A wrestler could guess someone’s body weight after just a quick glance. My teammates and I always watched strangers on the bus, the streets, in the malls, and argued over their weight. If either of us believed the other to be off by a decimal point, we would argue until we came to a mutual agreeance or the next stranger offered a more intense discussion. This was my life in high school because wrestling was my life in high school and in wrestling weight is King. Everything around me was constantly defined in kilograms. In between classes, about four times a day, I stopped by my coach’s office, stripped down to my singlet, and weighed myself on a digital scale which always sat in a harsh black suitcase like the ones mobsters use to smuggle money. A 0.2 kg difference could make or break my mood, dictate my diet, and determined how horrible the upcoming weeks would be for me.
Cutting weight – the process of dehydrating the body in order to lose weight – is a unique practice only used in a few forms of martial arts. To compete in a specific weight class, you must weigh in either on the dot or below the prescribed weight for that category. In other martial arts, like MMA, they use the concepts of featherweight, bantamweight, and welterweight. In wrestling the idea is the same, but we go by numbers instead. If I was wrestling in the 54 kg category, when I step on the scale 54.0 kg or less must show up. Anything more and I will be forced up to the next weight class to compete against girls much heavier than me. Cutting weight gives you the advantage of dropping to a lower weight class when you do not necessarily weigh that amount. You may regularly weigh 60 kg, but through intense working out, dieting, and even fasting, you can reach 54 kgs in time for weigh ins. Then, once you’ve weighed in, and the tournament is the next day, you have 12 hours to inhale as much grub as humanly possible, allowing yourself to float back up to your regular 60 kgs. Now you’re wrestling people with a 6 kg advantage on your side. Huge win.
I began wrestling when I was 14, at a small, low income school in the northern most end of North York. The wrestling team was at the top of the athletic hierarchy, always performing well at high-profile tournaments—sometimes even producing sports legends. Though we didn’t have cool matching singlets, or colour coordinated track suits, our presence was known, and we had a certain status in the grotty, inescapable two-storey building.
My friends and I constantly took over our coach’s office. It was in the tight corridors between the gym and the men’s changeroom, easily detected by the smell of pubescent sweat and weed lingering through the hallway. After each practice, we all assembled in the office and stayed way longer than promised. I would normally be slouched on the cedar-coloured couch while Dennis and Trevonn checked their weight.
“Raquel, are we hitting up the sauna tonight?” Dennis asked me as he changed into his singlet.
“No,” I replied. “I am going to try and push that off as long as possible. Maybe take a laxative instead.” We both chuckled while Dennis proceeded to step on the scale.
Trevonn, my other teammate, then chimed in with some comment about how he really wanted McDonalds, claiming that chicken nuggets were speaking to him in his sleep. But almost always, when he stepped on the scale, he’d let out a grunt and grab his stomach. McDonalds continued to be a dreamlike concept for most of our days.
Coaches don’t introduce wrestlers to weight cutting immediately, if at all. It’s held as the deepest level of a wrestler’s hell, only for those who are dedicated enough to commit to the sport for extended periods. But when your coach says those sacred words “you should cut for this tournament,” you know that he thinks, at least for the moment, that you have a chance to be on the podium. Just like conversing with a prophet, you nod and accept your newfound destiny. It’s been decided that your days will be spent in a full rubber suit running on a treadmill, followed by gargling water only to spit it out with the rest of your sanity. Seeing your body shrivel to a shell of itself is more mentally exhausting than it is physically. Looking in the mirror after days of eating only mixed greens, boiled eggs, and gallons of water, asking yourself “where else can I lose weight?” makes your mind look at your body in a very bizarre way. During my most intense weight cuts, I wholeheartedly considered buzzing my hair to lose an extra 0.3 kgs, tried to make myself vomit, and questioned if I truly needed all five of my toes. I only went through with one of those options.
There were three weight-loss related deaths in 1997 amongst university students. One kid attempted to shed 8 kgs in such a short span of time that his kidney failed. He passed out in his rubber suit during his workout in a 33-degree room. Things have changed exponentially since then—the chance of this happening today is nearly impossible. Rules continue to progress and develop, making sure there are never any more wrestling related deaths due to weight cutting. The community also did a good job raising awareness and attempts to sway people from participating in it in general, but no matter what, weight cutting has been ingrained into the zeitgeist of wrestling culture. It’s something you understand if you are committed to the sport, or you aren’t committed at all.
Sitting on the gym bench with Mr. K, tears and sweat crawling down my face, he held me as if I was his own child.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, as if wasn’t written across my drooping face.
“I feel… I feel really gross. I’m not sure if I can do it.” I could feel his hand rubbing my back as an attempt to keep my body warm.
“You’re so close, Raquel, only a bit more. But you know you can stop if you really want.” I knew he was only saying the latter half to comfort me. There was no going back and we both understood that. I nodded my head and carried my body to the bicycle machine. I plopped down and he promptly began to massage my shoulders. “You got this kiddo.”
Even at my lowest and subsequently lightest, I still carried with me a sense of confidence and pride. The first time I cut weight I was worried for my physical wellbeing; the second time I accepted it as casual and the third excited me vigorously. I began to see in the mirror, as most high-performance athletes do, the pinnacle of athleticism. I no longer viewed my goals as ends in themselves, but I was truly convinced that I was a means to achieve excellence. In order to push my body past its physical limits, I had to mentally detach myself from it. I had to look at myself with confidence, always. Even when my cheeks were sunken, eyes dark and hollow, and my skin the same color as curdled milk; I adamantly looked forward to the next day.
Though competing is done individually, everything leading up to tournament days are rarely done alone. I shared some of my most tribulating experiences with my closest friends. Whenever we ran on the treadmill together or water-wrestled (going 40% instead of 100%), we always found ourselves chatting about the tournament, about who’s in our bracket and which singlet we were planning to debut in. There was a clear goal in sight with a podium we all wanted to stand on, our opponents below us—crushed. We were each other’s cheer squads, because who better to cheer you on than the person you just shared a spit cup with. Though no matter how skeletal I looked, how weak I felt, my teammates always had reassuring words. I was never “too small” or “too big;” I never felt like the number on the scale meant anything to me or anyone else. And when I thought I didn’t have to work any harder because I just spent an extra three hours on the mats, only practicing my cut-back throw, they were the ones to humble me by literally pinning me to the floor and saying “you can always be better.”
Winning silver at nationals was the peak of my wrestling career. Leading up to nationals, I gained a place on the OFSAA podium, earning bronze, and secured my spot in representing Ontario at the Canada Summer Games.
“I am so proud of you, kiddo.” Mr. K said after each big win. Even at nationals, the toughest loss for me of the season, I couldn’t find tears to cry when walking away from the mat. I never competed on the national stage and somehow, I ended the tournament with the right to call myself the second best in Canada. All the cutting weight, the rubber suits, and the rabbit food culminated in this moment of pure confidence.
Before I decided to join the wrestling team, not only was I failing my first year of high school, but I was high for most of it. I wore bright yellow beanies and thick socks that said “FUCK YOU” in red bold letters (which I still wear nowadays, but in a much more tasteful, sensibly fashionable way). I was uncomfortably skinny while going through puberty and because of my fast metabolism I believed I was totally healthy downing packs of king size Kraft Dinner for days on end. I don’t know what attracted me to the sport, be it the idea of a new-found power and strength or the fact that practices were co-ed, so I would be surrounded by hyper-athletic, overly cocky boys for most of my days; both were equally appealing, but one resulted in me being a lot happier by the end of my high school life.
Wrestling became overconsuming for me in the form of the healthiest addiction possible. I didn’t think anything could be more enjoyable than being high in the company of cardboard boxes of processed cheese. I realized, like most sports, that wrestling gave the wrestler access into different ways of looking at themselves. Though unlike other sports, the wrestler becomes uncomfortably close with the reality of their size. For five years of my life, my identity bounced between 54 kgs, 59 kgs and back to 54 kgs. Whatever I did, I did it excessively; all to fit the wrestler identity. I practiced twice a day almost every day. I completely stopped drinking and smoking weed. I cut out carbs for months, which resulted in multiple fever dreams of pasta strangling me and shoving its stringy noodles down my throat, like some R-rated version of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” The highs were high, and the lows were very low. But living in these extremities, without balance in sight, I found security. Having committed myself to something so passionately, I carried this security with me even after I left the sport.
I still find myself asking people about their weight, and when they wince, trying to find a way to say “you don’t ask someone that” without overtly telling me to fuck off, I remember why I have grown to be so comfortable in my own skin. Like a bad cliché, seeing something so many times, in this case, my weight on a scale, makes that thing lose its significance. Through my own literal blood, sweat and tears, I have found familiarity in the extremities. Now, living an average college student’s life, I find it much harder to worry about such banal things like weight and body image. These things are only distant concepts of my past self that I need not reflect on, because I have, and I know they have no value on their own. Weight doesn’t define me anymore because it doesn’t need to, but even now, when I step on a scale I can’t help but guess what number is about to pop up.