In reply to mloskot:
Hi ???- I don't like these forum names - no idea who I'm talking to.
First, apologies for the lengthy answer below but it's hard to give a quick answer to a pretty complex issue and I feel a duty to be serious about this subject. If not interested stop here!
Anyway, to your question. As I said in my article, it's pretty obvious that being light is going to be of benefit in climbing. However the danger of pursuing lightness is forgetting that lots of other factors are essential too! - Strength, energy, general good health and resistance to illness/injury etc. Getting the right balance is the key! If you are fortunate enough to be able to get out climbing and training a lot, or have an active job, you probably needn't worry much at all about what you eat - just eat when you are hungry, eat healthily and eat enough - you'll be using the energy! This is what I'm like on a climbing holiday when I'm climbing all day at least 2 out of 3 days. When at home though, I spend most of my day in front of a computer so I feel that I have to be more careful about what I eat to balance a much lower energy consumption. In fact I am very careful. As a main principle I am more careful about what I eat than how much. I eat very little fatty foods and try to eat food with low calorie-density - lots of fruit, veg, brown rice, bran cereals, soups. This means you can eat big plates of food, which is satisfying, without it being far too much calories. One thing I notice though is that I actually eat more than many other climbers at the crag - I find it very important to keep nibbling at high energy, easily digestible foods during a climbing day in order to maintain performance - this is not the time to diet! I also take recovery seriously and try to have some sort of energy and a source of protein within about 30min of finishing a hard training session or climbing day.
So as a summary, it's more a lifestyle approach than going on diets. If I do want to get on top form I might be extra careful for a few weeks and lose around 2kg - I'm already light so I think I'd suffer if I lost much more than this - I think this does bring an improvement in performance short term but don't try to sustain this lowest weight for too long as it will start to negatively impact your ability to recover or gain strength, resist illness, injury etc. Most male athletes can get down to about 5% body fat (women it's a lot higher - don't even think about 5%!) but it's not good to maintain this low for too long - probably more 7 or 8% is good. This is roughly what I do and I am generally extremely healthy - lots of energy and extremely little illness.
Lastly if any of you reading this do suffer from Anorexia or Bulimia speak to a trusted friend or GP etc. about getting professional help - it's essential. These eating issues can be extremely serious - I have witnessed first hand with close friends/family.