triads + tough stuff
Did you know that professional female athletes aren’t always healthy?
There’s a phenomenon in women’s sports called Relative Energy Deficiency Syndrome, and it hasn’t really been studied enough (go figure). REDS is also called the “female athlete triad” and it describes 3 separate issues in high performing women: disordered eating, irregular menstruation, and bone loss. Now, none of these symptoms seem healthy, but they are so common. Let’s talk about some potential reasons why…
Female athletes are… female! And this world isn’t always built around the female experience– Even high performing, super confident women are subject to unachievable body standards and ideals, and that can result in disordered eating (eating too much or too little and hurting themselves in the process). Here’s a powerful articlefrom a retired professional runner on it.
Sports science hasn’t quite figured out the menstrual cycle. It’s no secret that women perform differently based on what time of the month it is, but studies haven’t been done properly to find a good way to work with it. In 2019, the US women's national team took home the World Cup title, and part of their success is attributed to cycle tracking. For the first time ever, female athletes were trained according to the current phase of their cycle– and for the first time ever, the complexities of womanhood were acknowledged on the field. So cool!
Women require serious rest, recovery, and low-impact work. Bone loss happens with overexercise– the traditional sports science mentality is to take results done on male athletes and shrink down the numbers to “fit” female athletes… But it doesn’t work! Anatomically, bone density varies between the sexes, and women need low-impact work alongside high-impact movements. As a personal trainer, I always recommend hybrid training- a combination of weightlifting, cardio, and barre or pilates- because that’s the safest, most effective way to move.
So maybe your favorite female athlete isn’t as healthy as you think– and that’s okay! As we promote the stories of high-achieving women, we open up discussions to question the way women are treated, perceived, and studied. Currently, only 6% of sports science is dedicated to the study of women, but huge breakthroughs are already happening. We just gotta keep on!
“If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.” - Louis D. Brandeis
Speaking of keeping on, life is freaking hard. A therapist shared that life is characterized by pain- there is no living without difficulty. It might sound bleak, but it’s actually really freeing.
When you accept this as truth, you stop avoiding the tough stuff. It becomes way easier to lean into the lessons that life has for you, and grow through them. Fun fact: the human brain actually craves challenge… The physical brain grows and forms around every difficult experience that is navigated properly, and if this doesn’t happen, the brain will create its own problems and feed into its own anxieties. Wild!
By acknowledging that life isn’t supposed to just be sunshine and rainbows, you give yourself the validity that everything is okay. That this is the design of the world, and that what truly matters is the way you respond. So, yes, life is hard… but guess what?
You were made to do hard things. You can do hard things. You’ve got this.