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Mary Cain's experience highlights a pervasive issue in athletics: the dangerous belief that thinner means better. Her impactful account of leaving Nike's running team reveals the severe consequences of this mindset. Once celebrated as the 'fastest girl in America,' Cain faced relentless pressure to lose weight under a new coach, leading to a decline in both her performance and mental well-being.
While thinness and fitness are distinct concepts, modern fitness messaging often blurs the line between the two, particularly for women. A stark example of this disparity can be seen in the contrasting titles of popular fitness books: Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for men and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for women.
Instagram fitness accounts frequently showcase bikini-clad bodies, perpetuating the thinness ideal. Similarly, communities like r/xxfitness, dedicated to women and non-binary individuals, often feature transformation posts celebrating weight loss, reinforcing the association between fitness and being skinny.
Achieving fitness and strength doesn’t require becoming skinny or developing visible abs. For most people, this isn’t a natural outcome of their fitness journey. Models and bodybuilders often maintain their leanest physique only briefly each year, using photos from that period to fill their social media feeds. Olympic weightlifters, for instance, often post bikini photos before major competitions, like the world championships, after extreme and unhealthy weight cuts to meet their weight class. These drastic measures result in temporary abs, a look they don’t maintain year-round. Many diet solely to compete in a specific weight class, believing it maximizes their Olympic chances. For a deeper dive, Alyssa Ritchey’s podcast episode discusses how her weight cut for Worlds left her too weak to perform her planned lifts.
In strength sports like weightlifting or powerlifting, gaining weight often leads to better long-term performance. This can be a challenging concept for those who equate being 'in shape' with being thin or slimmer than their starting point. The idea that dieting and exercise are inseparable is also misleading. Casey Johnston, a prominent fitness writer, has noted that when you’re struggling in the gym, sometimes the solution is as simple as eating more, like enjoying a burger.
Natalie Hanson, a powerlifting champion and coach, shared in an interview that many women seeking strength training also express a desire to drop a weight class. She points out the irony: they’re committed enough to hire a coach but fixate on arbitrary weight goals, like 63 kilos, which are often arbitrarily set by powerlifting authorities. Greg Nuckols, the interviewer, mentioned that even when he suggests female clients move up one weight class, they often resist, despite his belief that moving up two would be more beneficial.
On the Empowered by Iron podcast, the hosts, both women, asked their audience what they wished they’d known when they started lifting. A common response was the regret of not eating enough, particularly carbs, and worrying excessively about maintaining a low weight.
This resonates deeply with me. Personally, I’ve reached a point where gaining weight might be necessary to improve my strength and competitiveness. Yet, every time the scale rises, I feel uneasy and reconsider. Meanwhile, athletes like Mary Cain are misled into believing that losing weight will automatically enhance their performance. This simply isn’t true. While weight changes can be justified for personal or medical reasons, the assumption that thinness and fitness are inseparable is a harmful myth.
