Hi! I was wondering? Did anybody happen to see the 1998 McClay Championships on ESPN? OK, there were 3 people who rode in the ride off. Sarah Willeman, Erynn Ballard and Avery Dimming. Avery Dimming went first and had a beautiful round. Then the rider from Canada, Erynn Ballard, rode and had an “impeccable round” as said by THE Robert Ridland. Then Sarah Willeman went 3rd and had a great round. Why am I bringing this up you may ask? Did any body SEE Erynn Ballard? She WAS NOT a skinny girl and she WON the class!!! 
In fact, Avery Dimming wasn’t the perfect body type either!!!AND SHE PLACED 2ND!!! Sarah Williman did an outstanding job, she just had bad luck with her horse. What I am trying to say is, you CAN ride if you are not the perfect height, weight etc.! I watch the Championship over and over again trying to figure out how ALL three of those riders rode! They were wonderful! BTW, the 1996 McClay Championship had ALL skinny girls and made me want to puke! I still have it on videotape! NO WAY do I want to end up like those people! If I do, somebody shoot me! OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now!
Thank you Snowbird.
C – Your words are only a part of who you are. It’s the heart behind the words that affects us all so much.
[This message has been edited by Portia (edited 04-12-2000).]
Sarah Ill let you take it to the third if need be. I wish I knew you back when. Weatherford you too. Maby weatherford we can get something going soon and with your posative encuragement we will get all we talked about rolling. Actualy Majic Im talking with erin to remain nameless on what I have been asked to write. send me a note and Ill send you what erin sent me. We have a group thing going at the moment and I would like to include you and sarah on it too so sarah send me a note to. also Snowbird are you interested? I would like to have you on the team. Even for me I will be nameless if I write cause there are still people who I don’t want to know about this. Even my initials which I post under will give off my identity to people. So I have chosen the name charley to write all of this under. Erin would that be ok if I used this name? I just don’t want to use my real name. thats all. Its a long story but there are a select fue that do read this magazine that would hunt me down and make my life horible if they knew. Its that person that trys to make sure your life is a liveing hell and folows you till they know you are 6 ft under. Thats why. When Im finaly maried I hope my new last name will close the conection and let me be free from them. Erin Now you understand why and show your boss this. so whoever wants to get in with me on this project we have going let me know and maby weatherford Majic can help you and me with our side project between us. as an example of the friends point of view. See you all later. Im off to dallas in the morning and will try to find a computer to check up on all of you. Maby together we can all start something to get us to a better point on this topic. Erin I hope it has an efect on people. Also If it does I would be willing to help anyone that may ask for help on this. Lets do something about this and be heard even if its breaf atleast we were heard and can go from there.
CTT
I’m going to start a third thread guys. It’ll be there, if we need it.
Moving this up again - post replies to Weight III or Weight…Back Again.
For thoes of you that want to see what eating disorders are and affects i recomend you to take a look at these sights
http://www.something-fishy.org/
for thoes of you that don’t see the problems with what you do take a look at this page from the Something Fishy sight. Each candle is in the momorie of someone and a story to go with it http://www.something-fishy.org/memorial.htm
Scroll down and look for a girl by the name of Debroah simone fradin. Read this please! http://www.anred.com/ http://www.concernedcounseling.com/eatingdisorders/eatingdisordersindex.html http://www.eating-disorders.com/ http://www.edap.org/
Take a look at them and read the personal stories in each of them. Sory to skare you all but I find these sights to be important.
My God, Sandstone, please, please, please read these threads again. This is not looks we are talking about, it is your LIFE. Just like a young horse, you are still growing and developing. You would not do anything to risk that young horse’s future, would you? Then why endanger yourself? For the sake of what a few ignorant people perceive as the “right” look, you are risking your future. J Turner is right, it is up to you to be a leader. You know better, so why not take the point position and show others what a well and fit rider really can do?
Snowbird that was the most wonderfull thing I have read. It realy hit home with me. It took so many years for me to realize what you in just a fue minuiets wrote. If I didn’t slave myself to image maby I would not have learned what I did. Maby I would’t be a slave to my pill but I made that mistake. It hurts to see somany children like me make that mistake. Im a diffrent person now and if for the better i still don’t know. I can only hope for something to happen. Ill tell you all something that I remind myself every day about and I think its what keeps me going. Laying there in the hospital It hurt soo much that I would have done anything to end it right there. I would have traided in my life for peace and so i wouldn’t half to go on with the agoney and shame. One night while I was there I got up and went for a stroll in my in my wheel Chare There was a miror in the hall and as I passed it I saw a person I did not even know. I cried cause I had done this to myself. I had hurt the most prechious gift. As I sat there I began to think of how empty my parents would have been with out me. … excuse me I nesd a minuit to calm down…they would have never experienced the joys I gave them. I was a preachous gift that they made and I know it would have droven them to the end if I gave up. I went back to my room and from that point I stoped praying for the pain to stop and started praying for a kidnie. When I got out It was years of mental and physical battles. You can’t change over night but you can start by just looking around.
None of you are me. we are all diffrent but affedted by the same things . We just react diffrent to them. I am lucky and I mean lucky case I would not have been able to live thoes 18 months if I went on the list. Only till you eperience what dyeing is you cant change on your own. Thats why I reach my hands to people who nead that hand to get them threw things like this. its a disease and every day people dye from it but we fail to listen cause in our mind it can’t harm us. but it can just by takeing that wrong turn. It hapens cuase we look at ourselves and find faults that we are not happy with but ehat hapens when we can’t stop. So many people just never think. They say it can’t hurt me, Im not aa slave to this, im doing it cause it what is expected of me, Im fat, Im ugly. No you are perfect. Thats why we are like we are. I can sit and tell more storys but unless you look deep down my experiences are worthless. This is when a change neads to start and to do it is by reaching out and admiting you have a problem. only till then no one can help. It starts with you.
Sarah I read yours after I posted this one and well I want to say Im proud of you I wish more pepole will read what you just wrote. When will it stop? I respect you very dearly and for that thankyou. I wish I had know some of you when I was at my worst.
[This message has been edited by CTT (edited 04-08-2000).]
On the money about the body fat and fitness, devildog. You, too, Snowbird, and all those who have made similar points.
I’m jumping into this one because no one has yet mentioned that dehydration is also very bad for health, fitness, AND performance. Someone mentioned tennis players–they pre-hydrate til they squelch before they start playing, and keep adding water as they play. Once you start to feel very thirsty, you are already dehydrated–you lose strength, speed, reaction time, thinking ability. You feel faint, get overheated, cramp, and are nauseous. The heroics of Pete Sampras and Michael Chang notwithstanding, it’s not a good practise for daily life, never mind for actually trying to do a sport.
I’ll stop for the moment (and get a glass of water 
) but I think it would be a good thing to use this particular thread for many purposes: 1) bringing this problem–which I did not realize was so widespread among adolescents in this sport–to light; 2) letting people in all stages of dealing with it talk about their experiences; 3) providing alternative ways of viewing fitness and body image; 4) providing accurate health and fitness information, as well as sources for further information.
More later…
[This message has been edited by Nancey Phillips Fisher (edited 04-09-2000).]
I’ve been reading along with you guys and now finally feel as though I can respond. I wish I had been able to stand up to my trainer in college when he said, “there is nothing uglier than a fat rider.” Mind you, that was when I stood 5’9" and weighed 120. I lived on Slim-Fast and lettuce for the next two years, until I graduated. Now, four years out of school, I have gained 20-25 pounds. I realize now that I am healthier, even though some days, I feel fat. But my body has reached its proper weight and you couldn’t pay me enough to diet again. I run every other day and do my sit-ups and push-ups to keep muscle tone and I eat pretty much whatever I want (although I have to admit that junk food doesn’t cross my apartment’s threshold). Those years of living on Slim-Fast did nothing for me, except ruin my mental image of myself. I won when I was underweight and I still win now. Granted, I don’t show at the As - I take young horses to schooling shows and Cs, but those young horses require all my physical and mental strength to give them a good horse show experience, so that someone else can take them to the As and win. I wouldn’t be able to help the horses if I were still starving myself. I can’t tell you how many times I felt weak after riding at even an intercollegiate show because I hadn’t eaten enough to keep a fruit fly alive. If I were still starving myself, I would not be an asset to the young horses that I train. It’s taken me a long time to be satisfied with what I look like, but I’ve realized that who I am is more important than what I look like. I’d rather be here than in a hospital. And besides, what’s a ribbon really worth? Shouldn’t it be enough to know that you rode as well as you could and weren’t just a passenger on your horse? We already take take too much for granted in this life; we shouldn’t take our bodies and lives for granted.
Reading this thread I had a thought - everyone here keeps saying over and over “but judges favor skinny riders and it’s hard (or impossible) to fix it!” - might I make a comment that if you believe this and you then go about conforming to the rules you are only re-enforcing this.
If instead all of the people who want to lose weight - and are healthy where they are - simply in order to win spent that much time and energy RIDING and getting better maybe one day a ‘weight biased’ judge would find that the BEST rounds in a class they were judging were in fact by people who didn’t fit the ‘thinness mold’ and be almost forced to pin them b/c they were so far superior? (Hey I have a dream!)
Also suiting your horse doesn’t have much to do with weight, I may show a 14.2 hand horse in green hunter this year and if I judge tells me that I look to big or whatnot on her I won’t be terribly offended - as my legs are long on her and I do look big! And likewise my friend who owns this mare is 5’0 and does not look well on my 17 hand thoroughbred. Suitablity has more to do with height, how long your legs (especially thighs) are and how the horse is built!
But don’t get mad at people who are think - I am 5’5 and about 118. I don’t diet at all although I am careful with my diet I do eat quite a lot (today I had an apple and a drink for breakfast - a peanu butter sandwich, an apple, carrots, a bag of chips and 2 cookies for lunch, and low fat popcorn and goldfish as snack - then dinner will be chicken and vegetables with milk to drink and probably a roll or some bread) and I am naturally slender - some people really do look that way - I have a friend who is really really skinny but she eats anything and everything - some people just are that way and you can’t hate them for it!
Snowbird I love everything you are saying! I want to email the AHSA and tell them all about this but am not sure of what to say - could some of you who have mailed them share your letters with me?
CTT - thanks for your kind words - reading all of this has made me truly greatful I was able to stop before I hurt myself (beyond emotional wounds that are slow to heal sometimes)
And to those of you who want to impress the judge with your weight - what about impressing him with your great release, you perfectly following hand, your horse’s elegant jump, your immaculate turnout, your smooth transitions in u/s classes - etc. IMO those are the more important things… and if you don’t win? Is it the end of the world? Those classes at Devon are huge - there will be 40 or so people entered - maybe 6 of them get ribbons - so do all the rest walk away ‘losers’? IT depends on how they view it - for some the honor of being at Devon and competing and presenting the horse they have worked so hard with will make it all worth it! Is a ribbon worth physical pain? Even if you win will you need to keep winning over and over again? Will it never be enough? Those of you who talk about Devon I will be honest here I ENVY YOU - I would LOVE to show at Devon and I probably never will - yet all you care about is getting a ribbon and being thin - I am sorry but that attitude makes me sick! There IS life after Devon, after Indoors - unless of course you are in the hospital with your organs failing being fed through tubes. Or you have become so tired and depressed that you cannot take showing anymore…ask your self what is 10 pounds worth? What is a blue ribbon worth? What is your life worth?
If people here still think thin is better how can we EVER convince the judges to judge objectivily!!! We must all take a stand TOGETHER to stop this bias - and we must all stop buying into and believing it - it makes us almost as bad as those doing it if we keep turning a blind eye to it!
Sarah
[This message has been edited by Regalmeans (edited 04-10-2000).]
[This message has been edited by Regalmeans (edited 04-10-2000).]
It is truly horrific what is happening, not only in riding, but in our society that is causing women, young and old, to feel completely inadequate and so desperate that we are willing to destroy ourselves mentally, physically, and financially to achieve an unnatural and unhealthy state of being.
I am an older rider who has struggled with my weight my whole life. I have tried every diet known to man kind, bought every exercise tape, diet pill, miracle shake, diet-center plan etc… etc… I estimate I have spent as much on useless weight loss products as I have on my horses (pretty scarey)
I am at a point in my life that I have said ENOUGH!!! I eat healthy - fruit, vegetables, lean meat, grains. I don’t drink soda, only water and I TRY to limit sugar though I must admit life is not worth living without CHOCOLATE! I power walk every day and try to get to the mountains for a snowshoe, hike or backpack at least a couple of times a month. I’m NOT SKINNY and won’t ever be and I wish the whole world would quit telling me and every other woman out there that I’m a terrible person because I’m not skinny, that no one will love me because I am not skinny, that I will never have succes because I am not skinny. #@$%
I’m FIT and STRONG and HEALTHY and my hair isn’t falling out and my finger nails aren’t splitting and my breath doesn’t stink (all of the things that happen when you starve yourself).
I think everyone on this board needs to start pushing back with every opportunity. Keep writing to AHSA but do more. I was looking through a tack catalog the other day, I don’t remember which one off the top of my head, but I know they were advertising breeches for the “curvey” rider. The model who was wearing them was a STICK!!! I showed the picture to my husband and asked him if he considered the model curvey. He laughed - “she has a figure like a 14 year-old boy”. I will go home tonight and write a letter to that tack company - I encourage each of you to do the same.
It’s time we send a strong message to the advertisers, the media, the AHSA, and the judges, coaches, trainers etc… that our young women are becoming mentally ill because of unrealistic expectations placed on them.
I remember being a teenager, I remember the peer pressure, I remember what was important to me then, and I can completely understand why this is affecting our youth the way it is. Don’t lecture them - encourage them to find help - from someone who can give them the tools to help recover. They have to find the strength within themselves to want to make the change - help them find a way to find that strength.
CTT,
I understand you fears. I would be glad to help anyway I can. I am not anonymous, I am sure you all know me. I admire youth and would do anything to help stop it from being wasted.
I will say this to you, you will never be free until you can face your fears and win over them. No one can make you miserable, we do that to ourselves. You make me feel proud to chat with you, so you should feel proud of who you are. Remember that old commercial, Flaunt it!
Two things about riding a course that I love:
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is the fact that you can’t do it if you look down at where you are and
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You always have your eye on where you have to go and not where you’ve been. What a lesson to practice all through your life.
Just think you can turn a 1200 pound horse just by turning your head around a corner.
PS. I would like to add that while I admire youth, I am not ashamed of old age.
Heather, in response to your response from my response as the response to the response from the driving person the reason I responded that way is because we need to get out of the “It’s not MY discipline so it’s not my problem” mindset. I think it’s sad that you have the same nindset as they do. It’s not just the problem of the hunter world, it’s all of our problem and the more of us there are to fight it the better.
Moving up, yet again, ditto previous comments…
Hi! I have been reading this board for a while, and have really hesitated in posting my story, but I decided to help others now. Weight and food are definetly a very touchy subject with me, and I really hope that others dont have to experience what i did. This past year I was severly anorexic. Im about 5’4 1/2 and at my worst with this disease i weighed 85 pounds.Disgusting right??well, I was still riding and showing 5 horses on the A circut, and as bad as I looked, people either didnt even notice, or expressed that they wish they had a body like mine. This definetly didnt help in my recovery, (which by they way I am physically fully recovered, just not totally mentally)to have others admiring my emaciated body. I got so bad that I had to quit for a little bit, and doctors said I was very close to a heart attack and a pound away from the hospital. What was this all due to? Mostly trying to achieve that “ideal” eq/hunter rider body, which as I look back, I already had, at my heaviest of 110.This is very sad that people are wiling to give up their lives (literally) just to fit an image of the sport. Please if u are reading this board and having problems with your weight, get help before its too late-sorry this is so long, but I just dont want anyone else to go through the pain, torture and hell that I went through just for my body to be the way i thought it “should” be. Keep healthy, and most importantly, have fun- remeber thats what this sport is supposed to be?! thanks for your time, and good luck everyone
J. Turner & Louise You both Have a good point about being a leader. We cirtenly nead more of them. The first thing we need to do is educate these people on how to BE A LEADER! It comes with time and paitence. What were looking at as a whole picture is YES we do have an problem in our show world. The first step is to educate so that they can learn how to get to that point to be a leader. We must educate on a proper diet, Proper exercise and proper daily habits. What we are faced with here at the moment is we have people from every side, We have the adults who dream of being thin again and we have the JR’s who Folow in the foot steps of others their age thinking its ok to be unhealthy skiny. What I feel is more of a problem is the children (yes the adults too) but they are takeing health risks. For many of them they are growing and with out the proper diet they are causeing alot of damage. Not enough calcium in their system can cause frail and weak bones. And what grows for them to get biger and taller? yep you guesed it BONES! I have mentioned alot of health risks from not eating, Your liver, kidnies, your monthly cycles, bones.
I was doing a quick surf on internet and started to look for what I see as healthy. Sure there are some but I began to look at the pics and saw how small and fragile they look these days. What I feel is needed to be done is to find a way to go out there and educate people on the affects of an improper diet. what hapens to growing children when they crash diet. But how. How can we who care go out there and make it known its not OK for children to do this its not ok to be like everyone else, its not ok to risk your life? It takes more than a handfull of people to do this. I know I have said alot and Im sure by now you are sick of me saying this over and over again, but thats how you get a point accross. I realy do think Sandstone’s post had alot of validaty here although we don’t agree with her it is a diffrent side of the issue. If she did not write that we would not have responded like we did. What is hapening is by her and othres statemnts we are becomeing more aware of the problem and at the same time reaching down and voiceing what we think on the isue. Sandatone and her friends are not the only ones. they are just a handfull. When you have itme just look at pictures of riders out there and see what I am talking about. Im also curious what are the mens views on this. We see so much of it in females but what about the males out there. Do they folow in these foot steps? does it afect them ? or is it the female group? I encurage everyoone to put their two sence in even if they are on the oposite side.
Actually Snowbird, when you starve yourself your body doesn’t burn the fat, it burns muscle first because it is afraid to burn the fat. So when you start starving yourself, all you are doing is causing your muscles to atrophy. I think it is terrible that you people on this board that have eating disorders are so open about it and proud of it! That is terrible. And what is worse is that trainers are probably aware of it and let it continue. This truly makes me sick. PLEASE seek help and therapy, I have a friend who is on those same pills as CTT, and it is heartbreaking to see the pain she is going through. Everyday she suffers because of this. My mother too had an eating disorder when she was younger, and she still to this day twenty something years later struggles with her body image because of people making comments to her like some comments I have heard from these judges. It’s truly sickening and dis-heartening. These girls need to learn to stand up for themselves. If a judge ever tried to tell me that I would have won if I was skinnier, I would not only rip that judge a new one, I would report him/her and protest the show and get as many people as I could to not attend shows by that judge. Healthy living and fitness is the way to go. Look at Cindy Crawford, she is drop dead gorgeous and yet she is not waif thin. She is in excellent shape. I think that fitness needs to be the focal point in our world of horses, not the twiggy waif look. I personally think that those super skinny runway models are nasty looking with their bones poking out all over. If you look at female athletes in other sports, they are not starving themselves! Except maybe ice skating and gymnastics, but soccer players, tennis players (think Venus and Cyrena, they are beautiful and they are by far not tiny!) and other highly physical sports, and you will see a high level of fitness. How do you expect to go around a jumper course at 97 pounds without proper nutrition on a 17 hand horse? How do you expect to concentrate and achieve a perfect round if you can’t concentrate because you have no energy and are out of breath? It will catch up to you and the ugly monster of eating disorders will either kill you or scar you physically for life. You will have a constant weight battle and really screw your metabolism over if you keep it up. I guarantee it. Keep heading down the path you are going and you won’t have a pretty life.
I know for a fact that while Sarah Willeman is naturally slender, she is gym rat. She works out really hard to stay strong. I ride (or did before I became pregnant) at her home barn in Massachusetts. She has wonderful horses, yes, but she’s fit (“buff”), plus how could you not get better riding as much as she does!
If I took my horse and underfed it, overworked it, doped it with drugs, withheld it’s food on a regular basis, and demanded it be a “particular” size or shape (never mind what it was bred to look like, risk it’s health, soundness and mental capabilities; I would be condemned by everyone here, and quite possibly, arrested.
What a pity that some young women think that is perfectly acceptable to do that to themselves. Would you do that to your horses???
