{"id":305555,"date":"2025-07-31T03:13:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T03:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305555\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T03:13:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T03:13:13","slug":"they-send-photos-of-meals-they-didnt-actually-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305555\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThey send photos of meals they didn\u2019t actually eat&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The biggest race on the calendar of the women&#8217;s World Tour is currently ongoing at the 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tour-de-france-femmes\" title=\"Tour de France Femmes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tour de France Femmes<\/a>. The sport of women&#8217;s cycling has been rocked though, by the revelations of an anonymous, whistleblowing team doctor about the struggles of the women&#8217;s World Tour and their eating disorders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome riders lie. They send photos of meals they didn\u2019t actually eat, or of a scale showing someone else\u2019s weight,&#8221; reveals the World Tour doctor in bombshell comments to Belgian magazine Knack, criticising the attitude of some of the riders. &#8220;They don\u2019t think about the health risks \u2014 only performance matters. \u2018I don\u2019t want children anyway,\u2019 or \u2018Osteoporosis? That\u2019s for later,\u2019 is what you hear.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A big problem to this, is the question of how to best tackle this issue going forward. \u201cWe work with dietitians, physiotherapists, gynaecologists, and psychologists who all stress that being extremely thin offers no competitive advantage,&#8221; explains the anonymous whistleblower. &#8220;When we see troubling signs, we do try to step in. But we can\u2019t monitor every meal. At training camps, we can keep a close eye, but once the riders are at home, it becomes much harder.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>This news has not surprised former Belgian cycling star and team director Heidi Van De Vijver either. \u201cI avoided every gram of fat, weighed all my food, and calculated my calorie intake based on my training,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAfter winning the Tour (the former Tour F\u00e9minin, ed.), I wanted to improve even further \u2014 but I went too far. My body fat dropped to just eight percent. That\u2019s when I realised I needed to put two or three kilos back on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I confronted a rider who was too thin, I was often met with a very defensive reaction. I\u2019d then turn to the team doctor or nutritionist \u2014 they had a better chance of getting through to her,\u201d concludes Van De Vijver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest race on the calendar of the women&#8217;s World Tour is currently ongoing at the 2025 Tour&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-305555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114945668168402678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}