Before diving in, this is a warning to proceed to read at your own discretion because the following writing delves into issues around body image and unhealthy relationships with food and exercise. Also, God is good, and I am grateful for the growth and healing I have recently experienced and hope to continue.
Leaving a sport is a right of passage for many and yet when my 13-year-old self stepped off the spring floor at gymnastics practice for the final time, she was not ready for what would come. At this point, I was in incredible physical shape. Beating all the high school boys in push-up contests and hollow holds and being called ‘Beast’ by the PE teacher filled me with pride. Having a 6-pack didn’t hurt either. Prior to quitting gymnastics, it is safe to say I would have been in the top 5 percentile of physical fitness (outside of running, but more on that later…) for people my age.
The months wrapping up 8th grade and transitioning into high school left me feeling directionless. I loved gymnastics but the time it took up, the way it was beginning to damage my body (still have wrist and back issues to this day) and the emotional damage from a coach who, to put it gently, was an unkind and arrogant man who would lie, and try to manipulate myself and other teammates, while still finding the time to leave during practice and return to spot us reeking of cigarettes. As the oldest girl on our team, I did my best to lead and protect the other girls, but eventually I emotionally and physically burned out. So I left. I no longer went to a gym 12 hours a week with one hour per practice being solely dedicated to conditioning.
After leaving, my 4’6 and flat chested self finally began the process of puberty previously likely halted by the extent of my physical activity. 6 months after quitting, I was about to begin high school at 4’11, actually needing a bra, and gaining about 25 pounds, though I can assure you, at this time, I still had my visible 6-pack. I also joined my high school cheer team that summer, or should I say, was coerced into joining my high school cheer team that summer. Practices were 2 hours long, 4 days a week, not including games, and while there certainly was physical activity, it paled in comparison to what I experienced with gymnastics. And so, my body kept changing. That year, I grew another inch, got my period, and gained about 15 more pounds. My muscles became a little less defined (RIP 6-pack!), but I still looked thin and athletic. For the rest of high school, this is how I looked. Today, this is how I view my past self but back then, I did not see myself as thin and athletic.
This transition was already difficult enough but then I underwent several traumatic experiences which warped my mind and having an undiagnosed anxiety disorder likely did not help. I will not be going into specifics on what these experiences were here, because I am still not ready to be fully public with that information and I do not desire to throw shame towards anyone involved. Feel free to reach out to me privately, if you are curious, and I may be willing to enlighten you a little. Bottom line, some really bad things happened and I saw myself as overweight, unattractive, and undeserving of any kind of love.
This began to manifest in a lot of ways, but one area in particular was food. As a child I was an extremely picky eater (I have mostly grown out of this luckily) and I began to feel ashamed about this and about how I thought it was impacting my body. My sophomore year, I began to hide certain foods and eat them privately, fearful of judgement. A cycle, which can only be described as ‘torturous’ began my junior year of high school. I began coaching powder puff cheer (which was truly a highlight of my time in high school, if any of the guys involved are reading this, you all really made it such a blast!) We had the practices during lunch, which is why it became so easy to start this cycle. I began skipping breakfast. And I began skipping lunch because it was so easy to pretend I ate it quickly to make it to practice. Then the rest of the school day would go by and then by time I got home from cheer, it would be 6 pm and I ‘successfully’ would have gone nearly the whole day without eating. I would eat a small dinner to not raise any suspicions and then repeat the whole process again the next day. This would go on for about a week or two, but then the hunger would feel so intense and so I would cave and binge for a few days, typically on the unhealthy foods I felt too afraid to eat in front of others. As a result, guilt and shame would flow through me, and I feared it made me ‘fatter,’ so then I would punish myself again through the starvation technique.
This cycle continued through the start of college. It was impossible to do the full extent of this cycle with the setup of the dining halls where I often ate with other people. So I did a ‘lesser version’ of it. At this point, my primary physical activity was just walking to classes on campus, which were quite far apart with a lot of stairs so I never gained weight. My problem, well one of my many problems, was I had no idea how to work out and was too scared to ask anyone. The kind of stuff I did to exercise in gymnastics didn’t fully translate to a gym and my injuries also caused some issues. Plus, by this point, the idea of going to a gym when I was no longer super in shape felt way too intimidating. Being too anxious to go to the gym was just one more thing I could add to the list of reasons to hate myself.
The end of my first year of college had me at an all-time low, again, for reasons I will not get into here, and over the summer, it only got worse. I felt trapped and alone; ashamed of my body and ashamed of what I was doing to it. I was also ashamed of how I had stopped trying to pursue God and resolved to do so when I returned to college in the fall. And praise be to God, that I finally listened to that call from Him, because I recommitted myself to Christ that school year and began to heal and experience spiritual growth.
Unfortunately, even with God, everything usually does not get better overnight. My sophomore year I did stop the part of the cycle involved in starving myself – for the most part, there were still slip ups. I tried going to my apartment gym, but that was short lived. All I really knew how to do was use the treadmill and even at my best, running has always been a weakness of mine. I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing anything and even though I tried to go to the gym when no one would be there, people still came in and the anxiety was just too much for me so I stopped.
The following year, I found a YouTube channel called Blogilates which had a workout calendar with Pilates videos to follow so I began doing that which helped me get into better shape, and since I could do it in the privacy of my own room, I felt safe. There were still some setbacks, such as living in an apartment with downstairs neighbors who I didn’t want to disturb and some old gymnastics injuries and not a lot of space even for someone as small as me to spread out in, so the workouts were extremely modified. But I was proud to be doing something. I also improved a little with cooking some healthier meals, but the eating unhealthy food in secret continued. Over the summer, I stayed in Fort Collins and found a trail and fell in love with it. I would hike it about 5 days a week and used it as a way to spend time with God. I fell even more in love with Him as a result of seeing the beautiful mountain scenery, and those moments where there were no other people in sight and the deer would appear around me. It felt as though God brought them there just for me. It felt as though I could be loved after all. I was not all better, but I was getting better. The summer of 2018 and this particular hiking trail will be forever associated with God’s love for me and the literal strides taken towards healing.
The following year, I kept working out consistently, and my unhealthy food hiding remained the unchanged secret no one knew about. Going into the spring of 2019, however, new issues arose. Due to a number of incidents occurring my spring semester, again unmentioned here, I fell into a major depressive spiral, which lasted through November. God felt far away and the love I felt from my previous hikes with Him seemed non-existent, and of course this coincided with doing a Summer Mission in Rhode Island. There was no room where I lived that summer to workout, and I got even craftier about how to secretly eat certain foods. Many other challenges arose during my time in Rhode Island, though there were highlights too. By the time I returned to Fort Collins to go into my final year of school, I was in another low place in my life. I tried to go back to the trail from before reconnect with God, but became so distraught, that I couldn’t finish and I failed to get back into the workout videos. All seemed bleak and hopeless, but God revealed Himself to me many times in unexpected ways such as my practicum at the local high school, and even more oddly, through writing a paper for my capstone history class about water in the west (but that is a story for another post!).
I began doing better mentally and spiritually as I went into my final semester of college and student teaching. I felt ready to begin trying to workout again with the videos from Blogilates. All seemed well, and then the pandemic happened, essentially cutting off my college and student teaching experiences unexpectedly early. But after everything else I had gone through, I felt relatively okay during it all and my relationship with God actually got better and when things did get to be too much, I just went on walks where I could reconnect with Him. Unfortunately, by the time I felt ready to try my hike again, Colorado was basically on fire everywhere so the air pollution got to the point where going outdoors did not seem like a great idea.
It was also around this time, I gained a little weight. Even though it wasn’t enough to be particularly noticeable or even change my clothing size, this felt devastating. As a rule, I do not own a scale. Some of my traumatic experiences in high school revolved around the number on the scale. The number often triggered my periods of starvation back then, and sometimes when I end up in a situation where I am weighed, it can be challenging to refrain from going back to that. Thus, discovering my “quarantine/starting a job teaching where I am exhausted all the time weight gain” was brutal. It actually demotivated me from working out. But I did finally confide in some people about what I was doing with food, including my counselor. And bringing my secret to the light helped a lot. In fact, I have gone about 7 months without actively hiding food.
At the start of this summer, I still felt insecure. I actually decided to take up running in the hopes it would make me “look better” than the Pilates videos were. I quit the running two weeks ago. Turns out I still despise running; I lacked any sort of enjoyment from it. And it was actually causing me a lot of pain – like the bad, injury-inducing kind. And I was not “looking any better” despite 6 weeks of consistent effort. It looked like I would be hitting another low point, but then God showed me something wonderful.
About a month ago, for the first time since 8th grade, I saw myself without makeup on and I liked my face. A few days ago, I looked at my body in the mirror, ready to criticize myself, as I always do, and in fact had been doing especially brutally recently, but I just… didn’t do it. I can’t say I looked at my body and loved it, but I did look at my body, and not hate it, in fact, I didn’t even dislike it! It’s as if God is beginning to reveal to me how He sees me. He loves my face and He loves my body because He made them Himself! His love for me does not change when I gain or lose weight and He did not stop loving me when I lost my 6-pack, or when I made the bad decisions against my body or when I myself hated my body.
This whole time, I have been free but only now, do I truly feel free. It’s as though a prison guard opened my jail cell door years ago when I began to follow God, but I only now tried to walk out. I am working out by using the YouTube channel again and this time it is because I want to exercise for fun, just like gymnastics was. Back then I loved feeling sore, and it is empowering to feel excited by this again! Today, I finally, returned to the hike and made it to the top and God was there with me.
My journey is far from over – I am still too nervous to step foot in a gym or workout with other people, though I am hopeful I can get to a place where I can do it. Today though, I am finally confident in who I am, inside and out. I used to push others away, fearing if they got too close they would see me the way I saw me, but now I know others can love me, the authentic me. I love me; I am worthy of love because God who is love Himself loves me. He loves you in this way too, dear reader, never forget that. Praise God for helping me to finally remember.
If you’re intrigued by this post and looking forward to what I’ll write about in the future, you can expect a new post at some point in the future. Also, if you feel inclined, feel free to leave a comment below about what you think. Thanks for all your support and I hope you’ll come back the next time I post. Stay Amazing!