The statistics on eating disorders are shocking. In the U.S., 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life. By age 6, girls especially start to express concerns about their own weight or shape. Forty percent to 60 percent of elementary schoolgirls are concerned about their weight. A review of nearly 50 years of research confirms that anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.
Eating disorders do not discriminate; they affect all ages, genders and nationalities. But about 67 percent of a university’s female population will practice habits of an eating disorder, therefore it is something that should be addressed with in your recreation center, especially this week, which is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.
Chances are the mission of your recreation facility is to promote a healthy lifestyle and life long healthy habits. However, it is crucial to remember there is no cookie-cutter approach to health. Do your marketing efforts reflect this? When posting on social media or creating posters and flyers are you using images that might promote a certain body type?
The media has created this idea that being healthy means being thin. However, being healthy doesn’t mean you have to follow a strict diet and workout hours on end. Being healthy cannot be quantified by a specific number on the scale. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle varies from person to person. Everyone needs to develop his or her own plan and goals, that make them happy and are not based on some deep-rooted stereotypes.
In a blog post for NIRSA, Rachel Koretsky, the founder of upace App, outlined three questions to consider when developing your next marketing campaign.
- Are these images relatable? It is important to promote self-care at every step of your fitness outreach so that you can help students set realistic goals and expectations. We are referring to body images, food and workout intensity.
- Does the wording encourage students to feel body positivity? The wording choice is crucial to set the expectation of generating healthy fitness goals. A professor at American University’s Public Health and Nutrition advises, “Take the focus away from calories, numbers and weight loss, and ask questions that lead your members to listen to their own bodies with their fitness journeys.”
- Do we reach people inside and outside of the gym? Instead of asking people to come to the facility, the goal should be to help them understand WHY they should. Some reasons could include things like stress management, anxiety relief and better grades. But notice that none of these are about unrealistic physical expectations.
