A Competitive Powerlifter Opens Up About the Mental Health Effects of Cutting Weight to Win

Content warning: This story contains references to disordered eating and extreme weight-loss strategies, which may be upsetting or triggering for some readers.

At her very first powerlifting meet, Brittainy Chown had already noticed a pressure to “weigh in” as light as possible in order to nab the top spot. A former collegiate track athlete, Chown turned to powerlifting—a sport that involves lifting as much weight as possible for one single rep—to tap into her recent appreciation for strength training while satisfying her need to compete.

But it took her about a year to finally commit to a meet. Her years of running five-plus hours a day had made her body small and lean. It was hard to shake the nagging feeling that she needed to be “this super thin, skinny” athlete. “I was kind of embarrassed about what my weight had gotten up to in the year that I had taken off from any kind of exercise,” she says. “I personally felt like I needed to lose weight to get into what I was considering a more favorable weight class, as far as, like, what I wanted to be known as.”

Chown spent somewhere between six and eight months trying to lose weight before her first meet, ultimately dropping 20 pounds in that period. For the next four years, Chown said she “forced” herself to stay within the 75-kilogram (165-pound) weight class. But by 2018, her lifts were plateauing. She was suffering injury after injury, she recalled. In her ninth meet, the then-27-year-old had lifted a total of 881.8 pounds across her bench press, squat, and deadlift—more than 100 pounds less than what she had lifted in a competition just eight months prior.

Although many of the powerlifters in her circle encouraged her to embrace weight gain—and, in turn, muscle and strength—and bump up a class, “in my brain, I was like, ‘Sure, I’ll get stronger, but I’m also heavier, so it doesn’t matter,’” she recalls. “As if it doesn’t count in the same way, which is stupid, but in my brain, that’s what made sense.”

Chown’s not the only powerlifter who’s become fixated on the scale, either due to either internal or external voices. Up to 70 percent of elite athletes competing in weight-class sports diet and have some type of disordered eating pattern in order to reduce their weight before a competition, according to 2012 research¹ in Sports Health. In a recent 2024 survey⁸⁷² of 16 competitive American Olympic weightlifters, participants viewed competing without cutting weight beforehand as “unimaginable.” And the athletes’ own weight-class choices were driven by the sport’s condemnation of body fat, according to the study authors.

For some athletes, competing at a lower weight class could give them a competitive edge—so long as they’re engaging in healthful, sustainable practices with the support of a team of professionals (including a registered dietitian, sports psychologist, coach, and healthcare provider), according to the experts interviewed for this story.

But for many lifters, policing body weight for the sake of a win can have serious mental and physical health effects. And, as Chown later discovered, escaping the confines of a weight class can be freeing.

Why body weight matters in powerlifting

Powerlifting is promoted as a “you versus you” sport—you’re striving to be the best, strongest version of yourself. That unique type of competition makes for a generally positive environment, with a supportive community that will cheer each other on regardless of how many plates are on the bar. And that’s what hooks many athletes, says Natalie Ribble, MS, CSCS, CFSC, an athlete, powerlifting coach, and the chief of staff at Seattle Strength & Performance.

What your body looks like—its shape and size—shouldn’t be a concern. In fact, athletes interviewed for a 2023 study³ in the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal all described the powerlifting community as body-positive, thanks to the emphasis on training to level up physical strength—not aesthetics. The sport gives athletes a deeper appreciation for their bodies and their capabilities, enhances mind-body connection, and improves self-compassion, according to the findings.

Still, for serious lifters looking to win, body weight does matter. The primary powerlifting organizations divide competitors up into a dozen or so weight classes. USA Powerlifting (USAPL), for example, splits female athletes into 11 weight classes, spanning from 44 kilograms (97 pounds) to 100-plus kilograms (roughly 220 pounds and above). Height, body composition (i.e., amount of lean body mass and body fat), genetics, age, and other factors can all influence your body weight and, in turn, affect which weight class you’ll “naturally” sit in. The scoring system, however, can leave lifters feeling pressured to lose body weight or maintain a lower weight.

Powerlifting is promoted as a “you versus you” sport—you’re striving to be the best, strongest version of yourself.

Awards like “Best Lifter” of the entire sex category are determined by an athlete’s DOTS score, which is essentially your ratio of strength to body weight, Ribble says. In theory, having the same strength in a lower weight class will make you more competitive, she says. For example, someone who lifts 200 pounds in a lower weight class would have a greater—and more competitive—DOTS score than someone who lifts the exact same weight but is in a higher weight class. (Within the weight class, however, DOTS generally doesn’t matter for placement. Awards are given based on who has the greatest total weight lifted within the class, according to Ribble.)

“We’re all pretty ingrained early on that in order to win the meet, you have to lift the most weight at the lightest body weight,” Chown says. “That’s going to be what’s going to give you the highest score. So there’s this pressure to weigh in as light as you can, because if you want to win overall, that’s going to be one way to do it. Obviously lifting more helps, but if you can also lift more at a lighter body weight, then that ratio is going to go up.”

In powerlifting and other weight-category sports, that narrative often encourages weight loss⁴. Ribble points out that losing weight in order to compete in a particular weight class can be done in sustainable, non-restrictive ways. In a 2023 survey¹⁰⁵ published in the European Journal of Nutrition, many of the powerlifters who reported long-term dieting followed an “If It Fits Your Macros” or “flexible” plan, both of which are meant to be less restrictive.

Consider Ribble herself. In 2022, she sat on the edge of the 90- and 100-kilogram classes and wasn’t placing as well as she wanted in the higher class. As a powerlifting coach, she wanted first-hand experience with the weight-loss process. For an entire year, she gradually lost 24 pounds. She dropped to a lower class for her next two meets and got even stronger. Her totals went up, as did her DOTs. She clinched second and third place.

The harms of shrinking for competitive edge

That said, some athletes resort to extreme, short-term weight-loss techniques that are proven to be harmful, Ribble says. In a small 2022 study⁶ in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 83 percent of the surveyed athletes reported “cutting weight,” doing so by restricting fluid intake, fasting or skipping meals, increasing activity, taking laxatives or diuretics, and using the sauna. Weight-category athletes have been found to minimize energy intake.

The majority of lifters in the above 2022 study reported negative changes to their psychological state, experiencing fatigue, anger, feelings of isolation, and anxiety. And these weight-making methods have been shown to increase the risk of in-competition injuries, compromise bone health, and harm basal metabolic health, per a 2024 review published in Performance Enhancement & Health. 

As a coach, Ribble often sees this sequence of events: First-timers walk into their meet at their baseline, “as-is” body weight. After competing, they start to wonder how they might place if they did lose weight while maintaining their strength. Then, they try to cut down a weight class for their second, third, and fourth meets.

But this process tends to become frustrating; maybe they’re not as strong as they’d like to be or they’re struggling to maintain that lower body weight in the off-season. “If you try to cut weight fast for a meet, then what’s going to happen is after that meet is over, in your off-season, your weight is going to pop back up,” Ribble says. “Depending on when you need to compete again, then you have to go through another small cut to get back down to your weight class and another and then back up again. Each time you kind of fluctuate up and down like that, it gets harder to cut back to that weight class.” Not to mention, if you’re putting on muscle (which theoretically comes with⁹ potential increases in strength), you’ll typically weigh more over time, she says.

It’s why Ribble doesn’t specifically recommend cutting to any of the athletes she works with. If they ask for guidance on weight loss, they have an in-depth conversation about the client’s “why,” their relationship with food and their body, and what a realistic, mentally and physically supportive plan might look like. More often than not, though, she reminds people that their smallest body is not their strongest or healthiest body. “I think for me and for most people, unless there’s a nationals qualifier on the line or something like that, it’s not generally worth it.”

“For the first time in my life, I was eating to manage my weight and not eating to fuel my training.” —Brittainy Chown, powerlifter

For Chown, maintaining her 75-kilogram weight class wasn’t easy—or healthy. She recalls obsessively counting calories, overanalyzing everything she was eating, and battling an incessant cycle of restricting and binging. “I think mentally, that was really rough,” she says. “I’ve always been an athlete. I’ve always eaten a lot and eaten to perform, and then for the first time in my life, I was eating to manage my weight and not eating to fuel my training.”

These types of restrictive practices can not only lead to under-fueling and physical exhaustion, especially given the intensity of a sport like powerlifting. But they can also affect your social and emotional connections, says Melissa Streno, PsyD, CMPC, a licensed clinical psychologist in Denver who specializes in body image, eating disorders, and disordered eating, particularly among athletes.

Food isn’t just fuel for your body; it’s also a source of joy and a way to connect with others. And having to stay at a particular weight, avoid certain types of foods, or feeling like “I can’t enjoy XYZ food” often changes your day-to-day routine and negatively impacts your social life, she explains. “I think over time, that can get really draining and really disconnecting.”

Meanwhile, another damaging connection is formed: The number on the scale can become so much more than a simple fact. In her early days, Chown’s weight class was a tenant pole of her identity. Chown, like many other athletes, put that number in her Instagram handle, @brittchown75. It was instantly known in the powerlifting community that she was in the 75-kilogram weight class—and that’s what people would expect of her, she says. She recalls thinking, “If I were to gain weight and move up a class, what would everyone think? Once you’re attached to it and you think that’s your weight class, you’ll do whatever you can to hold on to it.”

This internal and external pressure to fit into one weight “box” can happen in any weight-category sport, whether it’s powerlifting, bodybuilding, or wrestling, according to Streno. “You feel like you fit in. You feel like you have a place. You feel like you belong,” she says. “If there’s choice in being able to move away from that [weight] to something that might actually be beneficial in the long term—for your health, for your performance, all of those things—but it feels like this unknown territory…there’s hesitation to that.” Creating that distinction, however, can take away some of the power those numbers carry, she adds.

The freedom of devaluing body weight

Following four years of restriction, poor performance, and injury, Chown hit a breaking point. Finally, she began to let herself grow. It’s a mindset shift many elite powerlifters experience, Ribble says.

“If you were to talk to anybody who’s been in this sport for a really long time—super mature lifters who’ve been competing for 10 years or more—they would say the same thing: Your smallest weight class is not always your most competitive weight class,” Ribble says. “Maybe sometimes it is, but it won’t always be that. And in order to continue to grow into the sport, you’ve got to put on muscle, which means you’ve got to put on weight at some point.”

Streno puts it this way: Just because a pair of jeans fit you in college doesn’t mean they have fit you for the rest of your life. In powerlifting, you shouldn’t expect yourself to sit in one weight class for every competition, especially if it’s doing more harm than good from a performance or health standpoint.

For Chown, transitioning out of that lower weight class wasn’t as easy as flipping a “reset” switch in the back of her brain. She spent a year working on eating more fuel for her training, feeling comfortable seeing her body weight go up, and breaking the habit of—intentionally and subconsciously—restricting herself when she did see those increases. While she worried that once she saw, say, 175 pounds on the scale, she would suddenly hate her appearance, “that never happened,” she says.

Instead, Chown says her strength increased a ton when she hit the 181-pound weight class. “I saw so much progress going from those two classes, and I just kept kicking myself, like, ‘Why did I wait four years to do this?’ It was terrible. I was so mad at myself.”

“It’s such a good feeling to not be so stressed over a weight class, and I can just focus on the training.” —Brittainy Chown, powerlifter

In 2023, Chown has moved up yet another weight class. While in the 181-pound category, she found herself doing water cuts (dehydrating herself to the point she would drop 10 pounds of water weight alone) in order to make weight on meet days, a practice she now admits “got really unhealthy” and is dangerous.

Now in her 10th year of powerlifting, Chown typically competes in the 198-pound class. It’s a weight that her body naturally sits at (often called a “set point”), no obsessive restrictions or diet micromanaging required. “It’s a weight that allows me to live my life,” she says.

It’s also a weight that allows her to reach new personal records and take home first place titles. In June, Chown nabbed the top spot in her weight class at the United States Powerlifting Association’s Tested National Championships in Nevada.

“I feel the strongest I ever have,” says Chown. “It’s such a good feeling to not be so stressed over a weight class, and I can just focus on the training. Who cares what the number is that I weigh in at, you know? It’s part of the sport, but I don’t have to have any kind of emotional ties to that number.”

Some people may see a performance boost from dropping down a weight class, so long as there’s a support system ensuring it’s done in a healthy manner, Ribble says. But for most athletes, powerlifting isn’t a serious career. It’s simply a hobby sport that helps people find their strength and, in many cases, heal body image issues, she adds. The constant pressure, identity crisis, and risk of harmful physical and mental health effects? That’s just not worth the trophy.

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline at 1-866-662-1235 for immediate support or go to allianceforeatingdisorders.com or anad.org/get-help for more resources.