I loved the sport of bodybuilding! I loved everything about it – the intense workouts, the restrictive dieting, learning to pose, pushing through even when I didn’t want to, and the power to mold my body.
The complexity of weighing my food, timing my meals, timing my supplements – spreadsheets galore – ahhh, I LOVED IT!
I thought I was SO healthy!
I looked healthy.
In reality, my joints ached, I got sick frequently, I had no energy for anything outside of training and, most frustrating of all, I couldn’t maintain the physique that I’d worked so hard to achieve.
When I stopped competing, I felt a huge loss, now what do I do? I’d grown accustomed to the “punishment cycle” even though I knew it wasn’t a realistically maintainable lifestyle. My life had been filled by fitness, but in truth, my life was focused on food – what to prepare, when to prepare it, when to eat, when not to eat, what I could or couldn’t eat…food food food. Food ruled my life.
I had come a long way. I understood nutrition. I understood the power of controlling food.
But I didn’t understand health. Or wellness. Or the importance of a healthy relationship with food.
I’d traded a decade of anorexic and bulimic cycles with a new all-encompassing obsession.