Navigating Eating Disorders in College Sports

In this episode, Nicholette interviews McKenze Rogers, LifeStance Health’s Marketing Integrations Manager, who shares her recovery journey from an eating disorder while being a student athlete. McKenze emphasizes on the prevalence of eating disorders among college athletes. She also recounts her experiences as a Division I Champion Diver at Stanford, sharing the intense and unforgettable moments, distinctions achieved, and the impact of a pivotal conversation with a Chinese diving coach at the age of 12.

McKenze explains how her eating disorder intensified after retiring from athletics and the significant moment that led her to seek help. She emphasizes the vital role of group and individual therapy, nutritional counseling, and supportive literature in her recovery. 

Read more on McKenze’s story by visiting our blog, Reclaiming Life: A College Athlete’s 15-Year Journey to Overcome an Eating Disorder.

Nicholette Leanza:

Welcome to Convos from the Couch by LifeStance Health, where leading mental health professionals help guide you on your journey to a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Hello everyone, I’m Nicholette Leanza, and on this episode I’m excited to talk with LifeStance Marketing Integrations Manager, McKenze Rogers, and she’ll be sharing about her journey of recovery from an eating disorder while she was a student athlete. So welcome, McKenze. Great to have you on.

McKenze Rogers:

Thank you for being letting me be here. It’s an honor, and I’m excited to talk about our topic today.

Nicholette Leanza:

And I appreciate you coming on sharing your story. As our listeners will hear in a bit, they’ll really see what you’ve had to navigate. And this kind of tethers us into looking at how prevalent it is among college athletes navigating eating disorders. Several studies indicate that college athletes are at a considerably higher risk for eating disorders, with some studies quoting up to 84% of athletes struggling with disordered eating or eating disorders. So I’m really appreciative that you’re coming on for us to talk about this today.

McKenze Rogers:

Absolutely.

Nicholette Leanza:

And let’s start with tell us a little bit about your current role at LifeStance.

McKenze Rogers:

Yeah. I’m extremely honored to be a Marketing Integrations Manager at LifeStance Health, and help us push the mission of making sure people can live healthier, more fulfilling lives by improving access to trusted, affordable, and personalized mental healthcare. It is such a need in today’s society, and from a marketing perspective, I am able to help in facets maybe related to our website and making sure new patients can find us as well as developing flyers or brochures and pieces that talk about the services we provide, the conditions we commonly treat, and most importantly, the insurances that we accept so that it is an affordable service for most of our folks out there. So I really enjoy being a part of LifeStance Health and our mission, and most importantly, being able to promote… we have about 6,800 clinicians around the country in 33 states. So there’s just such an enormous amount of people that have a passion for mental health, and it’s really an honor that I get to elevate that and amplify it.

Nicholette Leanza:

And we’re honored that you are part of the LifeStance team. You do an amazing job. You really-

McKenze Rogers:

Thank you. Thank you.

Nicholette Leanza:

So please share with us about your experience as a division one champion diver.

McKenze Rogers:

Thank you. Yeah, two major words come to mind. It is intense and unforgettable. So intense from the perspective, particularly at Stanford University where I attended and did my undergraduate degree, that there are high expectations, which I loved. I appreciated that elevated look of, “Hey, you can do great in academics and athletics at the same time.” Or the other populations that might be there. People really focused in music or people really focused in science and math and engineering and wanting to be doctors. Whatever your passion was, I love that Stanford really encourage you to thrive in many areas. But intense was a particular word from my experience because I would have classes all day as well as practices and multiple practices at times, it would be three a days where I’d get up and I’d have a weight workout at 7:00 AM in the morning, or we’d be over at the gym where the gymnasts are and we’d be doing our flips into the pits.

And then when I’d have a short water workout at 10:00 AM after I went to a class or two, and then in the afternoon we’d have another water workout after attending some more classes and making sure to try to squeeze in a meal here and there and then running back home to try to get more homework done and get back to the dorm. So it was intense from that perspective, but I was always used to that. It was normal for me. I started diving when I was seven and prior to that started gymnastics when I was three, and so I was always used to being in athletics and that to me was a big love. And the experience was also unforgettable because the people at Stanford are amazing. The people who are college athletes are just awesome at what they do and very keen on, “I want to perfect my skill in this way, in that way, and I want to make sure education is a top priority, and I want to make sure that I post my athletic career, I can have a stable working job and I can provide for whatever else comes in life.”

And going to all the competitions, and I got to travel around the world. Even prior to getting to Stanford, I traveled to China and Mexico and Canada and-

Nicholette Leanza:

Wow.

McKenze Rogers:

… Hawaii and all sorts of places, just to compete. So it was a great experience to be able to travel the world, see more places, and I made amazing, wonderful friends. My teammates are my core friends. I’m still best friends with those that I grew up with and my teammates from Stanford.

Nicholette Leanza:

Can you also share a little bit about some of your distinctions as a diver? It sounds like you won [inaudible 00:05:31] awards and [inaudible 00:05:33]-

McKenze Rogers:

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. No, I appreciate that. I was able to win three All-American titles-

Nicholette Leanza:

Wow.

McKenze Rogers:

… and my sophomore year at Stanford, we placed… the team, the swimming and diving team placed second by only half a point, only half a point at the national championships at the NCAA National Championships. And it was a really close, tight race at the end, but I was super happy to be a part of that team, and was also afforded the Pac-10 Diver of the Year when I came in as a freshman, having excelled in… it’s an award given to all the incoming freshmen in the entire Pac-12 for the diving teams, and whoever basically performs the best gets that award. So I was very appreciative for having excelled and achieved many great things.

Nicholette Leanza:

Congratulations on all of that.

McKenze Rogers:

Thank you. Thank you.

Nicholette Leanza:

Can you tell us about the period in your life when you first noticed changes in your relationship with food or your body image, what was exactly happening in your life at that time?

McKenze Rogers:

Absolutely. I was 12 years old and I was at a diving practice with my club team, which we trained at University of Cincinnati. And I was there and my diving coach was there. Many of my other teammates were there. We had also had a, you could call it a guest diving coach come, and she was from China. And if many of you watching the Olympics know that the Chinese have dominated diving for decades and they are ridiculously good and win most of the medals and many of the diving competitions. And also a testament to how much time and effort they put into it. When they’re young in China, they start diving at a very early age. That’s all they do. They maybe not even live with their families.

But we were honored to have a coach at her level come and help coach with us. At this particular practice, she pulled me aside and I’m always so eager to get her feedback and tell me how do I do better, how can I do more? I had Olympic dreams and I want to achieve as much as I can. And she said to me, “You need to lose 10 pounds.” And it was really-

Nicholette Leanza:

Jeez.

McKenze Rogers:

Yeah, it was gut-wrenching because my entire life at that point, only 12 years old, but up until then, I was always told. “Your muscle is an asset. Muscle weighs more than fat. Don’t worry about what the scale says. And you are a powerful diver. You need that strength.” And I thought my body was a really strong tool for me to achieve my dreams and possibly go to the Olympics, and then suddenly a complete 180 in this conversation of, “Wait a minute, maybe my body is actually a hindrance,” and if the Chinese coach is telling me this and they’re excellent in this field, then that must be true. And it totally made me question I, how I should look, how much I should weigh or what I should eat. And a lot of it unfolded from there.

Nicholette Leanza:

Wow. Was there a specific moment or event that made you decide to seek help and begin your recovering journey, your recovery?

McKenze Rogers:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. After that point, an experience with the Chinese diving coach, I still finished out my career, and thankfully I was able to really excel in the sport without much of an eating disorder issue. Probably some disordered eating elements, but it wasn’t until after college when I felt complete loss and I had finished at Stanford, I was no longer a diver, retired from the sport, and I was starting in a career but not necessarily sure that I wanted to do it. And so all that combination of a loss just catapulted me into, “Oh my gosh, I’m feeling out of control. What do I do? What can I control?” And then it became, “I can control how I look, I can control what I eat, I can control my size.” And so it was really after the collegiate career that the eating disorder took hold and lasted for nearly 15 years in and out of periods of my life.

But the one moment that really helped me get out of it was what I call Dorito Night. It’s a night that happened between my sister and me. We were on a family vacation, my parents were there, my husband, and at the time I had one son, and we were all there. And my sister and I were up later and she was just crying profusely and looking at me with this plea of, “Please just eat. Just eat this Dorito, just take it.” And I could tell that this moment for her was so difficult. And my sister is normally a very stoic, a very reserved, more pragmatic person. So she does not wear her emotions on her sleeve. It’s pretty much in a straight-laced. But her being so vulnerable allowed me to realize, “Oh my gosh, all she wants to do is see me eat some kind of food,” but stereotypically categorized junk food, if you will.

So that after that moment, I really had a heart-to-heart with myself and with my family, and catapulted me into making sure I could find hopefully a group therapy that would work for me.

Nicholette Leanza:

Which actually leads us to my next question. Was there forms of treatment or support that you found most helpful in your recovery process?

McKenze Rogers:

Yes, absolutely. So there are some critical pieces, therapy being the crux of it. So I started with group therapy first, and admittedly, I did do individual therapy throughout my 15-year stint with the eating disorder. And it would help at times, but it never fully got me into recovery. So this time I knew I had to do something a little different, and I found a group therapy that was geared towards females who had eating disorders, and that was a huge, huge hill for me to climb and also enjoy the other side of here’s what it’s like to be in recovery. And I will always be so grateful for the three other gals that were in my group, and if they’re listening to this podcast, I want to thank you so much that they were a huge, huge part of my recovery. Just being vulnerable together, being able to talk about our habits and talk about how we restricted or what we would or would not eat and why, but more about the why, and the emotions around it, and what were we afraid of, what did we think was going to happen if we did eat this?

And allowing us that safe space to talk about it really helped me uncover what was the driving factor for this eating disorder. And then that rolled into individual therapy. So we coupled that together. And then also my therapist in Indiana, who also was awesome for me when I was there at the time, huge props to her, recommended me for nutritional therapy, which was another woman who really helped me. So I had this great team around me, which was a lot more like being an athlete, where you have your different teammates around you, or you have your support staff, not only your coach, but your physical trainer or your physical therapist, that kind of thing. So it felt more like we were doing this together and that I had people to lean on, whereas when I was in the eating disorder, it was, how much can I hide this, how much can I do this alone, how much can I make sure people don’t see it, how much can I still function in the world, but keep this interior life [inaudible 00:13:58]?

So those key pieces of therapy were awesome. And then there were two other books that were really critical for me. So one was The Eight Keys to Recovering from an Eating Disorder, and one of the authors is Carolyn Costin, who is the pioneer for eating disorder recovery. She actually founded the first eating disorder treatment institute in the U.S. She recovered from her own eating disorder. She’s been training other therapists for three decades. She has her finger on the pulse of what does it take and how do you help guide people through it? So that was a huge help for me, and there’s writing prompts within it. So that was awesome.

And then similarly, after moving through that, I worked into Intuitive Eating is by some other great authors, one Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. And they have 10 principles that help you find your intuitive eating, which naturally means we are born with the ability to know how much we should eat, when we should eat, when we feel full. It’s just because of the societal norms and the structure that we grow up in that tells us you shouldn’t eat that, or you should or… Or also socioeconomic factors. Maybe you don’t have enough, you can’t buy enough, so let’s eat as much as we can while it’s here. But these two women did an awesome job of nailing down 10 principles to follow. My favorite is principle number four, which is challenge the food police.

Nicholette Leanza:

Yeah, that’s a good one.

McKenze Rogers:

And make sure you don’t let those people out there or societal norms tell you what you should or should not eat. It debunks all the myths and takes off all the labels. And so the mixture of that therapy and these readings and then combined with journaling on my own was critical for my recovery.

Nicholette Leanza:

Thank you. So how has your relationship with food and your body changed throughout your recovery journey?

McKenze Rogers:

Yeah, it’s been a 180, and a lot of people might ask, “Wow. Do you wish you had never had your eating disorder?” And I can honestly say no, because the journey I had to go through to get to the point where I am completely at peace with my body, with food, with relying on my hunger cues, with trusting my body, I probably wouldn’t have got to this point if I hadn’t had the eating disorder. And it probably just would’ve survived like many of us, many women do where we try to follow some sort of diet or we stick to certain foods or we don’t buy certain things at the grocery because we know we’re going to indulge and we can’t stop. And there’s so many of those struggles out there. And for anybody watching listening who has that kind of feel or struggles with food, I am right there with you. I get it. But if you embrace for me is what it worked, if you embrace that intuitive eating, if you embrace that, your body knows what it needs and it will tell you and you don’t restrict. There’s no foods that are off limits, there is nothing that has to be taken away.

Then suddenly this barrier lifts like, “Oh, okay, I can’t eat those Oreos if I really feel like I want an Oreo at 3:00 in the afternoon.” And thankfully, it’s taught me to teach and raise my children eating. And so I have three young, wonderful kids now and two we adopted from Colombia, South America. And at the time I couldn’t get pregnant, partly because of the eating disorder. And then after I recovered, got pregnant, and there comes our little baby Gemma, number three, and she’s a beautiful, she’s wonderful, they’re all great, and I’m so excited that I get to raise them in an intuitive eating environment.

Nicholette Leanza:

Very important.

McKenze Rogers:

An environment that is about peace with yourself, peace with others, being kind to yourself and giving yourself grace.

Nicholette Leanza:

So important.

McKenze Rogers:

So important. Yes, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Thank you.

Nicholette Leanza:

As someone who has gone through recovery, what advice would you give others who might be struggling with an eating disorder right now?

McKenze Rogers:

A critical phrase really helped me, and this was a phrase that I got from one of my other group therapy teammates, as I’ll call her, and it is, “Sit with it.” You have to sit with the emotion, sit with the discomfort, sit with the struggle. Whereas a lot of what my eating disorder was about was trying to fix or change or prevent something either bad from happening or some bad or unwanted emotion. So I use the eating disorder, for instance, if I was really sad about something. I would say, “Okay, then I’m just going to eat less so I’m thinner and I feel better about myself.” Then when you sit with the emotion, you recognize that it’s okay to have those various emotions, and not all your emotions need to be positive or need to be good in a labeling sense, but that if you lean into them and you embrace what you’re experiencing and you recognize it, and then you can work through positive coping mechanisms, or sometimes it just naturally goes away too. You naturally come back around to another emotion.

And so that phrase was just eye-opening for me. It’s so simple, but it was so profound at the time because I was so used to just changing, reordering, undoing what I thought I didn’t want or what I thought was in society deemed as, “Oh, you don’t want to go that path, or you don’t want to feel this way, or you don’t want to show yourself like that.” Whereas now it was like, “Oh, no, I can feel these emotions. It’s okay. And I’m just going to be where I need to be, and then work through it and then move on.”

Nicholette Leanza:

And great for you. Great insight too. And really looking at the roots of what was driving your eating disorder. And I think that’s key to be able to really look inside, okay, what is happening here? Why am I doing this? Naturally, when people are sitting with really uncomfortable emotions, you want to resist against it. You want to do something.

McKenze Rogers:

Completely.

Nicholette Leanza:

And hold space with it, lean into it is really what’s the most effective way. And a person will then learn to be able to navigate it better-

McKenze Rogers:

Absolutely.

Nicholette Leanza:

… and learn those positive coping skills for that emotion. So great advice there.

McKenze Rogers:

And I would say to loved ones, because they’re struggling and they’re going through a difficult time when your loved one is struggling with an eating disorder, that you as the caretaker or the parent or the relative, the friend, really deserve to be in therapy as well.

Nicholette Leanza:

Good point.

McKenze Rogers:

Or have someone to talk to and talk about how it’s difficult for you and talk about how you’re watching your loved one go through such a difficult situation physically and mentally that way. I think it also helps prevent the loved one from coming to that person saying, “Just eat more or just put this down. Just take this. Just stop exercising. Just…” There were so many times that I think in my situation too, where there might be loved ones who just were like, “Just do this,” and I was like, “It’s not a just do thing.”

Nicholette Leanza:

Right. If you could just do it, you would’ve just done it.

McKenze Rogers:

So I implore the loved ones too, to find their own outlet and own way to have therapy and provide a space for them to talk about what’s troubling them too.

Nicholette Leanza:

McKenze, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story with us. And many of our listeners, they’re going to walk away really filling the heartfelt message of you can recover from the eating disorder. So thank you again.

McKenze Rogers:

Absolutely. And I believe we do have the link to the blog that I’ve written similarly in the transcript of this, so feel free to click on that and read a little bit more if you found it helpful.

Nicholette Leanza:

Definitely. Thank you again.

McKenze Rogers:

Thank you.

Nicholette Leanza:

I’d also like to thank the team behind the podcast, Jason Clayden, Juliana Whidden, and Chris Kelman with a special thank you to Jason who edits our episodes. Thank you again for listening to Convos from the Couch. Take care, everyone.