Stop eating to climb Mountaineer | Sports

Madison Gordon 4 years ago 3 min read

Two great rock climbers, a woman and a man installed in the global elite, decided to broaden their horizons and try to climb mountains. Up until that point, their world had been a climbing wall, where they would train several hours a day, and the Sports Climbing Schools they visited to complete the ascent with unimaginable difficulty. Both of them stood out due to their extreme thinness. In their newfound skin as mountain climbers, they traveled to the Alps with another couple of friends and climbed the four a winter trail and what it entails: a long approach through ice and glaciers, ice climbing and, above all, a very long descent. His friends arrived in the canyon that afternoon, but they were so exhausted, they had to improvise a bivouac on a cliff.

When they returned to civilization, the former devoured them for pizza and beer. One day later, the two very strong rock climbers have shared a sad French omelette and tea despite almost nothing for the past 24 hours. I remembered this story after watching the honest documentary entitled Mild (Written, directed and produced by Caroline Treadway, 2021), which condemns eating disorders among climbers, a work that traveled to the United States and Europe to awaken a wave of sympathy and relief: It was time, for example, that anorexia in climbing was no longer a taboo topic, and he has denounced it Spanish climbing coach David Masia. Mild It means light in English, but also light, which the author of the documentary intends to shed light on in relation to the behavior of the flocks that do not always follow the smartest sheep. Treadway wants to be an elite climber and started taking a shortcut: Stop eating. After visiting hospitals and psychiatric centers, he manages to escape his nightmare to verify that the microclimate of climbing protects the food-harmful game for sporting excellence that is nothing more than an anomaly.

One of the strongest statements that help to graphically understand the severity of this type of mental illness comes from the doctor: “Eating disorders are likely to be stronger than love for family or God.” Sports climbing is a very small discipline that will be an Olympic debut in Tokyo 2021 (if the Games finally take place) and although there are more and more qualified coaches, the road towards the search for maximum performance is usually full of false facts, however, beliefs that do not It is unfounded, backed by a community that discriminates against those who aren’t obsessed with counting the grams they eat. Most prevalent, the documentary reveals, is to ensure that food is the greatest enemy of success. The climb has gone through a profound transformation, and it’s gone from occupying “a bunch of.” Dirt bags (Pulled) from doing an imaginary mountain climb, to a mass culture of weight loss, and a culture of diet as a way of life, ”Treadway explains.

The pressure of self-control and feelings of guilt or anxiety over the search for results generates great unhappiness, if not forced abandonment of escalation even when great results are obtained.