One of the most well-known sports in the world that controls weight is wrestling. It’s not an easy sport and does require a lot of knowledge in nutrition. Wrestlers and their coaches know how to control their weight and know healthy ways of controlling their weight.
For this blog post I’ve decided to look up a wrestler’s diet and how they lose weight in a healthy manner without just starving themselves. Below is one article that I found that lists healthy ways for the athlete to lose the weight.
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/sports/Pages/Wrestling.aspx
I would like to bring up the last part in the article in how to lose weight in a healthy way. It lists a bunch of things that are not allowed within the sport to lose weight. I also would like to bring up how the article says that athletes are not allowed to lose more than 1.5% of their own body weight each week.
I really question if wrestling is a healthy sport for people. My brother was a wrestler and I remember there were days where he chose not to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the family because he had a meet that weekend. Also, even with the list of things that wrestlers are not supposed to use or do to lose weight, who knows if they are actually abiding by that rule in the first place. It says no prolonged fasting but how is fasting in general healthy for a person to do?
In my opinion it isn’t but like the article says it has many different options other than fasting to lose weight. Below is another article that gives more examples as to how wrestlers can lose weight in a healthy way.
https://wrestleclub.com/best-weight-loss-diets-for-wrestling/
In the article it lists a bunch of examples of how a wrestler can lose weight properly while still eating food. It lists food that a wrestler shouldn’t eat and lists the ones that would be best for them to eat.
Now wrestling is one of the toughest and most athletic sports out there in my opinion. It takes a lot for a person to learn about their weight and learn how they can reduce and gain weight in a healthy way but again I ask is this healthy? No other athletes are going out of their way to gain and lose weight in the way that wrestlers have to but, yet they still do it.
People have their opinions about the sport but in reality, it’s a tough question to ask. I believe that there are people out there that are doing it the proper way and that’s most likely a majority of wrestlers, however, there is also probably a small amount that probably starve themselves or purge after they eat.
Like I said I believe wrestling is a great sport and I think it challenges people to their limits but how far is too far for the athletes?
Eating Disorders within our Sports 