do this. I’m an athlete and I think you can turn your athlete self against you. I’m an athlete, I do really hard things. This is another hard thing I can do. I can do this. I don’t need help. And I think that’s one major barrier. I think another major barrier is fear of performance changes. If I’m going to seek help and get eating disorder treatment, I mean a lot of people think then that’s just going to, and this is not true, but it’s just going to make me gain weight and therefore my performances didn’t going to decline.
(36:56):
And for those that have some real fears and maybe are scholarshiped athletes or doing this for a profession that can be a real threat of what’s this going to do to my performance? Are my providers going to understand my athletic identity? Am I going to still belong in my team? Am I still going to belong with my coach? I think those are real fears and barriers. And then of course, I think Caitlin said this too, the minimization of just the minimization of this in sport, because so much gets normalized. I mean, if you’re thinking of you’re sitting around a table full of athletes and everyone’s just eating a salad and this was my case, it’s hard to say that you actually have a problem when you’re seeing everyone else around you doing it and seeing people that you respect and admire and seemingly are doing okay. So it’s very easy to minimize and believe that you’re not sick enough or you don’t need help to actually seek out professional treatment, invest in doing it. Would you add anything, Kaitlyn?
Caitlin Jacobsen (37:58):
Just the one piece I was thinking about was the way that so many times from the client or athlete perspective, because of the just probably continued stigma and shame around seeking help. I know all the time when I’m meeting with athletes and new clients at Opal as a movement coach, they will come into sessions with kind of this belief that I am going to take movement away from them and that I’m going to say movement is bad, or that movement is the problem itself or running is the problem itself. And I just find such healing in sharing with them that that is not my role and our interest in working together is to look at the relationship with movement they have in their life and look at the harmful versus helpful aspects and really get to know themselves and their own relationship and with their body leaning into body wisdom, body trust. And I think there is such fear. And I remember as an athlete being so afraid to ask for help because I also thought that if I ask for help, someone’s going to tell me running is bad and I shouldn’t do it. And I think I knew at my core that the running itself was not the issue
Kara Bazzi (39:16):
And that fear just to name is, it is founded in some way because historically that message does sometimes come across in eating disorder treatment that there providers that will say, you can never do your sport again. You’ve been disordered in this and there’s no way to heal it. That bias does exist in eating disorder treatment. And I know that’s been something another way I want to make change on the eating disorder treatment world and I’ve tried to in my career is that to challenge folks in the eating disorder field to not perpetuate that idea because that doesn’t help then people to receive treatment. But I think for the listeners to know that there are a lot of places and spaces that that’s not the message you’re going to get in seeking help.
Lexi Giblin (40:04):
Maybe one thing you could do here quickly is just give an example of something as it relates to movement. What would be a goal of your work?
Kara Bazzi (40:13):
When clients are seeking treatment with us, again, we’re higher level of care treatment, which means people are with us either 10 hours a day, six hours a day, or three hours a day. So this is someone who has the medical necessity to get that level of care. And it’s really about having more containment, more support around the eating disorder in order to make change. And on the movement and sports side, we are doing the work of both educating, kind of like in Lauren’s book, educating about things such as red s about physiology, about diet, culture and its impacts. We’re doing a lot of educating. We’re also doing more introspective exploration about people’s stories and pasts and making connections, and we’re also doing experiential learning. So addressing both the left brain and the right brain, we’re addressing both the belief systems, the history, the education, and then the action piece and trying new things experientially.
(41:26):
And so that’s done through individual work, group work. And so for example, I think I’ve referenced on this podcast before, we have a group called Rethinking Exercise and Sport Process Group, and we are exploring the themes of things related to exercise and sport, such as doing values work around it. We’re looking at important human needs and how that relates to our relationship to exercise and sport. We’re looking at early movement messages that we’ve received in our childhood. We’re looking at toxic fitness culture, we’re looking at spirituality and movement and exercise and sport. So we’re taking these themes, having facilitated conversations, learning from each other in a community because people have very different lived experiences, different body shapes, races, backgrounds, looking at what counts, what does it mean to be an athlete. So a lot of big themes like that. Then we have a group experience movement group where people are getting to explore these themes in the context of movement surrounded by others, which can really help guide people in doing some of that work of comparison and looking at counts, expanding one’s idea of what defines movement and getting outside of the diet culture’s definition.
(42:51):
And again, more that experiential learning within the group setting. And then there’s the individual movement sessions that we offer. And maybe Caitlin could describe what she does in those as somebody who sees people weekly in that context.
Caitlin Jacobsen (43:07):
Yes, a movement session. So the individual experiential sessions, of course, are so tailored to the individual in their own work around the relationship with exercise, sport and movement. So I preface that saying they look so unique to each individual, but because I guess this topic, we’re largely talking about running today, I will call to mind and experience working with a runner where we often will work a lot on body wisdom, body trust, attunement, really learning that. I mean, I come from a place that I believe we all do have such strong internal body wisdom somewhere within us. For some people it has been so buried over by messaging. And so a lot of it is just slowing down, especially in the beginning of our work is doing body scans, check-ins before we head out the door, or if we’re on a walk together or if the client does have medical clearance to go on a run together. It may look like beginning session with a body scan, checking in internally with their mood sensations, feelings, and then while on the run, pausing, taking walk breaks, checking in with themself. A lot of just learning to recognize their own sensations and emotions that come up while moving. I think that’s what the beginning of the work often looks like.
Lexi Giblin (44:35):
Yeah. So what brings you hope?
Caitlin Jacobsen (44:38):
Yeah, I love that question. I think Lauren’s book did fill me with a lot of hope, especially it being in the top 10 New York Times bestseller list, seeing that so many people are reading this, it makes me feel like people really do care. I think it also called to mind a lot of work that’s being done by Wildwood, which Kara mentioned earlier with Robin and Marie. Their period talks, my thought of Elizabeth Carey and Melody Fairchild’s book that they co-authored Girls running and all the coaches, parents, athletes committed to unlearning harmful ways of relating with their bodies. One other was the Mind Body Endurance program by Riley Nichols and the work they’re doing with athletes. So all of these resources, and I’m sure I’m missing so many others, but do offer me hope that people are taking up space, demanding change, speaking out.
Kara Bazzi (45:29):
Yeah, I think you shared a lot of a great list, Caitlin. I think that also I think feel very hopeful too that we are going past the identification of it. I think there’s still a lot of identification work needed, but many people working on creating change and solutions and what do we do and how do we make a difference both systemically and individually to shift from this diet, culture, toxic culture, a lot of the myths that come along with it. I also feel a lot of hope from the high school coaches, I would say in the area. Recently I got a speak at the Washington State Track and Field Coaches Association, and my whole presentation is what do coaches need to know about diet culture? And there were close to a hundred coaches at that talk, and I felt very encouraged by the engagement, the interest, the desire to learn, to grow, to change.
(46:27):
And I would say that really is what I see, at least in the Seattle area with coaches, having my daughter running cross country and track in high school right now. I see a lot of coaches that I really respect and that, to be honest, would’ve enjoyed being coached by myself when I was younger. So I feel really hopeful about what is happening with our younger athletes and the high school coaches. And I have belief that this will trickle up into the collegiate and professional levels as well. And it’ll just take time. But I think the athletes and the high school coaches are going to set a trajectory that’s going to grow up into the higher levels of athletics.
Lexi Giblin (47:09):
Yeah, a lot of hope there. Thanks for this conversation. And thank you to Jack Straw Cultural Center for Sound Engineering. Thanks to Aaron Davidson for the Appetite’s original music, and to David Bazzi for editing. If you want to learn more about opal’s programming, go to opal food and body.com. Until next time.
