Avoiding Eating Disorder Triggers: Athletes Can’t Talk About Food? Q&A With Dr Paula Quatromoni
This Q&A was originally part of the third Q&A here, but is republished below to separate and make it easier to find questions/topics. This is part of a Q&A series with the leading expert in eating disorders and sports and registered dietitian, Dr. Paula Quatromoni.
Q: One running program forbids athletes to talk about or even post about food on social media because they think it will help stop the spread of eating disorders. What are your thoughts?
A: To me, this is silly. Eating habits, food behaviors, and attitudes about food are contagious in our culture regardless of social media. A different approach for the leadership in this program could be to invest in educating their athletes about responsible use of social media and working to build a supportive team culture where there is zero-tolerance for food shaming, body shaming, or promotion of restrictive eating or dieting culture. Social media posts and open discussions about food, if managed strategically and with some ground rules, can be quite positive and can role model healthy strategies for fueling athletes and sharing evidence-based recommendations.
Many nutrition professionals have an active presence on social media. An athlete who re-tweets a post by sports nutrition expert Nancy Clark about how to incorporate protein into their recovery nutrition snack is doing a service to their teammates by sharing those tips with other members of the club. The coach could advise his/her athletes that he/she is following them on social media and that if he/she sees anything that is negative in connotation, promoting restriction or bulimia, judgmental (shaming) towards others, etc, that they will be called into the coach’s office to discuss. The “ban it altogether” approach is not going to stop the spread of eating disorders. This coach is focusing on one tiny branch of a tree with very deep roots.
Of course, another strategy to help prevent eating disorders is to bring in a nutrition expert to talk with the athletes about the basics of nutrition and fueling for sport, providing an opportunity for them to ask questions and get advice that is tailored to their sport, their position, and their individual life situation. Having ongoing access to the nutrition professional is even more effective, for this allows a trusted relationship to be built. Should a problem arise in the future, the likelihood of the athlete reaching out for help is heightened because of the accessibility of a nutritionist who is now a part of their sport family.
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Paula Quatromoni, DSc, MS, RD is a registered dietitian, academic researcher, and one of the country’s leading experts in the prevention and treatment of eating disorders in athletes. Dr. Quatromoni is a tenured associate professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology, and Chair of the Department of Health Sciences at Boston University where she maintains an active program of research. She publishes widely on topics including clinical treatment outcomes and the lived experiences of athletes and others with and recovering from eating disorders. In 2004, she pioneered the sports nutrition consult service for student-athletes at Boston University, and in 2016, she led the creation of the GOALS Program, an athlete-specific intensive outpatient eating disorders treatment program at Walden Behavioral Care where she serves as a Senior Consultant. Dr. Quatromoni is an award-winning educator. She earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Nutrition from the University of Maine at Orono, and her Doctorate in Epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health.
