01/12/2025
Following on from our post last week about breastfeeding women feeling hungry and fuelling their bodies. This post from Hazel Findlay really resonated. What do you think?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of us (especially women) grew up with the message that eating is something to be managed, minimised, or controlled and anything less than being thin is a moral failing (just revisit Friends TV show if you want proof). Fuelling properly gets framed as a kind of failure. Over time it becomes a deeper belief: don’t trust your body. If you’re hungry, it must be wrong. If you’re tired, you should push through. Someone else knows better than you do.
Motherhood forces all of that into the light. Pregnancy, postpartum recovery, breastfeeding — especially if you’re climbing at the same time — make your body’s needs impossible to ignore. And yet, women are generally given very little information about what these phases actually demand. Health guidance is often absent, based on limited research, or makes weight loss the focal point rather than proper nourishment.
Breastfeeding is hugely costly for the body requiring as much as a 1000 extra calories and a certain amount of fat stored to support a stable milk supply — especially if you’re feeding through the night and doing other exercise like climbing. Many mums stop breastfeeding because their supply dropped or their babies weren’t gaining fast enough, without ever being told what their bodies actually needed to sustain it.
I’ve felt that growing into womanhood is so much about rebuilding trust in my own body. Taking responsibility, ignoring the noise, picking role models wisely, understanding that fuelling properly is not a moral failure, relearning how to listen to hunger, tiredness, and the quieter signals we’ve been taught to override since we were teenagers.
This is especially important for mothers but I imagine most serious climbers might be on a similar journey. Let me know in the comments.
photo from Bishop
