Weights to be sensitive to eating disorders

Weigh-ins and restricted diets are considered a normal part of athletics, especially for those elite few who get to compete at the Olympic level. It has just been accepted that athletes have their weights publicly available for everyone to see, theoretically to provide some sort of statistical comparison for matchups. One country, however, has broken that tradition to be more sensitive to those with eating disorders.

Norway has opted to withhold the weights of its athletes from publicly available Olympics data, saying they believe it puts the focus on the wrong thing.

“Focus on sport should be something else than weight,’’ Halvor Lea, spokesman for the Norway Olympic Committee, told USA TODAY Sports in an email, “and in a society with a lot of challenges regarding weight focus on young men and women, our choice is to drop to inform about athletes weight.”

Several Olympic athletes who have struggled with disordered eating and body image problems throughout their career say the pressure to maintain a specific weight contributed to their eating disorders.

It should be noted, countries are not required in any way to provide weight information to the official Olympic website.

Mark Adams, spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), told USA TODAY he wasn’t aware of any official position on the matter.

“I don’t think we would take a view on that,’’ he said. “I think it’s up to each team to decide what they want or don’t want to put.’’

While Germany, Japan, and Austria all provide this type of information, the US varies by sport. You can find the weights of lugers and hockey players, but not snowboarders and figure skaters.

It is unclear when exactly Norway developed this policy. Most say it began around the time of the 2008 Summer Olympics through the country’s handball team.

“This is part of our work with values in elite sport,’’ Lea said. “There is no reasonable argument that an athlete should have to inform about his/her weight. Information about weight is not important, and in respect with athletes, our decision is not to inform about it.’


Original Published Link Weights to be sensitive to eating disorders

#EatingDisorderAwareness, #EatingDisorders, #EatingDisordersAtTheOlympics #Disorder

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Breast Cancer Survivor Uses Her Experience to Help Other Women

Image
On a typical day at  Johns Hopkins Medical Imaging at Green Spring Station , patients coming in for imaging tests such as  MRIs ,  ultrasounds  and  mammograms have a comforting advocate available in the waiting room. Kate Pisano is a patient liaison — there to meet the needs of the patients by providing resources and support. With Kate’s smile and cheerful attitude, it’s not obvious that recently she too was a patient sitting in the waiting room confronting her own major health challenges. Two years ago Kate was fighting breast cancer and facing it alone as a single working mother of two teenaged sons. Months after a painful divorce, Kate noticed a lump in her breast while getting undressed. “I was afraid of what the lump might mean, so I waited several weeks before finally making an appointment with my doctor,” she said. That appointment led to a mammogram followed by a  biopsy . In April of 2012, Kate’s greatest fear was confirmed: She had breast cancer. “The diagnosis was a complet
Read more

Having pancreatic cancer a suspicious tumor on your pancreas

Image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=QDwctWY-DOQ Joseph “Cook” Edens III doesn’t let pancreatic cancer get in the way of living a full life. Edens was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent a Whipple procedure at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Unfortunately, a bout of pancreatitis returned, and in 2015, surgeon Christopher Wolfgang and his team performed a total pancreatectomy on Edens, removing his entire pancreas and spleen. The Arlington, Virginia, resident is now cancer-free and back to a busy lifestyle of work, sports and family time. About Johns Hopkins Pancreatic Cancer Care Having pancreatic cancer — or a suspicious tumor on your pancreas — is a frightening diagnosis. Johns Hopkins experts, some of the most experienced pancreatic specialists in the country, are working to dispel fear and create hope in patients with pancreatic disease. Pancreatic cancer, tumors and cysts are being treated with dramatic success at Johns Hopkins. The first step when dealing w
Read more

Howard's Weight Loss Journey

Image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfmgTU6L524 HOME››ABOUT LAHEY TEXT SIZE | SHARE | PRINT Howard's Story “I thank them for helping me get to where I’m at, and they keep telling me that it was all me doing the work. But, I know that if I wasn’t coming every two weeks to see them, I wouldn’t be this way.” They say timing is everything, and in April 2011, Howard Jardine was eager to change his life. Weighing in at 405 pounds, he decided it was finally time to join Lahey’s Medical Weight Loss program. Looking back, Howard says it was one of the best decisions he has ever made, as he found support from a team that encouraged and motivated him throughout his weight loss journey. At 405 pounds, Howard was the heaviest he had ever been, and the heaviest that he wanted to be. He was starting to feel the strain that the weight was causing on his relationship with his five-year-old daughter, and he didn’t want to miss out on her milestones. Howard’s mother was overweight and suffered a stroke a
Read more