Weight is something of a pre-occupation for most climbers and I guess that it has to hold true that the lighter you are the easier it is to haul yourself up the rock, however you still need muscle and the fuel to power them. Back in the 90s the norm was to starve yourself and climbers strove to be as light as possible by only eating such delicacies as clear soup, but in doing so they sacrificed much needed muscle mass. Now days we recognise that not eating enough is not only counter productive to becoming a better climber, but also detrimental to your general health.
Now this is where it starts to get awkward, so what is a healthy weight? One way to work this out is to use the body mass index from a BMI calculator such as BMI Calculator from NHS. However the BMI system is based on an average body and does not take into account the trained body, muscular bodies can score overweight even though they are not! Probably the best way to judge your weight and therefore food intake is to consider your climbing performance, body measurements and whether you feel tired during training sessions or maybe you cannot even complete a session.
If you want to go it alone one of the easiest ways is to use a free online diet tracking tool such as MyFitnessPal that uses your weight, height, gender, and activity level to estimate calorie intake. You can then easily input your food from the huge database list to track your daily food intake and see how much you eat every day. Track your food for a few days to see how much food you’re eating and what is consumed unnecessarily. The tool also gives the amounts of protein, carbs and fat you should, and have consumed, so that you can adjust your food accordingly.
Need to have some back up, then try Slimming World, which although it’s not free (£4.95/week) it gives you some much needed back up to your weight control and healthy eating. Slimming World doesn’t use weights or calories to measure food, but uses as much as you can eat free food and the free food includes great stuff like meats, fish and beans, rice, pasta, etc. The only measuring is for some carbs, calcium and what they call syns (chocolate, cakes, etc, which you get to have daily!). Great system that really works!
Basically we need to eat whole foods like lean meats, vegetables, fruit, some whole grains and beans which are all needed to maintaining healthy weight. We all need carbs for energy, but not at the level of the common European and American diet, with toast at breakfast, sandwich at lunch, pasta for dinner, burger bun after an evening out, etc. All of these calories remain unused and are turned into fat, so cut back on them! This also goes for refined sugars and includes corn syrup, if you must sweeten then use honey! You should however eat some good fats such as avocado, oily fish and nuts.
There are many fad diets out there, low carb, low fat, etc, etc, and in their own way they all work. But the side effects can be unsustainable for athletes with the loss of one part or other of a balanced diet causing training deficits!
Keep it simple, eat a balanced diet, back it up with tracking tool such as MyFitnessPal or a program such as Slimming World and most of all have fun and climb!