Victoria Burke’s New Year’s Resolution this January was to lose weight, 11 pounds to be exact. Standing 5’6” and weighing 133 pounds, Burke had a healthy body-mass index of 21.5 and was working out more than 20 hours a week at the California Rowing Club in Oakland, Calif. But to achieve the dream of rowing for the U.S. Olympic team in Rio this summer, Burke and her lightweight double sculling partner, Nancy Miles, have to be under a combined weight of 114 kilos (251.3 pounds). That means 129 pounds for 5’9” Miles, and 122 pounds for Burke.
She has been here before, competing as an open weight rower in college at Vermont and Virginia—she helped the Cavaliers’ varsity eight to a second place finish at the NCAA Championships in 2009—then dropping 10 pounds to race as a lightweight over her summer breaks. When she began training in earnest for this Olympic cycle last fall, losing a couple of pounds a month seemed achievable. “I thought This can’t be that bad going into this again,” she says, “but I was wrong.”
Burke, 28, weighs herself at least once a day: every morning, and sometimes after working out, or just before she heads off to sleep. “You want to get comfortable with being hungry at night,” she says. She gets her carbs from fruits and vegetables rather than processed foods like bread, and turns to low-fat protein sources like chicken, egg whites, and non-fat yogurt. Building muscle is complicated because although that might increase her power, it will also increase her weight.