Before most girls finish elementary school, they've already learned they're supposed to take up less space.

While watching an old recording from an NSCA conference, I heard a statistic that stopped me.

Research summarized by the University of North Carolina Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders found that 81% of 10-year-olds reported being afraid of being fat, with girls reporting this fear at significantly higher rates than boys (University of North Carolina Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders, n.d.).

They don’t know how to drive a car yet. They haven’t even started high school. Yet many have already learned that smaller is somehow better.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there.

Research has found that 42% of girls in first through third grade already want to be thinner (Collins, 1991). Before many girls have learned division, they've already begun equating thinner with healthier, prettier, more athletic, and more valuable.

51% of 9- and 10-year-old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet (University of North Carolina Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders, n.d.). They are barely in 4th grade, and they’re already associating dieting with feeling better about themselves while absorbing societal beauty standards.

For many girls, those beliefs don't stay outside of sport. They follow them onto the field, into the weight room, onto the track, and into the locker room. Instead of asking, "How can I become stronger?" they begin asking, "How can I become smaller?"

The consequences of this mentality extend beyond health and injuries. Many girls eventually leave sports altogether because they feel like they don't fit the "ideal" athletic body. Research shows that girls drop out of sports at significantly higher rates than boys, with body image, social comparison, and appearance pressures among the reasons many girls report leaving athletics (Women in Sport, 2019).

But leaving sport isn't the only consequence. For the girls who stay, the pressure to become smaller often changes how they fuel their bodies, and that's where the physiological consequences begin.

Restricting food reduces how much energy the body has available to support performance and essential physiological functions.

When athletes consistently consume less energy than they expend, they can develop Low Energy Availability (LEA), the driving factor behind Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) (Mountjoy et al., 2023).

RED-S doesn't just affect athletic performance. It can impair bone health, hormonal function, recovery, immune function, cardiovascular health, and long-term development.

That's why underfueling is linked to stress fractures, menstrual dysfunction, decreased bone density, fatigue, and reduced performance. Dieting and other attempts to meet the expectations of “skinny” can result in Low Energy Availability and eventually RED-S. Menstrual irregularities such as amenorrhea, which is the loss of a menstrual period, may also result (Selzer, 1996). Even without amenorrhea, dieting and caloric or food group restriction can contribute to osteopenia and osteoporosis later in life, which is characterized by weakened bones (Kreipe, 1990).

But skinny isn’t an indicator of health. A meta-analysis of nearly 398,000 people revealed that fit individuals, even those with higher BMIs, actually had a substantially lower mortality risk than unfit individuals with normal BMIs (Weeldreyer, 2025). The takeaway is that low fitness is a more consistent and dangerous predictor of morbidity and death than carrying excess body weight. For long-term health, our focus should be fitness.

The encouraging news is that our bodies are incredibly adaptable. Bone is living tissue. It constantly responds to the environment we give it. When we fuel adequately and challenge our bodies through resistance training and impact exercise, our skeleton adapts by becoming stronger.

During adolescence, roughly 40–60% of adult bone mass is accumulated during puberty, and peak bone mass is generally reached by the end of the second decade of life. These years represent one of the greatest opportunities we'll ever have to invest in lifelong bone health.

In other words, it's not too late. We can build stronger bones by giving them both the stimulus to grow and the fuel they need to adapt (Hereford et al., 2024).

But how do we come back to health after trying to slim ourselves down?

We make strength the priority.

It comes back to strength training, plyometrics, and eating more. These happen to be the same habits that improve performance in sport. We rebuild our bones and restore our energy by trying to become stronger, not skinnier. Strength training, plyometrics, and running all place stress on our bones. This stress stimulates action from osteoblasts, which are bone-forming cells (Harvard Health Publishing, 2023).

But a prerequisite for making both bone and muscle gains from strength training is eating enough (especially carbohydrates and protein) to energize our bodies, fuel our muscles, and rebuild them post-training (Thomas et al., 2016).

Here's the irony.

The habits that improve long-term health are often the exact same habits that improve athletic performance.

Eating enough. Strength training. Plyometrics. Sprinting. Recovering. Sleeping. Building muscle.

None of those require becoming smaller. They require becoming stronger.

So I guess you could say it’s getting Stronger. Faster. Fueled.

Sport should be one of the places where girls discover what their bodies can do, not another place where they're taught to make them smaller.

We should be building toward the version of ourselves that can throw around heavy weight. The version that can generate massive power. The version that jumps higher. The version that runs faster. The version that stays healthy for decades. The version who can look in the mirror and be impressed, not because they take up less space, but because they take up more.

That feeling is better than skinny ever could be.

Great for a high-protein breakfast, post-workout fuel, or really anything. She’s the best.

Why? Protein supports muscle repair. Carbohydrates replenish glycogen. Calcium supports bone health. Easy before or after training.

It’s simple. It’s actionable. And it’s research-based.

If you're a coach: Compliment strength before appearance.

If you're a parent: Talk about what your daughter's body can do, not how it looks.

If you're an athlete: The next time you're tempted to ask, "How can I get smaller?" replace it with "How can I get stronger?"

Collins, M. E. (1991). Body figure perceptions and preferences among preadolescent children. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 10(2), 199–208.

Harvard Health Publishing. (2023). Strength training builds more than muscles. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/strength-training-builds-more-than-muscles

Hereford, T., Kellish, A., Samora, J. B., & Nichols, L. R. (2024). Understanding the importance of peak bone mass. Journal of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jposna.2024.100031

Kreipe, R. E. (1990). Osteoporosis and osteopenia in adolescents. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 37(5), 1181–1200.

Mountjoy, M., Ackerman, K. E., Bailey, D. M., Burke, L. M., Constantini, N., Hackney, A. C., Heikura, I. A., Melin, A., Pensgaard, A. M., Stellingwerff, T., Sundgot-Borgen, J. K., Torstveit, M. K., Jacobsen, A. U., Verhagen, E., Budgett, R., Engebretsen, L., & Erdener, U. (2023). 2023 International Olympic Committee (IOC) consensus statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(17), 1073–1097. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-106994

Selzer, R., Caust, J., Hibbert, M., Bowes, G., & Patton, G. (1996). The association between secondary amenorrhea and common eating-disordered weight-control practices in an adolescent population. Journal of Adolescent Health, 19(1), 56–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(95)00229-L

Thomas, D. T., Erdman, K. A., & Burke, L. M. (2016). Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and athletic performance. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(3), 501–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2015.12.006

University of North Carolina Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders. (n.d.). Eating disorder statistics. https://www.med.unc.edu/psych/eatingdisorders/learn-more/about-eating-disorders/statistics/

Weeldreyer, N. R., De Guzman, J. C., Paterson, C., Allen, J. D., Gaesser, G. A., & Angadi, S. S. (2025). Cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index and mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 59(5), 339–346. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-108748

Women in Sport. (2019). Reframing sport for teenage girls. https://womeninsport.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2019-Reframing-Sport-for-Teenage-Girls-Full-Report.pdf