What My Eating Disorder Looked Like
I had been a competitive gymnast my whole life & never once worried about food or body appearance… until high school. Despite still being involved in numerous competitive sports, I found myself myself rapidly gaining weight at 16-17 years old, regardless of how much I ate (or did not eat) or how much activity I did.
If I wasn’t at track practice or competitive cheer practice, you could find me logging 2 hours on an elliptical 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, and meticulously obsessing over how many calories I (did not) put in my mouth.
Low calorie soups. 100 calorie “snack packs.” Salads, salads, and more salads. So much celery (ps: I HATE celery). Special K cereal. 80 calorie protein shakes.
At 17, I was diagnosed hypothyroid. I started on thyroid meds and while some symptoms improved, the weight continued to pile on. Doctors gave no advice on changes I could make to my nutrition, exercise, or lifestyle. And my eating disorder + obsessing with my body continued to consume my entire world.
So I flooded my free time by following “thinspo” / “thinspiration” accounts. I saved picture after picture of skinny women and quotes like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” I endlessly searched “skinny recipes” on Pinterest and owned every Low Calorie Cookbook in existence.
At 19, I was prescribed Adderall after being diagnosed with ADHD. To my delight at the time, a known side effect of Adderall is loss of appetite. I could summarize my college experience as abusing more Adderall than I needed to help me further shrink my body.
By 21 years old, I was in love with running too much and marathon training. By 23 when I found CrossFit, I was 5’3 and wasting away by the day at a whopping 93 lbs. Lifting weights saved me. I started obsessing over how much weight I could lift and what my body could DO, rather than simply wanting to take up less space and being obsessed over what I looked like.
Present day, Paragon Training Methods is my whole world and saves me every single day. Because I get to help women do the same.
