Sports were always a big part of my life in high school, as they are for millions of others. High school sports should be something you enjoy doing and should not demand so much out of you, physically and mentally. My experience with wrestling throughout middle and high school was the complete opposite of enjoyable and demanded everything out of me — largely due to weight cutting. Weight cutting is the act of trying to lose weight at a fast rate to make a certain weight class. Weight cutting is a big part of a large number of combat sports. High school wrestling needs strict rules regarding weight cutting to protect young athletes because of the unhealthy tactics used to lose weight in a short period.

My worst experience with cutting weight in wrestling took place in my sophomore year. I remember coming into practice on a Saturday morning after going to a party. I hopped on the scale, and my coach lost it — 210 pounds.

“How the f*** are you gonna make 195 for next Saturday?” my coach asked. “You really are a f****** idiot."

I felt sick to my stomach, not knowing if I was going to wrestle. I knew that I had to starve myself for the rest of the week if I wanted to wrestle in that tournament. That whole week I ate two meals per day. In the morning I would eat a single oatmeal packet, and for dinner, I had four tiny pieces of pork. I was consuming around 600 calories a day that week, while going to two-hour wrestling practices, where I would lose around two pounds. My stomach growled all day, I was tired all the time, and I had no motivation to do anything. When the day of the tournament came, I weighed in at 193, meaning I had lost 17 pounds. I remember looking really pale and sick that day. It is not healthy for anyone to lose 17 pounds in one week; this just damages your body, and the weight is just going to come back right away. By losing all this weight at once, you are not losing just fat; you are burning through your muscle. For people between the ages of 14 and 18, it is especially unhealthy to do this because their bodies are still growing.

Weight cutting promotes eating disorders, and tactics used by wrestlers to cut weight mirror eating disorders. Known symptoms of eating disorders include purposefully not eating, overexercising, throwing up after eating, and feeling guilty after eating. I have seen every single symptom of an eating disorder on my wrestling team.

Purposefully not eating is one of the most common. When you walked into the high school cafeteria, it was super easy to spot the wrestlers. Sixty percent of the wrestling team were not eating lunch because they had to make a certain weight and knew that if they were heavy, our coach would get angry and make us run more. Sometimes, I went 24 hours without eating in order to make the weight, and I know some of my teammates had gone even longer. Not eating will also make you tired, because food gives you energy.

When I was weight cutting, I would always get the “Are you okay?” or “You look tired” comments from random people. I was so tired and exhausted because nothing was fueling my body, which affected everything in my life. My grades would always drop during wrestling season because of how demanding wrestling was, which also caused me to always be tired. This never happened during my tennis or soccer season. My relationships with others would also fade in the winter too; I had no real desire to hang with my friends if I could just sleep instead. It was like when wrestling season started, I would ghost and turn into a whole new person.

Overexercising was super common too. We would practice for two and a half hours, five days a week. Almost all of us had to get an additional workout in because we felt it was necessary. Most of us would go for a run in the morning or go to our local gym after practice. Sometimes I would run stairs during lunch to achieve a certain weight. I would come back to class with my clothes soaked in sweat. People would always question where I was or why I would run during lunch because it was so absurd to them. No other high school sport demands this type of physical abuse.

Nothing is worse than the guilt I felt after eating, knowing I had to lose weight for wrestling. I always felt so bad for treating myself to a little dessert or eating something high in carbs. I still have the same feeling about treating myself to a dessert or something unhealthy, because I associate it with gaining weight. I know that I should not think this way, but I cannot help it. It is sad to think that this stems from a high school sport — one that I no longer compete in. Sports should help with your health, and not make you feel bad for eating something unhealthy every now and then.

High school wrestlers remind me of prisoners. If you heard the long conversations we used to have in our locker room about food we wished we could eat, you would think it was a prisoner talking about the first meal they would eat when they get out. We used to talk about how excited we were for the season to be over, so our life could go back to normal.
Our whole life was consumed by wrestling because we had to think twice before eating or drinking. These conversations only happened between my teammates and me who had to watch or cut weight during the whole season. The wrestlers who did not have to cut weight always seemed to be happy and not mind the tough practices. Cutting weight ruined the sport for many of my teammates and me.

People who see no real issue in weight cutting say, “It’s just part of the sport.” The problem is that it should not be part of the sport if it's not going to do you any good down the road. The best outcome for any high school wrestler is to get some type of scholarship for wrestling. In reality, most people do not go on to wrestle in college; I have only seen one of my teammates go on and wrestle in college, meaning that the other 50 people I wrestled with never did anything else with the sport. For all the wrestlers who did not go on to wrestle in college, we hurt our own bodies and sacrificed so much in high school. If there were strict rules regarding weight cutting, then everyone would be on the same playing field and no one would have to starve themselves or take part in the other unhealthy practices involved in weight cutting. Wrestling allowed me to meet some cool people and have some good memories, but the guilt I feel every time I eat something unhealthy is not justified.