Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard happy with her weight category

Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard gives colour to World Eating Disorders Awareness Day by wearing her most colorful socks and support this cause. Beauchemin-Pinard won’t be fighting in Budapest for the Worlds next week, but is preparing for the Olympic Games. She tells on her social media her struggle with food being a judoka. We are sure many recognize the battle.

Beauchemin-Pinard: Being athletes in a weight class sport my relationship with food has not always been easy. When I was 14-15, I bulimia tried to lose weight and gain 57kg. I was on a diet with protein shakes and coleslaw soup. For a growing teenager, that wasn't ideal. My coach discovered it and put me up in the weight class (63kg) which greatly helped my progress in judo.

As I got older and more mature, I decided to go back down to 57kg. On the other hand, despite healthier diets, a lot of problems have appeared over time. The year before the Olympics, I lost my period for 1 year and developed an all-or-nothing mentality. I was dieting at 1500 calories per day (which is very little with the volume of training I was doing) and after competitions I fell into a period of abuse and “binge”. My relationship with food was far from healthy.

I finally decided to work with a psychologist after the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016. Working and walking with my psychologist, I ended up realizing that if I wanted to do judo and be able to be happy I had to change the category of weight. I finally climbed into the 63kg. Now I can say that I have made my peace with diet, but it’s a constant struggle not to fall back into old ways as I’m still an athlete and doing weight class sport.