Athletic Women Who Think They Are Fat

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

How do you feel about your weight?

Did you know that heavier people are not always unhealthy, but could be athletes too?

Thin and fit don’t inherently go hand in hand, but athletic ability did not make tennis star Serena Williams feel better or happier about being bigger when she was growing up.

The winner of 20 Grand Slam titles, Serena often compared herself to her older sister. “Venus was like a model. I was thicker,” Williams said in an interview recently.

Both sisters have been playing professionally since they were children. But Serena always felt different on the court because of her size, and scoring big couldn’t squash (reduce) feelings of insecurity (not feeling good about yourself).

“Most women athletes are pretty thin,” said Serena.  “I didn’t really know how to deal with it.”

Serena’s combination of thinness and being an athlete is a common problem many women worry about. Being “in shape,” healthy, or fit often doesn’t mean wearing a size 2 dress, having thin legs or thighs, or that you can put your arm around your back easily.

Body mass index or BMI, is a common way used by doctors and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). BMI helps to decide whether a person is in the correct weight range for their height and weight alone. But it does not consider muscle mass. And since muscle weighs more than fat, many athletes’ BMI puts them past the “healthy” range.

Whatever number Serena has on the weight scale, doctors are unlikely to think that the athlete is fat. As the usefulness of BMI is being scrutinized—the CDC recommends athletes talk to their doctors.

So, Why Should You Care? Female college athletes have a higher risk of developing eating problems because of trying to be thinner than peers who are not doing sports, according to a 2015 study. Past studies have found that up to 75 percent of female college-level athletes are not happy about their bodies and that if they don’t have high body fat percentage, wanted to lose weight if they had higher BMIs.

At 33 years old, Serena has accepted herself as she is. “I had to come to terms… with loving myself,” said Serena. “I had to find different role models.”

She says that her positive thinking about herself came from her recovery from a 2010 injury, which put her out of commission. As she recovered, Serena began to become happier with her body’s ability more than the way it looks.

As for how she feels about her body now, she’s pretty happy: “I’m loving it!”

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.