Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #84: Gill1918 Project Presents: Ashley Botham "Glazier: From Silence to Support: A Coach's Guide to Eating Disorders"

Transcript

#84: Gill1918 Project Presents: Ashley Botham "Glazier: From Silence to Support: A Coach's Guide to Eating Disorders" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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  coaches, for coaches, powered by Gill Athletics.
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  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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  you grow as a coach. We're bringing the once a year
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  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
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  Interested in creating your own episode?
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  Everyone's welcome to participate.
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  Check out the show notes below For more information.
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  Now let's get into today's topic.
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  My name is Ashley Bastrin and I have the privilege of presenting
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  on athletes and eating Disorders during the Free Glacier Coaches
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  Clinic this December. To introduce the topic, I'm
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  going to read you an athlete profile that you might resonate
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  with. This athlete is commonly praised
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  for being 100% committed. In fact, she's so committed that
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  she does extra workouts on top of the ones that you provide to
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  her, and she only eats healthy and clean foods and stays clear
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  of all sugars because that's what she believes success looks
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  like. And she's commonly praised by
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  others for herself control around food.
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  This athlete is hyper focused on always doing the right thing, so
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  she goes to bed early, she skips social events, and her identity
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  is directly tied to her sport. When competitions go well, she's
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  happy for a little while, and then her mindset shifts to what
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  she should have done better. Where could she have run faster?
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  Where could she have jumped further?
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  Thrown further? Whatever it happens to be within
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  our sport of cross country and track and field, she won't allow
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  herself to celebrate her victories for long because she
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  believes that will create complacency.
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  And when competitions go poorly, she's immediately distraught and
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  often distances herself from teammates and coaches, believing
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  that she's let them down. And even worse, they're probably
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  all mad at her now. On the bus ride home, she skips
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  the team meal because she believes she doesn't deserve it.
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  And upon getting home, she has to complete a core workout
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  before bed to ease the guilt and shame of her poor performance.
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  Right before she finally falls asleep, she promises herself
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  that she'll be more committed, work even harder, and perform
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  better the next time. Maybe then her coaches and
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  teammates will accept and like her again.
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  I don't know if you've ever coached an athlete like this,
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  but I know I certainly have. And what makes it so hard to
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  recognize either this type of athlete as potentially having an
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  eating disorder or some disordered eating from just
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  being, you know, a really committed athlete is hard.
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  You kind of need to know what to look for.
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  How do you identify what is disordered?
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  How do you identify what's an athlete taking it too far versus
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  just a disciplined athlete who is all in?
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  And so my hope is this presentation will give you a lot
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  of that, some of those risk factors and kind of what to
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  watch out for because it's really hard to distinguish
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  again, what is discipline and what is disordered.
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  And when you combine that kind of personality trait that's
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  common with elite athletes or committed athletes with the
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  sport specific factors such as like a lean sport like ours, and
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  the psychological factors of perfectionism, the kind of
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  everyday commonality of like fear of failure, which is really
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  common today, it gets really hard to distinguish that
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  difference between healthy and unhealthy.
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  So why would I want to talk to you guys about this topic?
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  The research shows that athletes are two to three times more
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  likely to experience an eating disorder or disordered eating
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  than the general population. The research also shows that 60%
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  of female high school and college athletes identify with
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  disordered eating and 25% will be diagnosed with a clinical
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  eating disorder. So you're talking about one in
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  four having a clinical eating disorder and over 50% having
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  some form of disordered eating around food.
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  And if the statistics and the athlete profile haven't caught
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  your attention, it's also critical to note that eating
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  disorders have the second highest risk of death of any
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  mental illness, only behind opioid use disorder.
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  So while eating disorders might be really common in our sport
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  and it's easy for a lot of coaches to kind of brush it
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  under the rug or not talk about it or be afraid to talk about
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  it, we owe it to our athletes to keep them healthy and safe.
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  And we need to be able to recognize the warning signs of
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  eating disorders and disordered eating so that we can identify
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  it and then plug them into the right resources if they are
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  struggling. I want to definitely make note
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  that, you know, treating an eating disorder is not a coach's
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  job. We're not trained to do that.
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  But we can do our part to know what it looks like, be able to,
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  again, identify those behaviors that are kind of leading us down
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  the path of wondering. I think often times as coaches,
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  you kind of have that gut feeling that like something's
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  wrong, but you don't necessarily want to act on it.
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  And so hopefully I can give you the language to be able to have
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  those hard conversations with athletes or have those hard
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  conversations with their parents in order to get them the help
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  that they need. So it's not something that
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  they're going to struggle with, you know, for the rest of their
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  life or not something that could end up getting really dangerous
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  and and ultimately lead towards the lost of a life.
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  So I will talk about all of this and more during the free coaches
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  clinic this December. My presentation is specifically
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  on December 12th. You can check out more on their
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  website to get signed up. And just a reminder again, it is
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  a free clinic. We hope to see you there.
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  Bye bye. Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here.
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  Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Guild 1918
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  Project series. It's really my mission, my
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  passion to bring you massive amounts of value and I hope this
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  one hit the mark. The Gil 1918 Project is really
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  dependent on you if for you to build your own episode, to hear
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  your voice, to have your voice heard you have something to say
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  and teach other coaches out there.
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  So please get a hold of me, e-mail, text message, Twitter,
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  smoke signals, get a hold of me and let's help create your
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  episode of the Guild 1918 Project.
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  Hope you enjoy today, they will see you tomorrow.