My Journey

The thought of sitting down to write about all the ways that diet culture has affected me over the last three decades was daunting to say the least. I managed to narrow it down to the most significant moments of the last decade. If you can, stick with me through the end, where I share all of the wonderful and positive things I have learned, and that I hope to share with you.

It's 2007, a year and a half into college in DC. I am away from home and free of the food rules that plagued my childhood/teen years, eating all of the foods I was never allowed to enjoy. I now understand that this food fervor was a natural response to food rules and restriction, but at the time, I felt out of control around food and felt like I had put on "too much" weight.

At this point in my life, I am the biggest I have ever been. This time also happened to coincide with my needing unexpected bone graft surgery on my lower left shin. The recovery was rigorous and required me to take the semester off from college and move back home to NJ. At the time, I, my doctor, and my parents deemed my body size to be “unhealthy.” And so, as I healed from surgery, I also set out to lose the weight I had gained at school. When I think back to the extreme calorie restriction, and hobbling to the scale with my crutches for daily weigh-ins, it makes me sad and angry. As I got stronger, I started working with a trainer to rehab from surgery and continue my weight loss goals.

When I moved back to DC in the fall of 2008, I had a newfound interest in working out to "stay healthy,” which at the time, I defined as keeping the weight off. I started working with two trainers who introduced me to CrossFit, which was becoming the hot workout of the fitness industry. While the motivation behind my workouts was steeped in diet culture, it was also incredibly addicting to keep getting stronger, faster and more fit. I was hooked. In the summer of 2009, I jumped at the opportunity to help open a CrossFit gym and train to become a coach.

My early coaching years were all about learning the nuts and bolts of movement technique, different ways of teaching and correcting, group and time management, and workout program design. I was even more passionate about helping to build a gym community rooted in a shared excitement about CrossFit, and a desire to feel empowered by movement. Looking back, it all had a diet culture aftertaste. I cringe to think about the nutrition challenges we ran, our heavy focus on workout results, and how convinced we were that CrossFit was the elite way to achieve ideal fitness.

During the first half of the 2010s, I was working out harder than ever--chasing new skills, lifting heavier weights, doing two-a-days, and participating in local competitions. I was also plagued by chronic neck pain, and yo-yo dieting. The workout intensity, and unrelenting need for self-discipline around food, took a major toll. Some days, the last thing I wanted to do was workout. I felt stuck and like I had no choice, because it was the "right" and "healthy" thing to do. I tried everything from Paleo to low fodmap to counting macros, to hiring FOUR different nutrition coaches. I'd spend my weeks being as strict as possible, and my weekends "cheating" and gorging on as much "forbidden" food as I could get in. My workouts and food rules were designed to bring me closer to my goal weight, ideal body, and exceptional fitness, but instead, it was draining me mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Fast forward to January 2017. I was on my latest diet right up until the morning of my shoulder surgery to get my torn labrum repaired (probably a result of years of pushing too hard in my workouts). The recovery process turned my world upside down. Living alone and managing everything with one arm in a sling strapped to my torso was extremely challenging. I was back to coaching after a week, standing on my feet for hours at a time. I was disillusioned by how slowly I was recovering and couldn’t imagine ever feeling 100% again. It is no surprise that I finally quit my diet and was doing barely any physical activity given the combination of managing work, daily pain, and intense physical therapy.

Seven months later, I graduated from physical therapy and was allowed to start trying more formal workouts again. I was also confronted with the reality that I was at the second biggest size I had ever been. It felt intolerable. I had never been as sidelined by such a serious injury and I had never before experienced the challenges that come with moving in a bigger body. I wasn’t able to do the wild CrossFit skills I used to or lift the same heavy weights. I was terrified of getting hurt again.

These circumstances forced me to expand my previous notions about movement and transformed my views about exercise. I started by simply walking on the treadmill. I would dance in my apartment, reconnecting with a lifelong passion, go to Pilates and dance cardio classes, and when my energy levels and shoulder felt up to it, I would experiment with significantly modified CrossFit workouts. At the time, this felt revolutionary for me. I went from having one workout option, to having many. I began to recognize the importance of listening to my body, being creative and thoughtful around movement, and having self-compassion. I was fortunate that with my coaching background and years of experience, I was able to troubleshoot what I needed from my movement routine and find a solution.

I was well on my way to healing my relationship with exercise, BUT I was still preoccupied with dieting and changing my body. I went on a year-long journey to get back to my goal weight. It took a nutrition coach, weekly weigh-ins, logging everything I ate every day for a year, regularly skipping social outings to stay on track, and exhausting mental discipline and emotional turmoil, but I managed to get to my "goal weight.” It only lasted three months because I was starving, and mentally burned out from being so restrictive for so long. I would spend hours trying to convince myself not to order delivery or reach for more food, only to give in, and then go down the all too well known, guilt and shame spiral.

In one last ditch effort to get things under control, I decided Keto was the answer. It wasn’t. About four weeks into Keto, once again completely fixated on food, I couldn't take it anymore. The breaking point was one particular evening spent shoveling macadamia nuts and whipped heavy cream into my mouth. The week of that epic food gorge, my therapist who had begun to express concern about my disordered eating behaviors, had a frank conversation with me. She essentially pointed out that if I spent my whole life dieting, waiting to love myself, waiting to put myself out there and live joyfully until I got to my goal weight, then life would just pass me by. Mind. Blowing. And so on Thursday, April 4, 2019, I sent an email to my therapist with the subject line, "My Answer Is Yes!" I told her that I was ready to accept help healing my relationship with food and my body, and I haven't looked back.

I quit dieting and have been practicing food freedom ever since. It has been a transformative experience. One of my biggest challenges has been learning to be at peace with my body at the size it naturally wants to be when I am giving myself unconditional permission to eat, enjoying all foods, and moving my body in a way that feels loving, and authentic. I am not in a place to love my body every day, and to be honest, I am not sure how realistic that even is. However, I am in a place to practice a body neutral mindset, where I take the confident days when they come, I take the tough body image days in stride, and I focus most of my energy on embracing all of my other wonderful qualities, besides my body, that make me who I am. It is a skill I have to practice constantly because it goes against every old habit and almost all mainstream diet culture messaging.

If you've made it this far, I hope it helps to show you that my current philosophy about movement, exercise, and body image has grown out of many years of personal and professional transformation and enlightenment.