My Eating Disorder Recovery Story

https://youtu.be/U1C18kdZFfg
Here's a little secret. Most of the fitness coaches I know have had some history of an eating disorder and I'm no different. I hope this blog post just sheds some light on how eating disorders happen and how beautiful the recovery process can be. I'll be sharing a little bit about my health habits that were instilled in my childhood and how that affected my teen and young adult years. And by the way, my parents were amazing. They didn't know what they were doing. And ultimately everything that I did in my childhood ultimately led to the eating disorder that I had. 

So if you know anything about my story, I grew up around fitness. My dad founded the company that made one of the first three to one ratio, protein powders on the American market. And I also grew up around bodybuilders being very, very, very lean was normalized for me at a very young age. And if you've watched this video on how getting very, very, very lean ended up for me, you know, that it wasn't so good. So this is how my eating disorder progressed from my childhood to my young adult years. When I was six years old, I was doing Barbie workout videos in my living room, in my parents' living room, not my living room. It was theirs. Um, pretty benign, right when I was eight years old, I knew what a carb was, how many eight year olds are like, oh yeah, that's a carb.

When I was 10, I was leading my neighborhood friends in workouts around my house. When I was 12, I became self-conscious of my carbohydrate intake when I was 15, I started going to the gym. And when I was 16, I had removed specific foods from my diet because I thought they were bad. And at that time I was also waking up at five o'clock in the morning to get a workout in before school started. And this is the age that I also lost my period. And by the age of 18, I had a journal to track my calorie intake and try my best to eat less than 1200 calories per day. And I remember this journal and I remember feeling really, really guilty when I ate more than 1500 calories and extremely proud when I ate around a thousand or even less than a thousand calories per day, it's not healthy.

So when I went to college, I became a personal trainer. Like most people, lots of people with eating disorders do become a personal trainer. I started competing in figure competition, and this was before the era of bikini competition. So in college it was clear to my roommates that I had an eating disorder and they talked to me about it. But even when confronted about it, I would deny it and get defensive after all, I was a figure competitor, like this was my lifestyle, right. I chose to start myself. So if you watched my previous video about my history with bikini competitions, then you know that I had hormone balance around hormone imbalance around this time, not balance the opposite. And if you don't know, after I won third place in a national bikini competition, I would be diagnosed with hypothyroid syndrome and later learned that I also have PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome).

Okay. So by the age of 22, the pendulum swung and I gained 30 pounds in three months. And then after that, I continued to gain weight all the way up to 160 pounds. But looking back on that time, I realized that this experience was actually critical for my overall balance. The pendulum had to swing in order for my body to find balance again. And even back then, I trusted that my body knew what it was doing. I wasn't trying to get back to that competition weight. So I share all that because an eating disorder doesn't happen inside of a vacuum. There are stages of an eating disorder and things that precede it and things that it could be coupled with. I was over exercising. I lost my period at the age of 16. And like I share in this video, I had a really traumatic sexual event occur during this time that also led to more feelings of isolation and need to control.

I could control my food if I couldn't control anything else. Okay. So now the recovery, like I said before, the necessary pendulum swings started to happen. And during that time, when I went from 110 to 160 pounds, I had to accept my body and embrace it for what it was. And although this experience was everyone's nightmare, who has ever had an eating disorder, the weight gain actually liberated me. And after I reached that 160 pounds, my weight started going down after being in bikini competitions for years and feeling both disgusted and intimidated about the amount of exercise I had to put into the gym to get the physique I thought was good enough. I was ready to step foot back in the gym again.

And I did so with a positive frame of mind, embracing who I was instead of trying to work towards a goal so I could compete and win against another woman. I had no interest in that anymore. I was working out for me and my body. So what helped me get back in the gym without self-judgment or without like toxic goals was these support system. I had my gym buddies were my dad, and one of his, one of our family, friends that I grew up around and instead of training to lose weight or look a certain way, we trained just to be strong. I was training with my guys and we went to the gym together most days of the week, not every day, but most days for like an hour tops. That was the most we would spend. We had our workout protein shakes after we worked out and then went back to do whatever we had to do.

What was different about this experience is that it was communal and our day wasn't structured around working out. It was just a part of what we did most days. So it was very different for me. Another thing that led to my recovery is being open to food again. So after competing in shows, I found myself raving us self ravenous with a seriously screwed up metabolism with food, the pendulum swung, but also around that time, I felt ready to get back in the gym. And I also had eaten a sufficient amount of, of the foods that were deemed naughty that I wasn't eating out of scarcity. I was eating because I, I liked the food and felt good about what, when and how I was eating. And I think that the key attributes of my healing process, which I'm sure you picked up on was the fact that my mindset around food and working out changed and the whys that's so big, the whys behind fitness and food changed too.

In my heart. I wanted to feel nourished and strong because I felt so. And that was entirely different than my goal when I had an eating disorder, which was to when, I mean, in that time I got on stage, I wanted to compete against other women when trophies for how my body looked, no shade, but that seems silly to me now. So all that happened around the age of 22 ish. And then from there, I lived a pretty healthy life, but of course at the age of 28, I decided to compete in bikini competitions. Just, just one more time, just once more. But the first time I stepped on stage when I was 28, I was at a higher body fat percentage than anyone else on stage. And I had a massive support squad and a woman actually came up to me after the show.

And she thanked me for getting on stage in a bikini in what she called a more natural body. And I took that as a compliment. I, she basically told me that I was, uh, she had representation on that stage, right? So being at a higher body fat percentage was empowering and intimidating all at the same time, getting up on stage. I knew that I wouldn't place in the competition, but I also knew that I was doing the competition for me and not to compare myself to others, even though that's what getting on stage in a bikini in front of judges is all about. But I digress as with any recovery process, the changes is, is not always linear. And that was true for me too, because not even months later, I decided to drop weight again and get lean and do another competition. I did that.

It was following that competition that I started to notice the same hypothyroid symptoms as I did before that is, uh, fatigue, hunger, like endless hunger, all of those things. And then after the show, like you would expect, I gained weight again, not as much, but I gained like the necessary 10 to 20 pounds. And that was over the course of a few months. It wasn't right after the show and that's necessary a lot of fitness competitors do that. But then I started noticing the same PCOS symptoms. And like I said, the hypothyroid syndrome as well. And I got a blood test to confirm that. And during that competition, that was actually the same time I started learning about hormone health. So I was able to then make that connection between my diet training and how that impacted the symptoms of PCOS and hypothyroid syndrome for me and the connection around cortisol and blood sugar and PCOS and how that all connected to weight training and dieting really struck a chord in me.

I talk about PCOS and cortisol and the blood sugar connection in this video here. If that was something that you were like, huh, what I need to know about that and what really codified the fact that I was hurting my body by putting it through those dieting and lifting cycles was knowing the scientific hormone connection to it all. I had to experience it and know the science of it. And I'd argue that my understanding of hormones and how my body uniquely was impacted by this intense dieting and training is what saved me from the mindset of I must diet and exercise in order to be in a body that makes me happy, right? And now feeling healthier than ever. I look back at that experience from the age of six, with my Barbie workout videos, all the way to where I am now, teaching personal trainers, how to optimize their client's hormones. I can say that every

Step of the way, ultimately aided in my journey and helped shape who I am today and how I serve others and how I show up for my community. So with that, I wanna thank you for reading and supporting me talking about my eating disorder recovery story. And if you’re still reading this, please share this post with a fitness professional you know.