Who was her old coach?

---

blog

From the Kelly thread:

1) Weight has a huge effect on running performance. Losing 4kg (as her coach suggested) theoretically makes a marathon ~8min faster, if you have 4kg to lose.

2) She's a pro athlete and probably doesn't have 4kg of weight available to lose. You can't just continue losing weight and continue becoming a faster runner. There's a peak at which low weight and low strength cancel out. It's different for everybody. The optimal triathlete body is heavier (more muscular) than the optimal runner body because of the swim/bike.

3) The majority of non-professional athletes would be faster if they weighed less. Yes, you'll be tired and slower at a caloric deficit, but that is temporary until you go back to balanced calories. Her advice is fine, if inapplicable to the masses, probably because:

4) Victimhood/body positivity/"whatever you're already doing is perfect" is catnip for Instagram and the internet. Next to dog pics and bikinis there is no better way get clicks. I don't doubt that she struggled with this, but she also surely struggled with plenty of boilerplate training issues that didn't warrant such a post.

My thought is that deliberately losing weight often causes a decrease in performance as it increases the odds of overtraining and/or decreases energy availability for hard workouts. If you want to lose weight for performance it probably needs to be done very slowly or during a period of time where you aren't building for an event.

---

Dimond Bikes Superfan

Name rhymes with Sam Twat. Has a habit acting like a psycho around other athletes. This includes Cal Milward and more recently Sarah Crowley who he also used to coach. There's an old thread here where Cal accused him of riding alongside him during the marathon in Kona, calling him fat and stuff like that

---

What's your CdA?

I remember that thread. Crazy stuff.

---

blog

Oh the same guy! That explains some...

---

https://acprestation.se/

This is a very real issue, no need to denigrate her for the post. I applaud her for bring it up. I'm sure there are lots of young athletes who need to hear this - weight might matter, but fueling/training/rest/recovery matters more.

controlling behaviour and an obsession with body weight (especially with female athletes) seems to be a hallmark of the 'sutton camp.'

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

It's appalling behavior, but there's almost something slapsticky comedic about someone doing an Ironman in Kona while a spectator calls them fat. Feels surreal.

But obviously what a jerk.

Skye doesn't even look fat to me at all. I guess she has a bigger lower body than upper body? But obviously quads and glutes etc are important in triathlon!

I can see the theory that says, "if you were hauling less weight up all those climbs in St George on both the bike and run, you could run faster". People applied that exactly same reasoning to Gustav vs Blumenfelt in St George. And there are plenty of bony tour de France cyclists.


But she isn't exactly carting around a bunch of fat storage. And the fact that he made this assumption without doing a multiple body scans even, suggest stupidity. What, so she just goes no carb for a couple week and drinks minimal water and now she's "race fit"?

I think at the end of this road is an uncomfortable truth which I think she was confronting when she thought about quiting.

World Championship professional sport is often a matter of whose body can take the most abuse without breaking. It's all over the place in running, etc. It doesn't mean you can't be world class, or have a great pro career if you avoid thr extremes, but I think at some level many of the winners are breaking themselves left and right.

It's probably more rare to not have a winner that's unbroken.

Look at the recent world champions, nearly all of them are a litany of injuries and/or mental health issues.

This doesn't mean triathlon is unhealthy any more than sport is unhealthy. BUT at the very tip of the tip of the top pros? I sure feels like they walk that razors edge of who can go further/do more without breaking. And they usually break in the process and just hold it together "better".

That's going to leave a lot of broken bodies along the way.

Our sports obsession with weight is sort of wild at the elite level. I always look at Frodeno and this he's a bit too skinny. We'll have threads about Sam Long and people will say he needs to lose 10lbs. Wild stuff!

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Didn’t Lionel says in an interview that Frodeno got too lean one year to try and help his run and it backfired big time?

Maybe in his breakfast with Bob interview?

I am listening now and it's very uncomfortable interview, kind of more personal and their own issues. plus the caoch is not present to give input, kind of a set up???

Rather then talk about the weight issue.

On the weight issue sadly it is true lighter is better ( FOR RUNNING , or bike steep grade climbs) but you do hit a spot were it isn't the low hanging fruit anymore but for some the easiest to "control".

This topic can run on forever but ….. No one wins a medal for running with BMI over 20 ( even 19) and no one plays pro rugby or American football with a BMI under 22.

It's not any of our business but she does look much leaner this year but "healthier" which I think many don't understand. your not cutting calories and therefore "train under fueled" , if you can stay healthy and keep training with increased force load and strength it hard to be able to keep it on. It looks like she has hit that know with good results.

130 lbs at 12 % bf instead the best for long course tri vs 134 lbs at 10 % BF. More muscle power for the bike and run endurance.

---

Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

Agree with this. Telling an athlete to cut weight like that right before a goal race makes no sense at all. It could not have been easy for her to share that. No need to try to explain it or defend the coach. The most benign understanding of it would be that the coach lacks communication skills, which is what they're paid to do. But it's outdated to just tell a female athlete to lose weight. Skye is a top athlete and was racing/training at a high level. If the coach wanted to work on her running he should have been prescribing more miles.

The fact that someone like this has been coaching people for 8 years, including pros, is quite baffling.

Amateur sport.

---

"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Had you any particular "boilerplate training issues" in mind?
https://podcasts.apple.com/...3343?i=1000638197252

I listened to the podcast - it's really great interview. Skye's experiences are another representation of what Lauren Fleshman chronicles in her recent biography Good for a Girl. Also, if you haven't read Kara Goucher's biography, The Longest Race, it's another stark account of abuse by a coach. Both pro athletes suffered incredibly, the least of which was about male coaches' damaging rhetoric about female bodies. And, the biggest rhetoric used by abusive coaches is about weight with female athletes.

I'm so glad to hear Skye's story. I'm so disheartened (aka furious) that this kind of crap still goes on. And it doesn't just happen with women pro athletes. There are plenty of stories about male pro athletes who are pushed to the brink to be lighter to their own undoing for their careers at some point.

For women, there are all kinds of issues that come up physically with weight that drops unnecessarily.

The mental abuse from this kind of conversation becomes a lifelong mental health crisis for a lot of women.

(The conversation in the forum has turned to citing sources that say lighter is faster, but I beg you to think more broadly and consider who might be reading this forum. Also, so much research is done on male athlete bodies and not women athletes. A bit of Dr. Stacy Sims' work is in order for consideration as you think about this type of advice.)

I think if you're Skye or some similar pro and you want a profitable, healthy, podium/win most races and be a respectable Championship competitor with an occasional path to a WC podium she's on the right path.

The risks of focusing on weight loss are just too extreme for the damage potential to her body to maybe eek out those potential performance gains (which are more likely to become body/mental damage first anyway).

For everyone else, you'd be crazy to focus on losing weight while training to get better. Very risky. My feeling has been that if you want to cut weight, you need to spend several months to a year on that with very low training intensity. Get your weight near where you want it and then fuel and eat healthy and start training while avoiding junk food. Hungry? Eat a sweat potatoe. Want a treat? Just make sure you aren't lying to yourself and make them rare, but don't ever tell yourself you shouldn't eat if you're hungry... just don't reach for a box of frosted flakes. Eat the healthier bulkier carbs that will fill you up, not burn like a match and leave you craving more.

I heard Mat Fraser say when he was serious about crossfit he realized it was impossible to out train a bad diet. He also didn't want to keep competing because if the serious lifestyle commitments it took to be at the top. Different sport, but similar mindset.

I'd like to lose a bit of weight for personal reasons, and can see it eventually helping performance if I do it under lighter training load initially. But this idea of cutting weight while prepping for Kona is reckless.

SWEAT potaTOE?

Just doesnt sound appealing somehow

I would say it's more that it's an unregulated sport. We have top of the sport endurance coaches that have been banned by federations for legit safesport violations and can still work with athletes (and at high levels) because basically there's no real pathway to keeping them out of the sport. A "ban" is basically not real meaningful in endurance sports unlike other sports where to actively coach you have to be part of the sport (team sport where your coaching at a game, etc).

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Hah. No it doesn't. Definitely not.

This is just bad coaching.

Lighter is faster, until it isn't. More miles is faster, until it's not. More intensity is faster, Until it's not.

A proper coach makes sure x variable is leading to gain and prevents the UNTIL it's not part.

Training humans not robots. it sounds like for her this focus took away training focus and put it on the other 16 hours a day of avoiding calories.

Rather then focus on the training and over fueling and building some solid muscle strength and leaning the body out.

---

Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

All I'll add to this is that Im glad he's being called out again. Unfortunately, besides damaging their "coaching brand" theres not too many consequences for poor behaviour. Ironman can't or wont intervene and the national federations don't tend to get involved. Safe Sport were also very poor to deal with. So then it becomes trial by social media (if you take this route) and that can go any which way.

We have a lot of great coaches in the sport. If we really want to deter the bad apples in the bunch then vote with your coaching fee's and support the good apples.

---

---

Twitter: @callummillward | YouTube Channel |

.
.
Macca came the realization that Ironman is a strength/endurance sport and that when he tried to get lighter he got weaker and it negatively affected his performance. He decided not to try to be as light as he could but instead balance his weight with his strength and adjust his race strategy to match. It worked.
Racing Weight: Advice from History’s Heaviest Ironman Champion – Triathlete
"McCormack learned that losing too much weight weakened him, causing his performance to suffer despite his greater leanness. Realizing he could only get so far by dropping pounds, McCormack began to look at changing how he raced Ironman to make the most of his strength advantage and to minimize the effects of his weight disadvantage.
“I just had to find a way to get as light as I possibly could without losing my strength and then build a racing plan that suited the conditions and my issues in them,” he says.
In the end McCormack learned that a racing weight of 175-177 pounds gave him the ideal balance of leanness and strength, and that being aggressive on the bike and more cautious on the run was the best Kona racing strategy for a big fella."
.
As far as all the women racing,as has been mentioned many times by many female coaches/sports analysts ,most notably in triathlon Sara Gross (Feisty Media), "women are not small men" and their physiology is different.

This is an interesting TEDxTalk by Dr Stacy Sims
Dr. Stacy Sims | Female Physiology and Nutrition Science (drstacysims.com)
.

There is a good reason why Sarah Crowley had to take out an AVO when leaving

Any number of things that people struggle with in training. Volume, intensity, sleep, position, life balance. Nobody posts on Instagram about how their coach wanted their elbows narrower on the bike, and if they could've narrowed their elbows they would've come in 3rd not 4th. But every time they narrowed their elbows it caused back pain so the position was unsustainable although theoretically faster.

Minus the emotional baggage that people attach to weight and it's the same story. A theoretically improved outcome that didn't work in the real world. I give her credit for trying this pathway to improvement and seeing if it made her faster, and even more credit for realizing it didn't and going back to what worked.

At the end of the day (for a professional triathlete) weight is a training metric and should be treated with the same analytical view as hours, heart rate, lactate, etc. I trust a pro to know what's best for her.

Where I disagree is that the issue is undereating and not overeating. Yes, there are many people, athletes as well, who undereat to the point of being unhealthy and that shouldn't be encouraged. But there are far far more people, athletes too, who overeat to the point of being unhealthy. It's a disconnect because a post like Skye's is applicable to so few, yet an opposite world post about how she lost 4kg and it led to victories would almost certainly be met with disdain and vitriol (see Adele).

But what you’re ignoring here is that this is the coach saying “I know it’s causing you back pain and it’s unhealthy and you might end up injured or with worse performance outcomes as a result, but narrow those elbows anyway.”

It doesn't say that in the Instagram post though, which is what I was talking about. All the post says is how her coach pushed her to lose weight. From what I've seen here the coach seems like a real piece of work and probably did say things like that, though. (To be fair, pro level training already causes pain, is arguably unhealthy, and may cause injury or worse performance. You can't just do low volume and low intensity because high volume and intensity may cause overtraining).

It's why I give her credit both for trying it and for realizing it wasn't working. If you see narrow elbows give a much lower Cda you should probably try to adapt to the position until it's clearly not working. Likewise, if there's reason to believe being lighter would make you faster then that's also worth trying until it's clearly not working.

AVO = apprehended violence order

Which is taken out when you need to be protected from someone’s abuse and violence.

Right, and I forgot about the whole Sarah Crowley incident, here it is:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cts6R2xPw_m/

---

"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Not too long ago, I found a photo of myself taken after a Sprint Tri down the shore, many, many years ago = before we had D'Kid

From the neck down, I was fairly studly [beefy shoulders & arms, flat tummy], but my face looked terribly gaunt - my eyes were especially sunken, almost deathly, but that may have just been the residual google marks?

After The Big Quit, and gaining that missing healthy weight back, I vowed to not go that deep again

Although D'Wife still calls me "Skinny Little Shit" and probably will forevermore

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

The only way to stop this is for the athlete who hires the coach and then any coaches who become associated with that coach to face some type of sanction. It's weird though, is anyone publicly working with Salazar? Why is working for or with Sutton publicly ok? Because Chrissie won some races? Everyone fawns over her, but she and many others have willfully chosen to associate themselves with him.

How do we treat coaches that work for him? Very strange place in triathlon.


Based on what she said about her coach in the post it would not really be in the realm of SafeSport. But I'm not sure if you're referring to Watt or how you just get rid of Sutton. That's a tough one, it requires every Federation to recognize bans, and he was coaching while banned. But we know to be a coach you really don't need to have a federation license, just a reputation.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

what would also be great would be if professionals stopped using coaches like brett sutton.

It's one thing to tell her story, and I'm glad she did. It's another to argue the guy should never coach and everyone associated with him sanctioned. I believe what Skye said, and I believe he caused real offense and contributed to emotional harm. But bad advice and causing offense are reasons to do exactly what is done -- publicly share your story. Not prevent the guy from ever working, etc. etc.

If this coach has an ounce of sense, he'll come out and announce he never intended to create or add to Skye's burdens and that he's really taking her clear emotional distress as a result of his bad advice to heart and is not taking on any new athletes until he can do some new training for himself, blah blah blah.

That's what should happen in the best case. The worst case, he just doesn't change, and people stay away as his flaws are publicly shared and he tries to defend them.

No need to make a federal case out of this.

It was Frodeno in his breakfast with Bob interview IIRC. He saw the rise of Lange and thought that he needed to be light to shave a few mins off his run. There was a hint that this cost him his big injury in 2018

Talking about someone's weight, especially a professional endurance athlete, for five years and consistently being told that's not a primary focus point for you and it effects your mental health becomes offensive. It's one thing to talk about it for one or half a season of coaching. But a great coach would learn after a year with a good feedback loop that losing weight is not what will get their Athlete over the line. So I'm not saying what he did wasn't bad, I'm saying I'm unsure based on what was shared that would put it in the realm of misconduct. Just would make him a horrible coach.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

With how athletic centric and athletic protective sports has moved to in our climate within the coach-athlete balance of power issue, this general type of behavior by a coach is going to only more and more result in real issues for coaches moving forward (safesport if they are a federation member). So this particular case may not be an actual real issue, but the "bullying" type of behavior that can be present in some instances in these types of issues will most certainly cause problems for coaches who continue to behave in this general type of behavior.

So again this particular case may result in nothing to see here, but the general behavior of "bullying" will certainly only increase in cases like this.

Eta: many safesport violations are nothing more than breaking a sports association rule. There is no real world law broken etc you simply then get punished to not be an associated coach. But again in endurance sports it really doesn’t matter if you’re a regulated or unregulated coach. If an athlete wants you to coach them, they basically will be allowed to.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Ironically, this was also the year that he put in one of the best performances of his career (he confirmed this himself in an interview) at the 70.3 worlds where he ran 1:06 pre-super shoes to beat an in-form Gomez and Brownlee.

I think Triathletetoth has summed it up pretty well, lighter is better, until it isn't. And Frodeno was one of the leanest athletes out there, most of us would get sick or injured before we could drop down to 6% BF.

I think people were talking about Sutton more than Watt here. Sutton is a convicted child sex offender. Definitely should be out of the sport forever. Watt is just a bad coach, different story there.

Just a bad coach? AVO if true suggests otherwise

Is a coach talking to an athlete who has chosen them about that athlete's weight a 'red flag' for the athlete? Obviously I exclude sports where there are weight boundaries delineating competitive classes/categories. Presumably all sports have now proscribed any use of scales by coaches and athletes together. And similarly 'banned' the recording of an athlete's weight by the coach or the training group admin. IDK.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C01y9nNJRP1/ - Moench's latest.
Why, as an educated professional (accountant type) person, did Moench put up with Cameron Watt's weight-shaming behaviour for years. After IM Tulsa 2021, where Moench ran an excellent sub 2:57 - a personal best - Matthews (who beat her with a sub 2:50) went full on on the whole 'how do you run so fast; you don't look like a runner' diatribe. Time to ditch Watt there and then post pandemic.
I sincerely hope anyone who's in a coach/athlete control/weight relationship is listening (and getting advice and acting on it).

I train normal humans and weight control is the biggest focus for most as why they start running or triathlon.

You talk to athletes about wt and health and strength and skill. Wt loss is a big goal for some to gain health and fitness.

here we have a bad coach that is aiming at high hanging fruit because they can't teach the athlete to swim better or get stronger or learn to run more efficient with less stress.

Just like some coaches say to get faster as a swimmer swim more.... they are and not faster so what are you really helping with???

Her relationship had more then a focus on wt here??? Just like a spousal abuse. Why didn't you just leave ???? I am not sure why?

Maybe like those that play for Bobby knight or a swim coach that destroys your love for sport with volume and intensity but no joy, it's worth it if I am winning and improving, until it's not winning or improving.

Plus first coach? they think they are all like that.

go watch the tri film WHAT IT TAKES and you can see Peter Reid does this abuse to himself didn't even need a coach to push him? people watch that and assume that's the only way to win then.

---

Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

At the AG level it's obviously very important for athletes and coaches to agree on what they are trying to get out of the training. For a lot it's general health, weight loss, faster times, more muscular, etc. For a pro there really is only one goal, winning. Or at least higher placing. I;m not defending this coach specifically, but part of the job of a coach is to steer you in the right direction, especially when that means doing things the athlete normally wouldn't do. Some like speedwork, some like tempos, some like long runs, and we all naturally gravitate to the workouts we're best at and/or enjoy the most. Doing nothing but tempos generally isn't going to be as effective as doing tempos and speedwork, even if the athlete hates doing speedwork. A refusal of an athlete to at least try to complete the instructions is a failure of the athlete. A coach obstinately demanding completion of the instructions without monitoring the objective and subjective performance of the athlete is a failure of the coach.

My first thought is that anyone airing private relationships in social media scores very low in respect. She is supposed to be a professional and if she does not like her professional coach, find another one. But broadcasting this is very unprofessional, but apparently popular these days.

Replying in general. This question turns the thread a bit.

Let's assume Skye was not annoyed with her coach, and agreed she needed to lose weight, but also was sensible and realized there's no way she can cut calories, train, and not lose muscle and invite injury. She has hardly any body fat on her, as she pointed out in the interview, her lower body does amazing things for her in terms of biking and running, but let's suppose she apparently sees it as being the target area to reduce fat.

Is liposuction actually a thing a female athlete who wants to target fat loss can do? This isn't the case of an overeater who will just gain the weight back. She's carrying an absolutely healthy level of fat in her lower body by virtue of her genetics, not her excessive eating. But could one actually suck 4lbs of fat out and realize a performance gain?

No arguing anyone should do this, but has anyone heard of this? I'm just coming at this from the perspective of short of starving herself and damaging her body across the board there's just no way to target that fat loss to the area that the coach apparently thinks she needs to lose it.

I had this discussion a few years ago with an MD who's also a Cat 1 cyclist, jealousy enabled. The long and short (from him) is that yes, liposuction would immediately reduce weight by a measurable amount. It would also require at the very least a few days completely away from training and a longer time of reduced training load. The balance point at which there would be a realized net positive is up for debate. The big unknown is if the homestasis of the body would be thrown off to the extent that existing fat cells increase in size/number to maintain their current proportion or if a new balance will be found where less fat store are required. Personally, I do not trust studies of people who got liposuction as a valid indicator of what would happen to pro athletes getting liposuction. The differences in lifestyle are to great.

Plus:

"I'd like to lose some weight but I can't. How about I tried a liposuction?" - said no professional triathlete ever.

---

"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Incidentally, after searchigng a bit Simona Halepis is a pro tennis player who got breast reduction surgery. And it turns out she is also under drug use investigation. It's not surprising, if true, that someone getting surgery for performance might also consider drugs for performance.

Beat me to it. This place is amazing sometimes.

She can kiss that sports bra contract goodbye

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Am I missing something? If she didn't like his style of coaching get another one. I don't know him and maybe he is an asshat but if he's doing or saying something you don't like, move on......

that’s exactly what she did.

I'd get a boob reduction just to never have to deal with sports bras again. They're an unfortunate yet necessary evil.

(That said, I'm convinced most female cyclists have at some point wondered how much better our watts/kg would be sans gratuitous bosom.)

But took over 4 years to do so.
Moench had had two years (2016 and 2017) of 'also ran' race results.
Took Watt (Sutton acolyte) on as a coach (no idea why - was Crowley (also an accountant) already with him?) and stepped up a grade in 2018 and onwards (running past the collapsed True in Frankfurt with that season truncated by her accident (so no Kona)).
Under Watt the results were there, along with the weight shaming and those continued into 2019 and two good results post the early COVID phase (at Florida and Daytona Nov and Dec 2020). Sub 3 hour run in 2021 at Tulsa.
Suspect Moench is also the thoroughly/naturally loyal kind who would resist giving up on a coach who had helped her leap into the world top 10 and procrastinate dealing with his poor behaviour.

We don't really know the true details of their coaching/athlete relationship, so it is really not appropriate to comment beyond generalities. However, I do think my story is a perfect example of why cutting weight through caloric restriction is a bad idea. I was a collegiate runner who temporarily destroyed my body in pursuit of being faster so I know all too well what happens when you go over the edge. At 6 feet 2, my natural "fit body weight is about 175. My triathlete racing weight is about 165-167. My best running races were down at around 16-163 lbs, but I had cut my weight down to 147 pounds and had a body fat of 2.7 percent measured by hydrostatic weight testing. I was running around 120 miles per week, but probably undereating by at least 1000 calories per day. I would eat lots of fruit and veggies to "trick my stomach" into feeling full. I would often get really bad headaches at night from being really hungry. I went from being a 14 minute 5k runner to 16 minutes, developing anemia, depression and suicidal ideations. At 21 years old, I could barely even get an erection. It made me realize that I was not meant to have the physique of typical elite distance runner, and along the way I found triathlon which I was a better fit for anyway. I developed some iron rules for myself so that it would not happen again:

1. When you are training hard, you should never feel hungry. And I mean never. If you eat (mostly) healthy foods and appropriately consume carbohydrates during long hard sessions, your body weight will reach a natural homeostasis over time.
2. Weigh yourself at most once per month. There are too many things that can result in weight fluctuations that have nothing to do with body fat.
3. Ignore body fat measurements from scales. They are useless, especially for elite athletes.
4. NEVER compare your weight or physique to other athletes. Some people have a genetic predisposition for extremely low body fat/thinness. One of my collegiate teammates was close to 6 feet and 140 lbs. He was very thin, but ate well, drank beer and didn't ever obsess about his weight. He was (and is) also a very fast runner.

These apply to elite athletes who are usually training greater than 8-10 hours per week and burning 4k plus calories per day. Obviously if you are only training 3 times a week and carrying a spare tire on your belly, caloric restriction and dieting may be reasonable.

Big fluctuations are the reason it makes sense to weigh yourself more regularly! Assuming you don't have a history of disordered eating weighing yourself everyday is fine. Just don't overreact to one of two days measurement and look at the overall trends and averages.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m not fast at all but body wise, I’m pretty much like you.

I think some people can weigh themselves everyday without reacting to it inappropriately. I consider myself in general a very rational person, but if I weighed myself everyday, I would feel guilty about eating the burger and fries I had yesterday if my weight was up a few lbs. This is of course not rational, but it still happens. I do see your point about 1 data point for month being faulty. I should clarify that I will weigh myself for several days in a row every morning before eating anything and take the average to get an accurate measurement of my true weight. But then I will wait around a month before doing it again.

But what is the purpose of "weighing yourself everyday/more regularly"? If you wish to maintain an overview of "overall [aka long term] trends and averages" then a monthly weigh in will be quite sufficient (with your caveat of 'no history of disordered eating'). Weighing yourself (or encouraging others to weigh themselves) "everyday (sic)" seems itself 'disordered'. Ask yourself 'for what purpose/benefit? And eat well.

Because the more data points you have, the more apparent the trend will be. If you're only weighing monthly and your monthly weigh-in happens to be on an outlier day, that could give you a false idea of how your weight is trending. Having more data points insulates you from that.

Monthly weighing could be sufficient for seeing trends over the course of years, but if you're looking at say, 6 months, that's not very many data points along the way.

This is what I was getting at that I had never considered as a male. You're built in a way to have more body fat storage in a few different areas. It's a strength in many ways (presumed that lower body storage for fat in women lowers heart risk compared to men carrying it mostly around their trunk). Estrogen levels has some link with fat storage as well (so maybe the liposuction thought experience is both useless and foolish as it might just come back based on body hormones regardless of calories).

I had ever thought of any of these issues until Skye spoke up about it, so it's a first for me to think through what a desperate person would consider. I'm surprised her coach seems to be so ignorant of the reality of the female body considering he's coaching them. Just because Lucy Charles is chiseled bean stalk doesn't mean most women can get shaped that way. It would be like Blumenfelt looking at Frodeno, thinking, "what gives, I can't get my body to look like his no matter how hard I work." But with women it's even more "noticeable" as most tend to have a natural, healthy higher body fat percentage.

Let's say you weigh yourself on the first day of each month.

Month 1 - 170lbs
Month 2 - 174lbs

Have you gained weight? Perhaps the first weigh in was just a low fluctuation and the second just a higher? You are going to have to wait another month to find out. If your goal is to lose weight (which in of itself is likely a healthy goal for many) do you perhaps wrongly intervene and cut calories? Or wait another month by which time you could be up 8lbs?

On the other hand weighing more regularly could show a that on average you were 172lbs over the month, and the monthly measurements just happens to be at a natural dip and peak. Or it might show you were consistently going up each week.

Once a month is just not enough data points for something so easy to measure. All it takes is a couple of days sickness/injury or a few days indulgence or travel where you might not be eating so good to massively skew the numbers.

Like I said if you have disordered eating maybe weighing yourself regularly is not a good thing. For many of us it's just another metric to watch. If I said I check my HRV each morning would you suggest that is "disordered"? It's not like the number I see on a scale in the morning has any effect on what I eat that day, like I said it's about longer term trends.

For health I've heard plenty of people say things along the lines of "the weight just snuck up on me". Their 1-2lbs per week is 20lbs after a few months. Regular weighing might have gave them an indication their was a problem a little earlier.

If you're eating healthy and active you don't need these data points. It will take care of itself.

Pounding pizzas and cakes won't get you to your optimized body composition. It's simple really and doesn't require an eating disorder with daily weigh ins to get you there.

So he dropped her mid season? Did she get a team trucker cap?

Well, we're talking about tracking your weight, so yeah, weighing yourself is kind of an important part of that. Of course you can just eat well, be active, and let the chips fall where they may. But for someone who is interested in using data to track their progress, that approach is not going to work. And if you're going to use data, the more data you have, the clearer the picture becomes.

And I feel like this shouldn't need to be said, but weighing yourself every day doesn't mean you have an eating disorder.

At eating disorder is a way of controlling things. Instituting more control with daily weigh ins is disordered af.

As other posters have said, your weight naturally fluctuates daily. Daily weigh ins are disordered thinking which leads to disordered behaviors.

Furthermore, eating healthy and letting it take care of itself is perfectly good for a normal person, or someone trying to finish an IM, or most AG's. I can't imagine any professional endurance athlete not weighing themself on a regular basis. Not just to lose weight but to confirm all sorts of fueling and hydration questions. Losing/gaining 5lbs in a week is a red flag worth investigating and making a training/fueling intervention.

Again, substitute the word weight with power, speed, heart rate, and this whole thread looks kinda silly. "If you're cycling a lot you don't need to look at power, it will take care of itself".

Even worse, she didn't get to keep the bike chain and aero bars he left at her house.

Absolutely. That is exactly the point. This thread isn't about my next door neighbor trying to maintain their weight, or go couch-to-5K, it's about weight in relation to elite athletes.

It's all about what you do with the data. If you're weighing yourself every day and letting the number on the scale determine your mood, or sense of self-worth, then yeah, that's disordered and you need to stop. But there's a perfectly legitimate use for all that data...hop on the scale, record the number (or probably let an app capture the number). Look at the numbers (or graph, or whatever your preferred format) weekly or monthly to see what the trend looks like. That's just gathering and analyzing data, which elite athletes should be doing if they want to maximize their performance. (ALL sorts of data -- weight is just one example that may be of interest to some athletes).

I got the impression, some of the reason it took Skye to dump him was ignorance and education on her own part.

She mentioned how he told her to lose weight, but never did a dexa scan to see if there was any weight to lose. Yet later she says she's now working with a nutritionist to dial things in. So either Watt was stopping her from doing this stuff, she didn't know, or neither cared enough to pursue it.

So I suspect for much of those 4 years, she was improving enough to not begin to question the advise, and it was only as she was starting to really develop in the sport that she knew enough to question his advise.

One question is - are you refueling and rehydrating enough after hard sessions? Our training staff used to have us weigh in and weigh out before and after each practice during our training camps (soccer) to make sure we were replacing what we were sweating out and burning off during our sessions. So that's getting weighed four times a day. If we lost more than a certain % of our starting body weight we had to sit out. Just one example of how gathering ongoing weight data might be useful (and hopefully it's obvious here why only weighing once a week or once a month would not have helped us in this instance).

Weight is *one* thing an athlete may focus on. Certainly not everyone. For some (probably many at the elite level), their weight does work itself out without an extra effort beyond eating well. But if an athlete or their coach has identified weight as an area where they can improve, how could they possibly target that area in a serious way without taking regular weight measurements? We don't blink when athletes do aero testing (even though they're already pretty aero) to find gains, or do a big bike block to increase FTP (even though they're already crazy strong), or work with a swim coach to refine their technique (even though they're already a fish). They identify an area to improve, set a goal, make a plan to reach it, then gather data along the way to measure progress. The same can be done with weight *if* that's an area they have identified they want to work on.

But back to the original point of all this, no one should be shamed / abused into making any changes to themselves or their body.

I know of multiple professional triathletes who don't weigh themselves, ever. And then a whole other batch that weigh themselves at a frequency of either once per month or biweekly.

---

----------------------------------
Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Nobody is saying you have to weigh yourself regularly to be successful or maintain a healthy weight. I would be surprised if pro endurance athletes were not weighing themselves somewhat regularly. I doubt many talk about it as it's not particularly exciting, and in our body positive world it would probably generate a lot of negativity. However, if they've been doing this many years they have likely reached a point where they know "what works" to some extent.

We are constantly being told how big a problem RED-s, and stress fractures are not uncommon. Both have been linked to underfueling. So I don't believe the "just eat healthy and it will work itself out" is working for all. For pros underfueling is a real problem, and keeping track of weight is an obvious way to keep an eye on that - particularly in a hard training block.

For the average person there is nothing wrong with weighing yourself regularly. The idea that this is somewhat "disordered" in itself is actually kind of ridiculous. As said above used properly it's just another metric.

We live in a world where most are overweight. Yet the suggestion of weighing yourself regularly is considered an unhealthy behaviour. As someone that has a very relaxed approach to food and drank 6l of coca cola in a day earlier this year on top of other sugary snacks (silk road mountain race), I do find it slightly amusing the fact I weigh myself regularly to be enough for the slow twitch psychologists to diagnose me as having disordered eating!

For me, given where Skye is or really most women that are this edge of the elite level. I'd probably want some type of focus on weight...but more the other way. Make sure they're not underweight. But I've always looked at Skye as someone who is well built for this. She looks powerful rather than super skinny like Lucy does.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Yes, and is your are pedalling correctly, you don't need a power meter, or a watch if you are always on time, or a speedometer if you drive at the correct speed...

Daily weigh ins are not an accurate metric of any sort. In fact, they're wildly inaccurate and misleading. No athlete should be weighing daily and basing decisions on that.

The only basis is during heat training for fluid loss/retention before and after outdoor workouts. Otherwise, weighing weekly, biweekly or monthly are sensible measurements.

Amateurs probably need to weigh more frequently being less structured in terms of diet than most pros. It seems Skye's coach was misdirection her toward an irrelevant data point.

I believe your answer to be incorrect. As somebody pointed out, daily measurements can vary significantly for various reasons. This is not going to change of you measure weekly, or monthly. The variation is going to be the same. The only way to have an accurate picture is to have daily measurements but paying attention to the trend, not to the daily measures themselves.

Think of it as paying attention to NP or 3-10 second power instead of instant power which can be all over the place.

We'll have to agree to disagree. The power comparison isn't good because if your NP is down from one day to the next does it matter? You could be sleep quality, training load, nutrition, life stress can affect power from one the to the next. In fact, things like that can affect weight even.

When we do builds it's over weeks. Your daily NP isn't a big deal really, just like daily weight. It's pretty insignificant overall. Stuff like this should be looked at with the big picture in mind, but of course data obsessed triathletes can't process that idea. God forbid you swim without a watch once at the pool.

Uh...the point is to have an average. To get an accurate average it requires weighing daily. or at least 3-4 times per week. I haven't weighed myself every day for a little bit, but I do try to be consistent. So let's say it's M-F, every day, 5AM. Eliminate the variables. Same Time of Day, Same Scale, etc.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Pure runners weigh less because of the nature of the beast in running.

Pure cyclists from a GC perspective mostly weigh less. They don’t do the WCs of tri for 3 weeks with a dozen mountain stages.

Plainly they can be bigger and use the mass for power for single day events largely on less altitude.

No mystery there.

Ok, let's say you do a weekly weigh in and don't weigh on any other days (or substitute with power sampled only every 7 sec for a similar model). As we all know your weight and power fluctuate day to day.

150 (151,151,150,151,150,151), 150, (149,151,149,148,148,148), 150, (149,148,147,149,148,148), 150

It looks like over 3 weeks you're at a completely stable weight, when in reality you've been losing about 1lb week. A random sample of any day of the week will *probably* be close to or at the average, but is liable to capture an outlier,

The fact that weight fluctuates a lot is exactly the reason you want as many data points as possible to get a better idea of long term trends. I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.

Nobody is suggesting basing decisions off a single daily weigh in.

The fact that weight fluctuates a lot is exactly the reason you want as many data points as possible to get a better idea of long term trends. I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.

Nobody is suggesting basing decisions off a single daily weigh in.//

^^^^THIS... Can we end all this nonsense now. Unless you are tracking your weight over years or decades, having a daily or near daily graph is the most accurate way to track your weight over months or a season...The only problem with that is peoples perception of how weight gains/losses works, and their own personal quirks in not understanding them..

Of course the "most accurate" way to track weight is to gather as many data points as possible (aiming to take those data in similar conditions at whatever frequency). But is that "accuracy" useful? Having gathered those data, as you imply, the issue is what you do with the trends (or lack thereof). Any actions depending on weight (hard training athlete) are going to be medium term (months) so weekly data gathering will be fine. And sidesteps obsession.
How about offering examples of actions you took as a result of your daily monitoring of your weight (not just you Monty)?
Maybe this is a swimmer v runner thing?
My only action when I dropped close to 11 stone (154 lbs) on my weekly weigh in (because my cross country club had a set of "butcher's scales") was to make sure I ate a bit more (a couple of months after upping my training hours, bitd).
Unless weight is an issue for an athlete (either way) then (too) frequent measurement serves no useful purpose.

Speaking of Lucy, she put on some weight she got injured. I thought she's going to lose all that once she recovers from the injury and she did. Right before Kona, I saw her videos and Instagram posts and she looked really skinny. That's when I knew she was going to win. She looked determined and ready and that was it. So that weight was perfect for her. She's the best swimmer so that's out of question. Power to weight rartio on the bike must have been great for her so Anne Haug couldn't catch her.

I enjoy the topic of this thread drift...

About a decade ago, at around age 50, I was getting somewhat overweight. Decided I needed to get that under control sooner rather than later. Got serious about fitness, started working to clean up my diet, and started weighing myself regularly.

As that began to evolve, I started weighing myself daily. First thing in the morning, after my daily prep routine, on the same scale -- all to try to get as many variables consistent as possible. Recorded each day's weight in a spreadsheet (the effort to do this was essentially trivial). What I quickly learned was that, even when you try to be consistent, weight on a given day can jump about randomly. But over a few day period, those variations seemed to wash out -- and I could see more clearly whether I was starting to trend down, trend up, or stay steady.

That led me to reconsider what I actually focus on for my weight. I added a simple formula to created a weighted average of my weights for that last 7 days (7 parts today's weight, 6 parts yesterday's, etc). And that's what I paid attention to. What I found is that it s smoothed out the variations, and helped me understand the underlying trend.

During the first few years, I was focused on slow, but steady, weight loss. Looking at the evolution of those weighted averages, I could see if I was achieving my weight reduction goals. If I was seeing progression to lower weights, I stayed with what I was doing. And if I say the trend going the other way, I could take relatively minor actions pretty quickly to adjust and get back on track. And I learned that at some points my body would reach a resistance point, where weight would stabilize for a while. And that eventually my body would adjust and support me continuing to move toward my target weight.

While my weight loss was slow, I've lost about 35 pounds since I started this. And I've done a few body fat measurements that have shown reduction there to. I'm down to about 5 pounds from my latest goal weight (165), so I'm really more in weight maintenance mode. If I see my weighted average tip up a pound or so, I can make relatively minor adjustments to what I'm eating to keep me on course (rather than suddenly finding that I've put on 5 pounds or more and having to "go on a diet").

I've found that, for me, integrating this into my daily self-care routine, and focusing on the trend (rather than any one day's number), takes the emotion out of the whole process. Having on-going, essentially real-time data, make it go more smoothly and simply for me. Of course, as always, YMMV...

Michael

When I’m training I go periods in which measure my weight daily. The daily measures give me a reliable average, which is useful to see if I’m fully rehydrating or getting enough nutrition on any given day(s). I will even weigh myself pre- and post-big workout, so sometimes once a day isn’t even enough.

Why measure resting HR, or anything else, daily? So that you have a good sense of your baseline. Knowing my resting HR, which of course was determined by averaging many days, helped realize the impact of a night of drinking and how much stress it puts on one’s body, as evidenced by the HR spike.

Power/weight play very little role in a Kona bike performance. Power/CDA is far more important.

From Best Bike Split 1kg heavier only work out a 30s added over the 181km bike course.

It does however play a much larger role in the run.

---

Full-time Engineer / Part-time Pro Triathlete
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benwgoodfellow/
Strava - https://www.strava.com/athletes/3085032
Website - https://benwgoodfellow.wixsite.com/bengoodfellow