bladesofgorey
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Anna Scherbakova discusses her eating disorder and states she was ordered to weigh 92 pounds at 5'3" by her coaching staff, and was told she was fat when she gained a few pounds but still weighed less than 100 pounds. She ended up weighing herself 50 times a day and needed to know how much she weighed at every moment.
I have no idea how anyone can feel anything but disgust for Eteri and what she's done to her students. These are children.
translation of excerpts from a November TV show interview by a poster on Golden Skate:
I have no idea how anyone can feel anything but disgust for Eteri and what she's done to her students. These are children.
translation of excerpts from a November TV show interview by a poster on Golden Skate:
First, Tsiskaridze’s long introduction about how difficult it is for girls during puberty and how they fall under the bad influence of false friends, start smoking or taking some kind of weight loss drugs, which is absolutely forbidden to do, he specifically prohibits all this to his students, etc. .d.
Anna: I can say that girls who do gymnastics, figure skating and ballet all know this topic very well, they all understand that from childhood you are forced to monitor your weight. We are being weighed...
Tsiskaridze: You can’t imagine how they cry now when they go to weigh-in. But I force them to do it. You just need to weigh yourself.
Anna: We had weigh-ins every day. At the same time, I started measuring my weight starting at the age of seven. But I’m probably one of those lucky girls [for whom this is not a problem]. Until a certain age, this was not a problem for me either. But I know girls who had to limit themselves [in food] starting at age 9. Their mothers watch them so that they do not steal some chocolate somewhere, and these problems begin with them from an early age.
I probably didn’t think about it at all until I was 15-16 years old...
Tsiskaridze: So you started puberty at that age?
Anna: Yes, this happened directly during the Olympic season. Until that moment, I had a similar stories (Anna means that the story was similar to the story of one of the participants in the show), when they told me after the weigh-in: “If you lose weight now, then instead of general physical training we will send you to the locker room, and you will eat there." I said in response: “Please don’t!” and cried (laughs).
At a much later time, I naturally recalled these incidents and thought: “It was good then - instead of training, go eat!” But it’s really probably (she thought for a second)… it turns out that at the age of 17 I began adolescence - it was just the Olympic season. At that moment, I first encountered the problem that I needed to lose weight. And all the methods that worked before stopped working. Before this, I always thought that all I had to do was skip dinner for two or three days, and now my weight would return to normal. But here [during puberty] you are faced with the fact that nothing [changes].
Tsiskaridze: Moreover, you are still under pressure all the time due to the fact that at any moment they can check you and find some kind of illegal drug.
Anna: Yes, we always monitor this very closely. But, probably, it was during that season that I began to monitor my nutrition very strictly. It also happened that I would put on five sweaters and five pants and go to the gym in the evening. That is, you are always chasing [optimal weight].
Tsiskaridze: So what was your critical weight then?
Anna: Well, I knew exactly how much I had to weigh [for the competition]…
Tsiskaridze: What is this weight?
Anna: This is 42 kilograms.
Tsiskaridze: 42, and at what height?
Anna: With a height of approximately 161 centimeters.
Tsiskaridze: Well, this is cruel. Also, wait, is this with or without skates?
Anna: (laughs) This is without skates, during our usual weigh-in before training. And it just so happened that in the offseason I suffered an injury, which caused me to gain weight.
Tsiskaridze: And how big was this increase?
Anna: It was about 3-4 kilograms.
Tsiskaridze: This is quite serious...
Anna: This is incredibly critical.
Unidentified woman: How is it determined what weight should be?
Anna: This is determined during training with a coach.
Tsiskaridze: Well, firstly, this is determined visually. It happens that on one person these 3-4 additional kilograms are unnoticeable, but on another they say that he has become fat, even if the increase was only 30 grams. It [depends] on the natural structure of the body, of course.
Anna: We do not use a general system of parameters, when a certain number is subtracted from height and the desired weight is obtained. This is determined individually for each athlete.
Tsiskaridze: By and large, the weight of boys should be calculated as their height minus 110, and the weight of girls - as their height minus 120. This is in the general case. But, of course, for those who do elements like Anna - the lighter you are, the easier it is for you to jump, land, and so on..
Anna: And, of course, excess weight is always a risk of injury, because our jumping is a huge load on the body, and every extra kilogram is an additional load on the joints...
Unidentified Woman: The stress on the knees and everything else...
Anna: Yes. But we do not use this scheme with subtracting some numbers from growth. This is individual for us. There may be athletes of the same height, but with different optimal weights.
Tsiskaridze: Well, in the end, how did you cope?
Anna: Well, here’s the first, and, as it seemed to me [at that moment], the surest way is, as everyone says, “don’t eat!” So you just...
Tsiskaridze: But in this case there is no strength for training...
Anna: Yes. But at that moment, my main problem was that I seemed to believe that food was my main enemy, and every meal seemed to me to be harming myself. And after each meal, when it seemed to me that I had eaten too much, I would put on [five sweaters and five pants] again and go to the gym.
After that, almost until the very end, Anna sat and was silent; all sorts of terrible stories were told about gluttony and anorexia, and she listened.
(two minutes before the end)
Tsiskaridze (addressing all participants): Tell me, do any of you count calories?
Anna: I tried to count [some time ago].
Unidentified Woman: You're tired of this, right?
Anna: No, because of this I just overly focused my attention on nutrition, now I’m trying to be more relaxed about it. It was like this: I look at food and a scanner starts working in my head, I count [calories] and a goal arises - to reduce the total number of calories.
Tsiskaridze: Stanislav, tell us about calorie counting.
Stanislav (professional nutritionist): Anna has already answered everything. This is a very difficult method that can cause anxiety in a person, so I do not recommend people to use this technique. Although in professional sports this method is probably effective.
Anna: I always had to weigh myself. That is, I weighed myself 50 times a day, but now I’m out of the habit, now I weigh myself once a day, and even then I’m lazy. And when I was in active sports, during competitions I had to know exactly how much I weighed every minute of the day.