My Body isn't on Tripadvisor, it Doesn't Need a Review.

Simply put- I am a Gen X-er, so it should go without saying that I grew up being bombarded with and surrounded by a culture of diets and fads that made sure young girls and women linked their self-worth to being thin, regardless of whether we were happy or not. Kate Moss and I metaphorically grew up together, we are roughly the same age but that’s where the similarities end. As the desire to be thin thin rose simultaneously with her fame, there was a gang of women following in her wake, an in-group that I certainly was “out” of. Their up and down thinness made George from Asda look like Giorgio Armani; my curves just made it look like George from Down and Out. But despite everything telling me to the contrary, I was always ok with that.

Picture the scene- my second daughter was 6 weeks old. I’d had 2 babies in the space of 2 years and I so wanted to get “my life” and body back.  I asked my husband for a pair of shiny black Chelsea boots for my upcoming 26th birthday- identifying them as the one item that would give me something of my old self, which I felt almost desperate for.

But my excitement soon turned to utter disappointment as I ripped open a, lovingly wrapped footwear shaped box.

Now, it might be hard to believe after making a career out of the utilisation of trainers, but my first encounter with a pair left me with bitter and very sour tasting disappointment. As I ripped open my present, instead of the shiny black boots I’d set my hopes on, a pair of trainers looked up at me, waiting to be loved.

And as my heart sank to the floor, thinking it couldn’t get any lower, Jamie handed me a “bonus complimentary gift!” and then I couldn’t stop the tears as Beverley Callard promised me “Rapid Results!” by following her weight loss fitness video.

Hang on, the sad little voice in my head said, what was wrong with my old “fitness” regime of drinking pints, clubbing until the early hours and smoking fags, often all at the same time?

I felt a huge pressure to get on the diet and fitness bus, something that to be honest I’d felt I was too cool to join before.  Often the odd one out, I’d successfully and proudly rebelled against the diet culture of my teens. I didn’t sit with the other girls drinking white wine spritzer, eating dust for dinner and discussing how much they’d weight they’d lost and how they all felt so fat.

But on my 26th birthday my husband (who truly loves the bones of me) unwittingly planted a body image seed of doubt. I was suddenly extremely aware that this new body shape was unsatisfactory, not just to me personally, but to the world.

Was it because I was a mum now, have I had my fun, was it time to grow up and be a “proper woman” who watched what she ate, refused desert, weighed herself every day and certainly didn’t drink pints? Enough was enough, I heard them whisper, you’ve got out of shape, you’ve put weight on, but Bev will sort you out.

And so I was reluctantly pushed onto the diet bus, kicking and screaming in my trainer clad feet, shouting “but where are my Chelsea Boots?!”

And here I am 30 years later (it may surprise you, still married) reflecting on the diet culture of my generation as I watch the sassy Gen Z-ers embrace running, moving for the joy it and holistic health. It makes me feel proud that young women are showing up and smashing taboos with #FreePeriodStories, sweating, red faced, proud that their voices and experiences are front and center, creating visibility and carving out their own spaces in sport.

But…

There is no denying that we still live in a culture where it’s a social norm for people to openly discuss weight, body shape and appearance. I hear so many compliments on men and women’s appearance, on how “amazing” they look now they’ve lost weight, but do we ever stop and think about how inherently backhanded a weight-loss compliment actually is?

AT BEST, it’s saying WoW you look SO better than you did before, and I’ve been on the receiving end of this but I’ve been left wondering “what on earth did you think I looked like before?!”. And whilst my body shape and weight have regularly been commented on over the years, it wasn’t until last year that I truly felt the impact of these, literal weight bearing comments.

An appetite loss side effect of a new medication meant that I literally couldn’t eat a thing. I’d heard about people losing their appetite but I’d personally never experienced it; to be honest, I’m often either thinking about my next meal or running so to not be able to eat anything at all due to this crippling nausea, it knocked me sideways. I know that to continue running and staying injury, I have to eat, but my mouth felt like the proverbial cotton balls and even the thought of my favourite food had my stomach lurching. I was so stressed and worried about lack of nutrition and proper fuel, let alone just the actual joy and community of eating food, as I continued to only be able to manage smoothies and chocolate milk.

But the compliments just kept rolling in! “OMG you look amazing!”, “You’ve lost SO much weight!”, “You must be SO happy now that you’re SO thin!”, “You look fantastic, I think I’ve put on all the weight that you’ve lost!”

WTAF!! Why did people think it was ok to make these comments? At times it left me feeling as though I didn’t really know who I was. I was left wondering what on earth did I look like before and, more importantly, why were people scrutinizing me that closely? Why wasn’t my body simply, my business?

This also set me in a spin thinking about what happens when I start eating normally again- would people ignore me? think less of me because I didn’t look as good as I did when I lost all that weight? It completely threw me and as someone who has (amazingly given the cultural conditioning) never had a negative relationship with food or body image, I saw how easily disordered eating can creep up on people as the cultural norm of being thin is still (despite all our professions to body positivity) seen as the holy grail of being a woman.

You might be thinking that I’m just making a fuss and that I should accept compliments or be happy to receive them but this social norm can be truly damaging. Especially if there are insurmountable insecurities that can lead us to try to change ourselves beyond recognition, chasing some kind of state of happiness that we think can only be found once we look a certain way or are a certain weight, and conforming to societal expectations often leads to unhappiness and feeling less than.

And in my experience, this is never more true than in the world of running.

For many runners there is an intense focus on achieving or maintaining a certain weight, the idea that there is a perfect “running weight” but these damaging expectations surrounding runners so often blur the line between discipline that allows a runner to perform at their best and disordered eating that can harm their health.  

The noise surrounding sports nutrition is LOUD but once again I feel that my generation of women continue to be unseen and unheard as female focused research hasn’t caught up with the increased female participation in sport for both recreational and elite level sports. We know that Tokyo Olympics 2020/21 was the first ever gender-balanced Olympics, and at last the gender split for London Marathon 2025 Ballot was 50.33% men and 49.03% women, ten years ago, on average women only made up 30% of marathoners.  

Why is it a problem? Because sport science nutritional recommendations and strategies are failing to consider female specific adaptations, like hormone responses, and as women we have many of those throughout our lives.  

I’ve been a master runner (a runner over 40 years old) for 15 years now, many of my clients are master runners, yet assessment of Low Energy Availability in master runners is problematic due to the Low Energy Availability in Females Questionnaire not being validated in females over the age of 40!

This is crazy and makes me cross because if we can’t assess or identify areas of weakness how can we make changes, recommendations, and improvements to further support training and performance?

As a runner and a coach with no female specific, master’s athletes robust data supporting mine and many sports nutritionalist claims that carbs won’t make you fat, that they will actually make you a better, stronger runner, I continue to watch too many runners crash and burn as the try to lose weight, get faster and run longer, all at the same time. I’m watching good runners force themselves to push on through low-energy runs, that I know will feel like hell, no pain no gain, right? We know that under fuelling is linked to an increased prevalence of injury, illness, compromised training quality, consistency and recovery, yet this ideal of what a runner should look like is knocking runners down like a big, black bowling ball in a ten pin alley.

The good news is there is robust research now making it’s way into the mainstream. Only last month a study on the Risk of Disordered Eating, Exercise Dependence, Body Dissatisfaction and Fuelling Habits in Masters Trail Runners found that most athletes (males & females) weren’t fuelling sufficiently during long training runs. The primary findings suggested that many master runners were at risk of disordered eating, have a higher body dissatisfaction, especially peri and post menopause. 71% of the participants reported being dissatisfied with their current weight; body image may be a mediator factor for disordered eating.  

If findings from these types of studies show such a high prevalence of being dissatisfied with body images in both male and female endurance runners over 40 years old, what does that say about our generations attitude towards body acceptance? And about our innate desire to be thin even despite the ultimate cost of our running performance? It’s time to get off the diet bus.

Changing social norms doesn’t happen overnight but we can all be mindful of the language we use to each other. Think before you comment on the way someone looks or if you think they’ve lost weight. Our bodies aren’t on trip advisor, you don’t need to leave a review.