“Even within the male-centric model, women have accomplished incredible feats of athleticism, smashing long-held beliefs about what women can or cannot achieve. Imagine what would happen if everyone had access to better information and guidance.” These are the words of Christine Yu, in the introduction of her book “Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes”. In this episode of The Appetite, Opal’s Director of Exercise+Sport and Co Founder, Kara Bazzi, LMFT talks with Christine about her reflections on the intersection of sport and gender through the lens of her work as a journalist and author. Christine is working to disseminate much needed information (and highlighting the work that is still needed) to better understand gender differences in sport in an effort to support all athletes in their similar and differing experiences.
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Editing by David Bazzi
Music by Aaron Davidson: https://soundcloud.
Sound engineering by Ayesha Ubayatilaka at Jack Straw Studios
Transcription by Rev.com
Kara Bazzi (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the Appetite, a podcast brought to you by Opal Food and Body Wisdom, an eating disorder treatment clinic in Seattle, Washington. It is a podcast about all things food, body movement, and mental health. I’m Kara Bazi, co-founder, clinical director, and the director of the Exercise and Sport program at Opal, as well as your host for today. On today’s episode, I’ll be having a discussion with Christine Yu, author of Up to Speed, the Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. I first became connected to Christine’s work when she interviewed me for a piece she did on WebMD, entitled, we Need to Talk About Body Image and Female Athletes. I got excited to learn about her journalism work that focuses on the intersection of sports science and women athletes. And then to find out she was writing a book, I was even more thrilled knowing that our resources are so limited in this space. So I’m delighted to have her on our podcast and share her knowledge and wisdom. So welcome, Christine.
Christine Yu (01:04):
Hi. Thank you so much for having
Kara Bazzi (01:06):
Me. Yeah, this is great. And I think just first off, I would love to start by naming and talking about the focus on women athletes, and I know you addressed this in your book, but just to lay a foundation for our listeners, let’s talk about the gender binary that is often found in sports space and research. And I’d love for you to speak on your experience with gender constructs as it relates to the research you did for this book and why you chose to focus on athletes that identify as female.
Christine Yu (01:34):
And I think this is a really important idea and concept, especially coming into a book whose subtitle is the groundbreaking Science of women athletes. So science and sports are both really interesting in that they are two fields that are very much predicated on the gender and sex binary. So in science, I mean everything is kind of split male female, male, female because science is all about trying to minimize variability and trying to find general understandings of how things work, how we can categorize things, how we can understand things. And so they want to have these kind of clear categories in order to advance that knowledge. And similarly, in a way with sports, we have the male female category in sport. Again, it’s this way to kind of categorize people, but when we do that and we only have these two categories, we make a lot of assumptions around what that means and what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.
(02:40):
And so what I was trying to do with this book, I mean, I’ll back up a little bit and say that when I first started thinking about this, it was really interesting to think about. It’s like, oh my gosh, women are left out of all the scientific research. What does that mean for girls and women in the sport? And when I first started researching thinking about this, it was very much like I expected to focus on all these sex differences between men and women and really understands like, yes, men do it this way, women do it this way. But really as I kind of dug into it a little bit more, realizing that we can’t kind of bucket people in those ways. We can’t kind of bucket just men, just women and expect them to be these wholly different categories of folks because the fact is that we’re all human.
(03:30):
So the reality is that there is a lot more overlap between us as men, as women, as someone in a male body and someone in a female body. Then there really are differences. I’m not saying that there aren’t any differences, but the fact is I often describe it as almost like this Venn diagram. So you kind of have the male slash men circle on one side, the women slash female circle on the other. And it does overlap, but the fact is that we don’t actually know how much of that overlap exists or really what exists in that female only, woman only side of things. We know a lot about that sliver and that’s just the men and the male bodies. So that was kind of really important for me to kind of think about. It’s like, well, yes, there are these differences, but also what are the commonalities between this?
(04:22):
And so in the book I try to, one way I was trying to do this was really think intentionally about the language that I was using and really intentionally only use male female when I’m describing something biological or physiological or anatomical, not as a way to describe any one person and to try to use as much inclusive language as I could. Understanding that gender and sex very much exists on a spectrum. And then to your question as to why this is really important and why kind of focusing on women athletes in particular, it really is when you think about the fact that we’ve for so long studied men, particularly in the field of sports, men have always been centered both in their experience has been what this whole system has been built up around. And so when you think about that, for me it was important to think about, well, who’s not centered in that conversation? Obviously women, but then it also includes non-binary folks, it also includes trans folks. So when I talk about thinking about women athletes and the experience of someone who identifies as a woman athlete, I think it also speaks to this broader conversation of lots of folks who have been marginalized by sex and gender and what that experience might, not their entire experience, but how by understanding more than just men’s experience, we can actually better understand a more inclusive understanding of lots of different people instead of just men.
Kara Bazzi (06:14):
Yeah, totally. If that makes sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. And it just makes me curious too, when you were looking at the research, obviously seeing the underrepresentation of women, did you find research studies that were looking at some of these ideas with non-binary or trans folks? Were there studies even that exist?
Christine Yu (06:35):
Not very much. And again, so this is also a couple of years ago now. So when I first started really reporting and researching for the book, that’s 2020 into the first half of 2022. So even at that point in time, there definitely were not, I don’t recall really coming across many or any studies around non-binary folks. There were maybe a handful of studies that were looking at trans athletes, but it was really small. And that’s in part why there isn’t say a specific chapter on trans athletes in my book because there just wasn’t anything to really talk about very concretely at that time. But yeah, it was very much still like men, men, a study on women, men, men, men, men.
Kara Bazzi (07:35):
Yeah, totally. It’s interesting too to think of your work in journalism and how we are starting to see more articles and media come out about trans athletes or non-binary athletes. So yeah, just curious too about that lag time between the research and the application and then what we’re seeing in media.
Christine Yu (08:00):
And that’s probably one of the more frustrating things about science is how long it takes to do things, how long it takes to put together a study, recruit for the study, run the study, analyze the data, and then go through the publication process. And for the most part, you do need those published results in a peer review journal in order for those findings and that evidence to be concrete and to be valid and accepted, if you will. But that takes so long, it takes so long. And science is very much an incremental field where you’re slowly building up this evidence base. And so it can take a really long time until you can build consensus and have things like guidelines, evidence-based guidelines and the like, which can be really frustrating for a person who is in it in the thick of it who is looking for advice or looking for something. And so yeah, it’s kind of this interesting tension between you do want the science, you do want it to be validated, but at the same end, media needs that validated sources in order to report on it. But then at the same time, you want to be telling more of these stories, you want to be pushing the field in some way.
Kara Bazzi (09:27):
Yeah, totally. And I think for me, being in the clinical world, we can feel that just impatience of, but this is what we’re seeing clinically and it’s in front of us and we know that we need to have these conversations. And what are best practices and how are these different? What is the overlap between those similarities and the differences in the lived experiences and what athletes need? I don’t remember if you said this in your book, but did you give a sense of how many years that takes from science research to translation to practice?
Christine Yu (10:08):
Yeah, so there’s one statistic that kind of stood out that I kept coming across, and it’s 17 years. 17,
Kara Bazzi (10:17):
Okay.
Christine Yu (10:18):
That’s
Kara Bazzi (10:18):
A lot.
Christine Yu (10:19):
You think about it. That’s an adolescent child.
Kara Bazzi (10:22):
Yes,
Christine Yu (10:23):
That is. It’s like that’s the age of my son who’s going to be leaving for school for college next year, but it’s like 17. It’s
Kara Bazzi (10:32):
Bananas. How long that takes,
Christine Yu (10:35):
Right?
Kara Bazzi (10:36):
Yeah. I would’ve thought I was thinking five-ish. So 17. Wow, that’s a long time.
Christine Yu (10:43):
Yeah, and I’m sure, right, that varies by the field. So I think that particularly in this realm of athlete health and performance related to women athletes, I think that the researchers are very cognizant of this tension and of the desire and the need for some sort of guidance or something now that they are trying to figure out ways to translate that work a little bit faster to shorten that pipeline or to figure out ways that they can set up their studies in such a way that they can provide a little bit more concrete guidance.
Kara Bazzi (11:30):
I think of the female athlete conference that takes place in Boston that I know you did a book signing last year, and that seems like such a huge part of that conference is having the researchers there, having the clinicians and trying to bridge that gap. And clinicians have access to that research, have coaches have access to that research to inform the way they are going to work with people. So yeah, I know that is a main hope of that conference. Okay, well, let’s change gears a bit and get to know you a little bit more too as author of the book. So I’d love just for listeners to hear the why behind, how did you get into this in your journalism work and into the book? What personally interested you or what drew you to doing this in your career?
Christine Yu (12:26):
Yeah, so I’ve always been kind of interested in sports science and performance in part because I tend to be injured or have been injured a bunch in my life. So trying to figure out ways I’m like, maybe I won’t be injured so much. So I’ve always been kind of interested in that realm. And then I remember specifically, it was about 10 years ago, I was at this fitness magazine event. It was for editors and writers in New York City, and there was a doctor talking about female athlete triad. And it was actually the first time that I had heard that specific term growing up I’d heard, yeah, if you are really fit or you train a lot, you lose your period. And it was kind of like, oh, okay, just as everyone, it’s like this accepted fact that happens. And at some point it never really dawned on me to really wonder why, but as she was talking about it and really talking about this interconnection between nutrition and energy intake and how that affects hormones and how that then affects bone health, it made me really mad because the thing that I remember her saying was that how the metrot cycle really plays a role in bone building and how important that is during adolescence and how adolescence is that period of time where you are just laying down bone and what you lay down, you can’t make up if you don’t reach your full potential.
(14:02):
And it really, like I said, it made me really mad because I was like, why didn’t I know this information when I was younger? Because I feel like that’s kind of important information to know and it would’ve been really useful to in terms of thinking of my own relationship with my body and eating and all of this stuff. And I was also mad because why didn’t anyone ever tell me that my menstrual cycle was so important outside of just maybe being pregnant or not? That’s all you learn about it. You don’t learn about all these other amazing things that the hormones do. So that kind of stuck with me and made me upset because if I’m someone who is very interested in this type of information and in this field I’m writing about it, I’m talking to people about it and I don’t know this information, I’m pretty sure a lot of other people don’t know this information. So that was kind of the genesis of it and really trying to want to write more about female athlete health and how that intersects with performance and overall health and wellbeing.
(15:19):
I never really wanted to write a book, but I had started writing a bunch of articles for Outside magazine, which had been really great because my editor there had allowed me to really explore a lot of different topics and kind of different angles related to this. But yeah, my agent had read a bunch and she’s like, I think there’s a book here. And I was like, that’s fun, that’s nice. We can move on from that, but, but it made me realize that if I were ever to write a book, this would be the thing that I would want to write about because this is a thing that I have been writing about and that I really do care about in understanding and furthering our information and our understanding about what’s happening here.
Kara Bazzi (16:04):
Yeah, I’m so glad you did. I mean, again, I know that there’s more coming out through articles and media, but in books we’re really lacking in books with good sound information about it. And I’m so glad that you wrote this.
Christine Yu (16:20):
And part of it too was this frustration that I felt like we kept kind of writing the same article over and over again, eating disorders are bad, prevalent in sports, bone stress injuries or all of these things or concussions and ACL tears, but it never went anywhere. It was like, oh my God, this is a terrible thing. And then died down and then it was again next year, oh my god, this is a terrible thing. And so part of my motivation with this too was I really want to put under one umbrella all of this information because I figured there had to be some sort of connecting thread between these ideas between arm menstrual cycles and bone health and eating and injury and different life phases. And I wanted to just, like I said, just kind of sew it all together, if you will, and put it all in one place
Kara Bazzi (17:14):
As a one-stop shop for all of the information.
Christine Yu (17:16):
Yeah,
Kara Bazzi (17:17):
Yeah, it was really impressive. I think that was one of the things that really struck me is how you tied all those things together, incorporated a large variety of this athlete stories, and I’m so happy that you picked athletes of multiple sports. I felt like that was really important and integrating all of the research and to do that in a way that’s understandable and interesting. I mean, that was really, I mean, was reading it I remember on a road trip and with my two teenage girls in the car and just thinking, wow, oh, this is great. Just so excited about again, how you constructed the book and created something that is easily digestible and then had so many that you’re tying so much together. So amazing.
Christine Yu (18:07):
Thank you.
Kara Bazzi (18:08):
Yeah. So you said some of this hormones, menstruation, early sport specialization sport and aging breasts and more. So I did find myself curious in having a conversation with you if there was any particular topic that you found personally the most captivating, the most interesting, and also an area that you think deserves more myth busting where we have it wrong in the way that people perceive something. I dunno. I was just curious about both of those things.
Christine Yu (18:42):
In terms of the area that was personally most interesting to me, I think it was the research around injuries. I mean, like I said, because I have been injured a bunch and I’ve had three ACL surgeries at this point now and really trying to understand what was happening there, why that was happening, because again, this is talking specifically about acls, it’s not new news. We’ve known the disparities and the injuries between men and women since the late eighties, early nineties. But what I really wanted to understand was why hasn’t anything changed? And really trying to dig into that a little bit too. And then I think for me personally, so much of the injury model or the way that we talk about injury is innate risk factors versus external risk factors. So again, with something like ECL injuries, it’s like your Q angle in, depending on how wide your hips are and your hormone levels, your ligaments might be more lax at certain points of the menstrual cycle or all these things that had to relate to your body, which you can’t really do that much about. It’s like my hips are as wide as my hips are, I can’t make them wider or I can’t shrink them without doing something really drastic.
(20:17):
But at least for me, it always made me feel like, well, it sucks to be you. You’re just going to be injured. That’s just your luck of the draw. There was nothing that I could do about it really, even with the external factors, and even if I took care of X, Y, or Z or did the strength training, whatever it is, there were still these internal innate factors that would put me at higher risk and I hated that feeling. And so for me, really looking into the research a little bit more, and there is a little bit of a movement or a little bit of this changing of how we do think about injury and really thinking about moving beyond just the physiological, anatomical and biological reasons to really take in the wider context around that athlete and the environment in which they’re in, the resources that they have.
(21:14):
All those things play into whether or not you’re going to get injured. And a lot of those factors also have a gendered slant to them too. Just thinking about say professional soccer players, the men’s team have always been much better resource. They have more staff, usually higher qualified staff too, because they pay those staff better. They have access to facilities, whereas the women’s professional teams haven’t always had that. It’s starting to get better in these last several years. But again, just kind of looking at this wider lens so that again, it’s not all on me as in there’s nothing I can do about it. So that was really interesting for me. It really made me think about injuries a lot differently than probably therapeutically what, or thinking in terms of therapy wise, it probably helped me with my mental emotional state around injuries as well.
Kara Bazzi (22:18):
Totally. I’m thinking of just being in it too, as you’re sharing with my teenage girls, I have a junior as well, you do, who’s planning to run distance in college. And so even just looking at different colleges and again, resources and facilities very so greatly from university to university of a division one school to the smaller schools and just what they have available and accessible to them. When I was at, for example, the University of Washington back in, I graduated in oh one, there was a 0.5 FTE dietician and no mental health provider for the entire athletic department. Obviously things have changed since then, so it’s just speaking to some of those systems variables for sure.
Christine Yu (23:10):
And to answer this second part of your question about the areas where we need more myth busting, it’s funny, I was trying to think about this and the thing that always pops into my head is around youth sports and early sports specialization, and it’s like no matter what the research says, no matter the fact that the research says doesn’t matter, you’re more prone to injury, you’re more prone to burnout. It’s like all of these negative things in the real world, everyone is still just so obsessed with youth sports and professionalizing youth sports and their kids getting college scholarships and all of these things that I’m like, that’s do we change that? Do we change that? I’m like, I really want to change that in some way. It would make me, I just feel like we’re just doing such a huge disservice to the kids and kind of their longer term social, emotional, physical health and wellbeing. Did
Kara Bazzi (24:16):
You find anything with youth athletes in other countries that do it differently and show more long-term longevity and passion for the sport by doing
Christine Yu (24:31):
It differently? Yeah, I mean, the one that always comes up is the Scandinavian countries, and I think it is specifically Norway where for their youth, at least at one point, it used to be this way, it’s pretty much low cost all access for kids to be involved in sports. There’s no ranking of athletes like adolescent, teenage age athletes. So there’s none of that type of pressure and competition in that way, in that it really is around building solid foundation and love for moving your body and playing sports and being out there. And the fact that it’s low cost is huge, that anyone can participate and that there aren’t all these barriers that are keeping people from being able to play sports. They can’t afford it or it’s not available in their community. And then Scandinavian countries, obviously, especially in the Winter Olympics, they do well. Their athletes seem to have more longevity. But
Kara Bazzi (25:47):
Yeah, so interesting. We need to do what Norway does. I know, but what, it’s tricky. Even something like social media, it’s hard to do something different when the whole community is doing something else. And that’s the trap I think a lot of parents are in is I’d like to do it different, but how do I do that differently when the rest of the community is doing it this way?
Christine Yu (26:09):
Well, I always felt like, especially when my kids were younger, so my kids play baseball, but I didn’t want them to play travel a because I’m like, I’m not spending thousands of dollars for this and I don’t want to waste my weekends driving all over the place to tournaments and stuff like this. It was a little selfish, but at the same time, I did feel like I kept wondering, am I holding my kids back? Am I doing them a disservice by not having them be part of this because everyone else is doing this, so will it get to a point where all these kids are so much higher in their skills and outcompeting my kids and my kids are again shut out from it just because I want them to play baseball in the park here in Brooklyn, which is fine when they’re 10, 11, 12.
Kara Bazzi (27:00):
Totally. Yeah, that’s a challenging one. You also mentioned in the book that we have a ways to go with diversifying our research to become more gender inclusive, like we talked about. I’m curious what responses you’ve received from your book around that and how you see your book as a means to help turn the dial. And I know we kind of touched on that earlier, but I’m curious if there’s more you’d want to say about
Christine Yu (27:25):
That. Yeah, I say it’s not, I’m like, I’m just reporting on the stuff that these scientists are doing and this amazing work that’s happening. And I think that there was a lot of this work going on already as I was working on the book and as the book has come out. So in a way, it’s a nice coincidence I’ve been able to benefit from that in a way. But yeah, I mean there has been, like you said, there has been, I think both a greater recognition of this gender data gap that exists, and frankly, more of a demand from the general public too to be like, well, why aren’t we included? Why isn’t there information that’s suited to me? So I think that it definitely has been helping to raise the profile of the issue to demand more, but it’s also a hard thing because scientific research is really expensive.
(28:31):
So it’s not like we can really do a GoFundMe raise a couple hundred thousand dollars to run a clinical trial or anything really on something. And so what I say to folks too, it’s like, yes, you can continue to demand more, but also understanding the constraints that a lot of these researchers are working within. But what you can do as a private citizen too, is if you are, especially around a university campus and you see calls for research, participants participate. If you want more research, then we need people to also participate in that research. A lot of the research, it can be just like a survey. It’s nothing like you’re not going to be doing a VO two max test or something like that, which not everyone wants to do, but it is something just to consider, right? It’s like there’s a part for all of us to be able to play in this as well.
Kara Bazzi (29:30):
I love that. I love that takeaway of that could be a way we’re contributing to turning the needle. Was there anything that really delighted you as a response to your book, either from a researcher or athletes, or is there anything that kind of stands out? Because your book has been released for over a year, correct?
Christine Yu (29:53):
Yeah, yeah. Just over a year.
Kara Bazzi (29:55):
Just over a year, yeah. I don’t know. Anything that surprised you or stands out in
Christine Yu (30:02):
Response? I think there’s two things that come to mind. One was as I was writing this, I was terrified I was going to get the science wrong or misrepresent someone’s work. And I have so much respect for these scientists and researchers and what they do. So for me, you had mentioned the Female Athlete conference last year, so that was about a month after the book had come out. And literally I feel like 80% of the people that I interviewed for the book were at the conference. And so it was amazed, it was amazing for me to be there and see them, to be able to thank them in person for helping me put this thing together. But then also to hear from them their gratitude as well, to have their work showcase, to have this on a bigger stage as well, and to be able to get this information out to an audience that isn’t reading academic journals, that isn’t following the latest scientific news or anything like that. And so that really touched me too. And to be able to have that relationship and support for each other in our work, in our different work was really heartening. And it made me really happy. I’m such a nerd. I made, I brought my book there and had people sign my book almost like a yearbook. Again, it’s like this wouldnt exist without their work or their willingness to talk to me or their stories.
(31:42):
I think the hardest part for me writing the book was I often just saw myself, I’m a reporter, I’m gathering information and putting it together. And my editor kept having to tell me, she’s like, this needs more of your voice in it, your authorial voice. I’m like, what is that? What does that even mean? Yeah, what does that mean? She’s like,
Kara Bazzi (32:01):
Oh, authorial like an author.
Christine Yu (32:02):
Author. Yeah. She’s like, you are the authority here and you’re the author here, so it needs your point of view as well. And I’m like really uncomfortable with that for a while. So that was really lovely. And then the other thing, that moment that kind of stands out for me is there’s a younger sister of someone on my son’s baseball team. I think she’s a freshman, and this year she plays softball. She read the book and I saw her kind of at the beginning of the baseball season this year, and she was so excited to meet me. She was so happy, and she came in this big hug and she like, total fan. I’m like, what is going on? This is so weird. But she was just so excited that the book existed and loved it and read it cover to cover, and I was like, oh my gosh, because that really is the audience that I want to be reading this.
(32:58):
Right? Going back to what I was saying earlier, I’m like, I wanted this information when I was a teenager to really, because my hope is that if we are able to provide better education, better information, get start, people talking about this and really just understanding their bodies just as bodies, that we can lay a better foundation so that girls can start to make better, more informed choices going forward rather than making decisions based on something they heard or an assumption or a myth. And so that meant a lot to me to know that there are girls her age reading it and really getting something out of it.
Kara Bazzi (33:43):
Yeah, I love that. I’m going to have my oldest read it this summer before she goes to college, her
Christine Yu (33:50):
Summer reading.
Kara Bazzi (33:50):
Her summer reading. It’s part of her summer reading list. You’re sharing about some of the contributors of the book, which a lot of them I know too, so just warms me to think of that too, of the clinicians and the professionals. And then of course the athlete stories as well that you included, and which I also, I just really enjoyed hearing those throughout the book, and I felt curious about that too, if there was a particular athlete stories, interviews that you did that personally was meaningful or touch you.
Christine Yu (34:27):
Yeah, it was really important for me to include, like you said, a variety of different sports in the book because my tendency would just include butters because that’s what I’m most familiar with. That’s what I have mostly reported on. Definitely. I’m thinking about this in two different ways. One, definitely Mary Kane’s story in her op-ed in the New York Times in 28 19. That really also was a big catalyst for the book too, because it changed the conversation around
Kara Bazzi (35:05):
Reds and which is relative energy deficiency in sport. We talk about it a lot on the podcast, but in case this is your first episode,
Christine Yu (35:15):
And so really changed the conversation around that really changed the conversation around women’s experience in sport in general in a way that I had not seen before. You could tell that there was something brewing and that there was something going on here. And Mary actually moderated was my conversation partner at my event in Boston last year, and she’s just been great and super supportive and wonderful. But in terms of the athletes that I spoke with specifically for the book, I think there’s a couple of ones. Me personally, some of the athletes that I spoke with for the menopause chapter, I mean mostly because that’s the phase of life I’m entering into. And it was both heartening and terrifying to hear some of their experiences, but more just in terms of how they were about their experience and what they were going through. And no one wanted to hear it, no one wanted to help or anything like that.
(36:25):
But it also gave me insight into what to expect. But also seeing, there’s a way through it too, if that makes sense, that it’s not all doom and gloom and terrible and there’s nothing you can do. There’s also a rower. I spoke with Jackie Kittle, who is on the New Zealand National Rowing team, hoping that she’s rowing this summer in the Olympics too. But she was a lightweight rower and lightweight rowers traditionally have done right. It’s all about cutting weight. You’re making weight and undereating and the whole New Zealand team, basically after, I think it was after Rio, they had done a test and realized that everyone, except for maybe one was kind of in the red, their energy availability was way below what they needed to be. They were all having menstrual irregularities or abstinence menstrual cycles. And so the whole organization shifted and they made a concerted effort in terms of repositioning nutrition and what they needed to do and how important that was.
(37:43):
And it became this organization wide shift, and all the teammates were supporting each other too, in terms of encouraging them not to under fuel to make sure everyone was eating. And I remember her saying at first, it’s like, it’s so hard to do because you are so used to doing it a certain way, and you’re so afraid that if you do it this way, if you eat more, you’re going to get worse. Right? The fear, that’s what’s been kind of br into you. But when she had said that once she started doing this, once she kind of got on board, she started eating more, she realized, she’s like, huh, I’m not as tired at the end of my workout. I’m not dead tired and exhausted, and that means I can get through my workouts better. That means I can actually push myself more in my workouts.
(38:41):
That means I’m actually getting faster and stronger and better. And will you look at that? I’m not gaining this ridiculous amount of weight that I was afraid that I was going to gain. And I think just that kind of idea, that fancy that if you fuel your body, if you give your body what it actually needs, it will perform. And for me, it really struck in terms of I grew up in the eighties, nineties, everything was about restriction. Everything was about under fueling. Everything was about in the magazines that I read, this ridiculously low number of daily calories I should be eating. And it just made me think about we’re forcing women to kind of keep themselves so small. It’s like we’re not letting us live up to our full potential, our full capacity because we’re not eating. And it was just, I don’t know, it was just kind of this shift for me in thinking about how our culture of society really does limit women in what we’re able to do by telling us just don’t eat over 1200 calories or something ridiculous like that. Right?
Kara Bazzi (40:03):
Yeah, I remember that in my own recovery journey too, of taking that risk, having similar fear, taking the risk and then seeing, wait the same just what you’re saying. Wait a minute, what have I been doing this whole time? I actually feel so much better can still perform and all of these things. And wow, buying into this lie of that, this was what was needed. And if performance matters, we had to sacrifice and we didn’t have to sacrifice and I didn’t have to sacrifice. I think I love that story. I remember that story in your book, and I love that the team made a systemic change.
Christine Yu (40:43):
Yeah, it’s fantastic. I mean, that whole idea of deprivation and that is just a given in sport. You just need to deprive your body, but it’s so contradicting. It doesn’t make sense in so many ways in terms of if you actually want to perform, I don’t know, maybe you need some calories.
Kara Bazzi (41:05):
We need a lot. We need a lot of food. We need a lot of food. Before, as we get closer to the end of this interview, I was curious if you had any other research or books or people that you’d want to highlight for further learning. Of course, I would love all of listeners to get your book, and I’m also just curious if there’s other people you’d want to highlight or resources you’d want to highlight.
Christine Yu (41:36):
Yeah, I mean definitely the Female Athlete Conference in Boston. The next one’s going to be in June, 2025. It is pretty much who’s who in this field in terms of research, but it is also geared towards athletes and coaches and parents. So I mean, if anyone’s in the Boston area, they actually also do it virtually too. I think you can watch the sessions virtually. So that’s a great resource. There’s a new book coming out June 18th called The Price She Pays Confronting the Hidden Mental Health Crisis in Women’s Sports From the schoolyard to the stadium. It’s by Katie Steele and Tiffany Brown, and also with Erin Strout writing too. So Erin’s an amazing journalist in the running world, but it’s a fantastic book too. And it talks, I think of it as it’s actually a really nice kind of companion piece to my book because it really takes this idea of if you are marginalized from sport, if the system of sport and science does not reflect your lived experience, what does that kind of do to you mentally and psychologically and emotionally? And so it kind of talks through a lot of those different issues. It offers a lot of really concrete guidance too, to parents and coaches and athletes themselves. So I think it’ll be a really great resource as well. And then the last person I would want to shout out on social media, one of my favorite people to follow is Alyssa Lennick. Her handle is Doc Lis, L-Y-L-Y-S-S fit. Okay. We’ll put it
Kara Bazzi (43:25):
In the show notes,
Christine Yu (43:25):
Links. I’ll send it to you.
Kara Bazzi (43:27):
Great.
Christine Yu (43:28):
But she’s fantastic. She actually has her PhD in Exercise physiology. She studies female athlete health and particularly has been doing a lot of work around menopause, which she’s also runs some fitness programs herself as well. But she does a great job in terms of just getting really good science backed information out on social media. She also debunks some stuff as well, and I mean, she’s just great on social media and kind of really I think does an amazing job with that platform in terms of communicating these messages.
Kara Bazzi (44:02):
Cool. Oh, good. I’m excited to add to the list for Opal too. That’s great. Well, yeah. Is there anything that you would like to share that we didn’t get to? Anything that you feel like is missing from this conversation?
Christine Yu (44:18):
No, I mean, the only thing I would say, right, I think it is just having these conversations that are really important, that we are talking about these topics that we haven’t felt comfortable talking about in so long. And really, for me, the purpose of that is, like I said, really encouraging people to become body literate in terms of just knowing and understanding your own body. Because we haven’t been taught that. We haven’t been taught to pay attention. We haven’t been taught what everything kind does and should be doing. We haven’t been taught how amazing our bodies are, and I feel like that’s such an important thing because otherwise it’s so easy for these myths to be put onto you and for you to take up those narratives as like my periods, my menstrual cycle’s bad. My boobs are terrible. Whereas, yes, boobs can be really annoying and uncomfortable and all of that, but it’s also just part of your physiology, right? In the same way that your menstrual cycle is just part of your physiology. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s like it is heart of you and something that we need to know and understand just as we pay attention to our pulse and heart rate and cardiovascular fitness and all of those things. It’s all part of your functioning body
Kara Bazzi (45:44):
Or just had this fantasy, Christine, of your book being required reading and health class for high school. How amazing would epi be? That would be pretty amazing. Amazing, amazing. Because still having teenagers in high school, the stuff that’s getting taught in health class is often perpetuating the myths. It’s not giving the correct science. And imagine if all the teenage girls and boys and non-binary
Christine Yu (46:14):
Boys
Kara Bazzi (46:15):
And boys and non-binary athletes, trans athletes, students, were all reading this in health class dream.
Christine Yu (46:24):
My poor kids are like, they’re both boys. They’re like, are you talking about periods again? Oh, yes, we know. We understand. Whatever,
Kara Bazzi (46:36):
But how good for boys to understand too. Totally. Oh, that would be my dream. That’d be my dream. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Christine, for being on today’s episode. We’ll definitely link all of the things that you mentioned in our notes, and if you’re listening, yeah, including your incredible book, which again, for all of you listeners, I recommend highly and hope that you get it. So if you’re interested in Opal and you want to learn more, please visit us at opal food and body.com. Thanks to David Bozzie for editing, Jack Straw Cultural Center for Sound Engineering, and Aaron Davidson for Appetite’s Original Music. See you next time.
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