[webbo]

Are people saying that people come in to climbing, get pretty good then somehow end up with an eating disorder due to trying to get better.

[petejh]

I think you guys who are arguing with Ellie here are pretty ignorant of the difference between men and women here. Last time I looked, the scientific consensus was that men can go about as low as physically possible without any serious harm (at least in the medium term). Unfortunately, women by virtue of naturally having a higher bodyfat percentage to begin with have most to gain by aggressively reducing this. But some pretty nasty things start to happen when women go into the same sort of single-figure percentages that men can happily exist at.

What? Using the logic that people who are unconvinced by the argument must simply be ignorant (of quite widely-known facts) doesn't help further your argument. You're just begging the question by starting out assuming there definitely is a problem and that anyone who disagrees must be wrong hence they must be ignorant of something-or-other.

Me being unconvinced about whether climbing suffers an increased incidence of eating disorders relative to general population doesn't mean that I'm ignorant of ^ those facts ^ at all. I'm well-read, take an interest in lots of things around me, know a lot of climbers and I'm well aware of the differences in safe body fat percentages and the figures you quote. I just don't buy the argument, because there isn't any convincing proof for it.

If they must then people can state the eye-itchingly obvious - that eating disorders can be horrible to go through and that more women than men experience them. This isn't news, and it's about as useful in trying to work out iof there is a significant problem particlaur to climbing as saying, say, domestic abuse can be horrible. It's the same for climbers or non-climbers.

If someone came up with some unbiased data - instead of personal feelings based on looking at photos of people and gym gossip - that showed climbers were at significantly higher risk of having eating disorders over general population then I'd be open to changing my mind.

edit: 

I definitely have met people through climbing whose perceived need to be light to climb their best was stoking an eating disorder which was jeopardizing their general health. And there's still plenty of others who battle those kind of thoughts every time they sit down to eat.

This is my (undoubtedly biased) overall perception of climbing in relation to eating disorders. It is also my perception of the general population.

[webbo]

I would be so bold as to suggest that those climbers who develop an eating disorder might have developed some other serious psychological issue if they had not become a climber. As the issues that can lead to eating disorders, generally have little to do with losing weight.

[Danny]

Here are two highly cited studies with partially conflicting findings:

http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/15692312

http://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Abstract/2004/01000/Prevalence_of_Eating_Disorders_in_Elite_Athletes.5.aspx

I've only read the abstracts so can't comment on the particulars. 

[iwasmexican]

as a counterpoint to all of this, growing up with climbing (from 15) has made me massively more comfortable with my body: going from being the weedy, picked last in gym kid to being the slightly less weedy and more muscular one made all the difference and wouldnt have happened without climbing. sure im not the only one that would be pretttttty sedentary without climbing and that has to count for something...

[Muenchener]

Similar story for me: at fifteen I was a weedy teacher's pet, at twenty five I had led E3, had a brown belt at karate and a six-pack.

(The six pack seems to have gone missing somewhere along the way though  )

More anecdotal "evidence": I can think offhand of about half a dozen young ladies I see regularly at local climbing walls who are national-or-above level bouldering competitors, covering the range from just about made the national junior squad to number 12 in the world rankings (Monika Retschy). Not one of them looks strikingly thin or unhealthy.

[lagerstarfish]

what Webbo said

[fatdoc]

healthy thread. oft avoided discussion. believe me you are not first generation to consider the gains and pitfalls. keep on discussing... one part of my recent renaissance is I'm lighter... not thin, not ripped... just more effective.. difficult..

[Oldmanmatt]

what Webbo said

Amen.

as a counterpoint to all of this, growing up with climbing (from 15) has made me massively more comfortable with my body: going from being the weedy, picked last in gym kid to being the slightly less weedy and more muscular one made all the difference and wouldnt have happened without climbing. sure im not the only one that would be pretttttty sedentary without climbing and that has to count for something...

I was the quintessential 9 stone weakling when I started climbing seriously in the early '80s.


By the time I was 20...

Some long forgotten (doubtless down-graded) Ardeche 8a..

[a dense loner]

What do all these before and after shots count for? Saying I was a weedy kid at school and now kick chalk in peoples faces has nothing to do with the people out there starving themselves for numbers. That's what we're talking about not climbing made me into Arnold. If the face turns gaunt they're fucked

[fatdoc]

Usual effective drole.. No dis intended.. What's your point?

You outline the issue, yet fail to contribute.. In terms that my sad, old brain understands..

I'm sure you have much to add to this...

[Oldmanmatt]

What do all these before and after shots count for? Saying I was a weedy kid at school and now kick chalk in peoples faces has nothing to do with the people out there starving themselves for numbers. That's what we're talking about not climbing made me into Arnold. If the face turns gaunt they're fucked

Because it's hard to say who is unhealthily skinny, starving/anorexic or just naturally slender.
And no, you can't tell from looking.
I was a stick insect at 14 and at 21,  and looked anorexic, but I ate like a horse.

One of the lads that works for me, started climbing a year ago and he's lost 5 1/2 stone in that time. Without the slightest hint of dieting, I watch him shovelling curry in his gob every day in the staff room, enough to feed half of Mumbai! That would look well dodgy, if I hadn't watched him work it off.

I suspect Webbo is right, that's my point.

I wasn't built like Arnold. I was skinny, wiry and around 73/74kg at 183cm tall.
I was often told I needed to eat more by various base Docs.

The kind of body you wind up with when training hard at route climbing is going to be a pretty slender one. More recently, as Bouldering has surged in popularity, a heavier, more powerful build is becoming the norm; but it's still pretty slender compared to other sports.

And muscle development requires nutrition, surely?

Does every good climber's breath stink of Pear Drops?

Are we suggesting all the top climbers are deep into an orgy of Catabolysis?

Of course some are beyond the boundary, I just can't see it as more than in any other sport, or even the general population.

Edit.

People didn't talk much about BMI in those days (at least not in my hearing), but I was diving a lot with work and struggled with being extremely Negatively buoyant, which has to have indicated a pretty low body fat %?
But I started each day with a fry up and lived on standard Navy issue stodge.
With pudding.
And snacks.

[webbo]

And Webbo suspects he's right because he might not know a lot but he has worked in mental health for 28 years. So even he might have picked the odd bit of psycho babble up.

[Muenchener]

If the face turns gaunt they're fucked

Nope. I had a good mate at college who was a decent road cyclist. He used face gauntness as a gauge of whether he was getting towards race fit or not, and when his important races of the season were over he un-gaunted. Loads of athletes in loads of sports do  this; it doesn't mean they're all in danger of anorexia.

(Not that I would want to look like Sachi Amma, but most top climbers don't look like Sachi Amma either)

[scottygillery]

I'm afraid I can't give figures that pin-down the extent (or non-extent) of eating disorders in climbing. I've not made an attempt to do so merely pointed out that it is a problem I've experienced and (as Abarro the 81st has also mentioned) can be observed within the climbing scene. For me this alone is enough to justify a discussion on the impact that this problem can have on people within climbing and perhaps what could be done to highlight the issue and what can be done to improve the situation. I think it is worth doing this because climbing is seen as a community and we should look out for each other.


I've taken from the links you posted that the prevalence of eating disorders in climbing, which I’d class as a "leanness" and "antigravitation" sport, is higher than in the general populous (at least in the one article) and other sports (in both articles). I’ve read around a few papers now and they all seem to suggest that prevalance is above normal for leanness sports. I have no reason to believe climbing is any different. Further, I'm aware that in 2012 and 2014 Isa Schoffl (who I gather is seen as a "scientific" expert on climbing matters) gave talks at the BMC climbing injury symposium on the higher than normal occurrence of anorexia in junior climbers and what they had done to attempt to address this issue. Which would seem to me to suggest that it is a recognised issue. That's the best I can provide.

I feel I should clear up some earlier confusion regarding anecdotal evidence. The above studies provide *empirical* evidence on prevalence of eating disorders. There are many more studies that examine the effects, attitudes, diagnoses, treatment, etc of people with eating disorders in sport. These studies use *anecdotal* evidence. When we talk about the impact eating disorders can have on athletes we can only use anecdotal evidence.

Webbo, are you trying to say that someone with a problem is a lost cause?

[Oldmanmatt]

Pretty sure that wasn't implied in Webbo's post?

He only said eating disorders tend to be caused by things other than a desire to lose weight.

For the Docs. Does starving yourself, to reach a specific goal, constitute an eating disorder? Is a low BMI not just a consequence of hard training?

I just had a trawl through some Instagram accounts of top climbers, from around the world and I didn't notice much in the way of "Gaunt" in the faces.
Even Alex P, who posted a veiny, ripped, pumped selfie this morning looked pretty healthy around the face...

Why do people believe there to be an excess of eating disorders in climbing? There haven't even been any concrete/specific anecdotes in this thread and where number and research have been provided (even though non specific to climbing) they don't support the hypothesis.

[scottygillery]

Do you want names?

[Oldmanmatt]

Do you want names?

No.
Of course not.

But how many names do you have?

And is it really a huge proportion of competitive climbers?

That's the large number of people who climb competitively or obsessively, not just the IFSC cast list.

[scottygillery]

See my post above. I can't give numbers. And that's not the point IMHO.

[Danny]

That's pretty much it, Scotty. Most of what you're saying I agree with - in essence, that climbing is probably par for the course as far as eating disorders in equivalent pursuits go remains my point. I have to say though, I wouldn't take the merits of studies like these on abstracts alone. Bearing in mind the modern tendency to pathologize relatively normal behaviour its clear that plenty could be shoehorned in to the 'ED' category, and of course the fact we're dealing with self reporting etc. As for anecdotal evidence, I'm sure it has its place (somewhere), but just because science peeps sometimes present this kind of thing as 'evidence' doesn't mean that I'm going to defer all scepticism and nod my head. At best, anecdotes can help flesh out certain arguments, at worst they're downright dangerous.   

But I digress, webbos point is perhaps the most important one to bear in mind. Think of it in terms of the different prevalences of EDs in the different subsets of elite pursuit. Why these differences? Is it something particular about climbing, or the lackadaisical attitudes in the media and culture surrounding it? I don't think this is strictly the case, as you kind of point out too.

No, its really just a matter of being in a sport that favours those skinny fucks in the first place, and then throwing a bit of competition into the mix. Highly strung, depressive, temperamental, driven, narcissistic, egotistical are all words that you might associate with many at the top of many a pile. It just so happens that in climbing being skinny is a pre filter to all of this.

I mean, its like saying there's a worrying prevalence of moobs in Sumo. It just kinda goes with the territory.

[account_inactive]

I can think of plenty of people......but I'm sure that's not the point scottygillery is raising. I think you only need to open your eyes to realise it's a problem and has been so for many years. It does go in and out of fashion

[petejh]

Well that's me convinced

[account_inactive]

How was I trying to convince you? I don't remember caring about what you think

[petejh]

You should watch that not being able to remember stuff, could be a sign of malnourishment. You being a climber an all that - very common I hear...

[scottygillery]

Even Alex P, who posted a veiny, ripped, pumped selfie this morning looked pretty healthy around the face...

Yeah I was looking at that also and thinking the same ... partly because of this thread and partly because of watching "project Mina" yesterday (recommended ...), which is mostly about the pressure of comps. All I read into AP's current look is a strong desire to win.

Also saw that pic of alex. Wow. Jessica Ennis step aside them some impressive abs! Sounds like she's been doing some hardcore workouts and that she'll look a little ripped in the selfies at the end of them.

What I'd like to think is that someone (male or female) who is working hard to push their grade but they've read this thread and perhaps an article in a magazine or on the internet and they're able to check themselves when their eating habits become a little extreme. It could be their friend that does the reading and as a result feels empowered to offer some support. A tricky business but a step in the right direction.

Before I post want to clarify I'm not trying to suggest Alex has an eating disorder.