Kamila Valieva: “In professional sports, it’s not about health. The way we maintained our weight and how we ate left much to be desired. I was a child and even though I tried to practice healthy eating, we were still weighed every day at lunch.”
Kamila Valieva about weight control.
original source: Forbes Education podcast “GO study!
On the Forbes Education podcast “GO study! Kamila Valieva discussed how her weight was controlled in sports. Here’s a translation of her comments.
“In professional sports, of course, it’s not about health. The way we maintained our weight and how we ate left much to be desired. I will speak for myself.
I was a child – even though I tried [to practice] healthy eating, we were still weighed every day at lunch. And you know, those extra 100-200 grams, and they start saying: ‘What’s this? What happened? Why did we gain weight?’ And you constantly keep yourself in a kind of spiky gloves, looking not at healthy food, but at quantity. How much does it weigh, so to speak. Eat a chocolate bar or a piece of meat? For your psyche, to get the sugar and all that endorphin… You think: ‘Yes, yes, yes, better to eat the chocolate! It’s smaller, [less than] a piece of meat.’
Over time, when adolescence starts and you’re used to eating not exactly in a healthy way, you start to… First, you stop moving as actively, you spread out a bit, and then it dawns on you: ‘I must have been doing something clearly wrong in this world.’
Now it’s just healthy eating without any restrictions. Restrictions lead to breakdowns – serious breakdowns. Any restrictions. Because usually they say ‘don’t think of a pink elephant’ and what did you think of? The pink elephant! ‘I won’t eat sugar, I won’t eat this, that, and the other…’ And in the end, you walk around thinking: ‘What’s this? Where’s my sugar?’
A friend not from sports says: ‘I eat when I want to.’ And really, I think that’s right. And in small amounts, when you want. Probably the right thing is a plate where you have 50% – vegetables, protein, and carbohydrates. That’s it, super. And if you want that chocolate bar – well, you eat that chocolate bar. Just ‘didn’t feel like it today, didn’t feel like it tomorrow, the day after, another week’ and you sit under the covers at night with a huge bag of chocolates from delivery, ha-ha.
It was hard. In my understanding, you have to pay for everything. But now the main thing is to stabilize all this, to build a calm attitude towards food without any fuss, and everything will be just fabulous,” said Valieva in the Forbes Education podcast “GO study!
Related topics: Kamila Valieva
I don’t know I think half of interviews right now by figure skaters from Russia are instructed by Russian officials to serve propaganda. I don’t know what to think… the way she says it seems a bit artificial. The whole “I’m a victim” thing. Of course it’s normal to have those emotions after all that she’s been through but the way it’s put forward by the media is very… disturbing.