You are probably going to diet anyway, so why not work together with probably the most experienced body composition change coach in the climbing community.
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Athletes will diet…
This year, around half of the climbing community will likely manipulate their diet in an attempt to alter their body composition, and body weight.
The majority will restrict energy intake—primarily by cutting carbohydrates—while simultaneously increasing their training volume, adopting new programs, and increasing workout frequency.
Despite widespread misunderstanding of the factors that influence body weight beyond energy intake, most will rely on changes in scale weight as the primary measure of success, inevitably driving further unhelpful eating and training patterns when the numbers don’t meet their expectations. Many will struggle emotionally with the disconnect between their efforts and results. Cycling between restriction and overeating, exacerbating poor self-image, negative self-evaluation, increasing anxiety, depression, and self-sabotaging behaviours.
Dieting as an athlete, without professional evaluation and guidance, can lead to reduced athletic development, and exasperate underlying physical and psychological issues.
Dieting for athletes is not casual…
Misunderstood and misapplied dietary restriction can lead to serious physical and psychological consequences, particularly in athletes, or high physically active individuals.
Inadequate nutrient and energy intake delays recovery, disrupts sleep, increases injury risk, impairs physiological adaptations to training, hinders memory formation and skill development, and exacerbates anxiety and depression.
The combined stress of restrictive eating and intense training and sports performance can result in hormonal dysregulation, requiring prolonged recovery, significant gains in body fat mass, and a substantial reduction or complete cessation of training and sports participation.
If you are aiming to reduce body fat (commonly mislabelled “losing weight”), consult a dietitian or qualified nutritionist who actively engages with the latest nutrition research and consensus guidelines for athletes, who understands “Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs)”, has extensive professional experience working with individuals, provides the facility for regular conversation, guidance adjustment, and someone you feel comfortable enough to share how you feel physically and emotionally during the process.
A case study…
Female worked with a dietitian to recover from REDs (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport) and hypothalamic amenorrhoea. By 2023, she had gained 20kg (44lbs), and regular menstrual cycles.
Approached Tom Herbert (useful.) in 2024, as despite significantly improving her relationship to food, she was struggling to understand her new body, and herself as a climber. Her climbing social life was impacted, now climbing 6A from 8A, bouldering 6A (V3) from 7B (V8). After years of eating as little as possible, to the essential recovery through doing the opposite, she asked if there was a “healthy middle”. She had also developed significant anxiety about losing her menstrual cycle again, which displayed as the safety behaviour of frequently waking at night to snack.
useful. coaching provides unlimited video calls, and therefore the space to deeply discuss and explore the cognitive, emotional, body sensation, and behavioural aspects of her situation. Education on the concepts of “load / stress / adaptation / strain”, and with the primary focus of managing physiological and psychological stress. Nutrition strategies, weight and menstrual cycle tracking, CBT concepts, mindfulness, and hypnotherapy (including recorded audio), supported her to achieve a DEXA verified healthy body fat range. A change of 12kg (26lbs) in 13 months, whilst maintaining her menstrual cycle, athletic development, and near full cessation of anxiety-driven sleep disruption.
The client received over 30 hours of conversation and guidance.
useful. / Cognitive Behavioural Nutrition
→ Cognitive Behavioural Nutrition
A schema used in useful. coaching, is viewing everything through the lens of the load it is placing on you, your capacity to handle the stress of the load, the resulting physical and psychological deformation, your ability to avoid or recover from the strain (cumulative deformation), and the resulting increase in your capacity to handle future loads—allostasis.
Allostasis is the process of regulating homeostasis (internal balance) through the adaptive change of your internal environment to meet the perceived and anticipated demands of the external environment.
In relation to nutrition, what, how, and when you eat can lead to the body ‘expanding’ or ‘contracting (defending)’—allowing you to do more, or preventing you from doing more. Health and performance involves your nervous system, which is constantly interpreting internal and external signals of ‘safety’.
We evolved to survive, and survival is about efficiency—often the dialling down of physiological functions: growth, recovery, reproductive, and ultimately athletic performance. This is why dieting (energy restriction) strategies have to be applied with care, identifying and understanding the variable factors and contexts, and adjusting the process with those in consideration.”
I get to know people…
My entire coaching approach is helping people to develop physical resilience and psychological flexibility—the capacity to handle what both their life and sport demand of them. It is about providing them the strategies to support their highest workloads possible, enabling them to do more, and recover faster than anyone else, even in the context of energy restriction for lowering body fat.
I have held over 2600 hours of conversation with nearly 400 unique individuals, with unique body compositions, and unique lives. A three-month client, gets around 10–16 hours of video calls. The “unlimited” purpose is to facilitate much broader and deeper ongoing discussion and examination of their beliefs and behaviours around food, eating, their body, self-efficacy, and assumed and realised performance changes resulting from applied strategies.
I also know a lot about body weight, having researched and written over 12,000 words on factors that influence acute body weight change outside of energy intake. In fact, I get everyone to track their weight daily, just so they can understand what a blunt tool the scale really is. Education, and understanding more about body weight, entirely changes someone’s relationship to the scale.
The underlying purpose of useful. coaching, is to reduce suffering in people’s lives, to help them create greater freedom.
Working with someone for their best health, identifying limitations, and encouraging appropriate, and ultimately useful strategies.
Does coaching fat loss for climbers lead to disordered eating?
→ Does coaching fat loss for climbers lead to disordered eating?
The act of paying closer attention to what you eat: source, quality, composition, macro/micro-nutrient, and energy values, is not disordered behaviour, any more than paying closer attention to your training method, form, sets, repetitions, and intensity is disordered behaviour.
Nor is energy management to lower body fat inherently disordered, any more than eating in excess to increase muscle mass is disordered. Both can become disordered behaviour when used in a context that leads to poor physical, mental, and social health—our interaction and relationships with other people. This is prevented through education, instruction, and monitoring by a professional.
The desire to change your body is not disordered behaviour.
However, it has to be understood within the boundaries of physical, mental, and social health. What is actually appropriate, physically possible, and the means for change, all have to be rooted in those health contexts, which themselves are informed by the context specific scientific literature.
Climbing is a sport known to have a troubled relationship with body weight, body composition, and dietary practices. As a nutrition coach working with climbers, my priority is to understand where someone is in their current health, training, and life.
Want to work together?
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