Sure, being light and lean is good for climbing performance. However, as climbers, we are athletes and, as athletes, we shouldn’t just be looking for a quick way to shed a couple pounds. Instead, we should be looking to optimize our diets so that they fully fuel our training and climbing performance all while allowing us to live at a good strength-to-weight ratio.

Finding a healthy diet that will allow you to reach your target weight while fueling your climbing isn’t easy. However, to help here’s an article by Brian Rigby of Climbing Nutrition. In it, he explains how long-term success with weight loss and finding an optimal performance diet requires not only physical changes, like caloric restriction, but also mental shifts in our attitudes towards food and dieting.

“Long-term weight loss (or weight maintenance) doesn’t come about through short-term fixes, it’s the culmination of building long-term, healthy dietary habits. Just as a person who finds an athletic activity they love naturally becomes fitter over time in the pursuit of it, a person who finds healthy eating behaviors they love will over time develop a healthier diet and body. In this way, “dieting” isn’t really about razing your old diet to make room for a new one, but cultivating behaviors that improve it, and pruning ones that do not; making dietary changes means admitting there are flaws in the way we’re currently eating without rejecting our diet wholesale.” – Brian Rigby

Food and Diet Attitudes

Ultimately, a lot of what Rigby covers in this article involves change psychology and how we can make sustainable habit changes with food and diet over time. As athletes, this is really what we should be after. Not quick fixes or unsustainable restrictive diets. If longterm weight loss in the name or climbing or otherwise is one of your goals, this article contains some really high-quality information that will help you succeed.

Click through below to read the full article and learn more about how shifting how we view food, dieting, and eating can help us all work towards finding a healthy and sustainable performance climbing diet.

Full Article: Climbing Nutrition – Food and Diet Attitudes

(photo courtesy of climbingnutrition.com)

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