Transformation
Comeback
A pro
Athletes Journey: management of an ED (Eating Disorder)
In continuation to yesterdays blog post, after my first encounter with anorexia I journeyed through fitness for my recovery. I had seen a Fitness Pageant on ESPN and decided I wanted to do that routine round! I was ok with the physique round with look of the fitness competitor although never planned on achieving the pro level fever. I wasn't so excited about the beauty portion, lacking confidence there, and was never a 'make up frew frew' girl.
What I wanted was to perform, dust off my gymnastics and dance which I had to quit as a kid due to my health. I was ready to take this on and find my fit in my mid 20's!
At this point I was introduced to some asthma medications that allowed me the freedom of exercise without attacks. I had the asthma under control for the first time in my life. I felt like a caged animal, freed!
I trained, competed, tried it all, every diet, every category, every federation and learned so much!
Immediately I was recruited into fitness modeling, magazine appearances and photo shoots.
My goals changed and as I achieved, I wanted more! I won trophies and Pro cards throughout the ranks, federations and different categories but Fitness was always my main drive. The rest was for fun. Sometimes If I had an injury I would try another physique category so I could keep competing and learning yet competing in something less agile as fitness, such as Figure or Bodybuilding.
I had the normal stuff like sprained fingers, toes, wrists, shoulder and groin issues, blew my knees and had them both reconstructed, but in 2009 after a few years of nagging my doctor, he finally took me seriously and discovered I had osteoarthritis in my neck and lower back. It had crippled me for a year or so and I was not sure I would ever come back. I kept working on it with acupuncture, deep tissue massage, fascia massage and different types of chiropractic. Over a couple years I had eliminated the chronic pain. A few car accidents in between all this did not help. Of course the osteo will react if I do not care for it properly and work with it but you can still be almost normal and do what you like athletically if you work with the body rather than force or fight it…….a lesson I learned from always being the force and fight type.
I went on to coach athletes, judge and host a few competitions myself.
Personal training was also born after my initial recovery and grew fast from 1993 onward, while working with medical practitioners and their patients, injuries, health issues, athletes and everyone in between. This was what I was meant to do, it came easy and naturally. I loved it and enjoy the outcome of positive results with everyone I am blessed to work with. Empowering others and watching them achieve things they did not think they could and may have never tried, that is the best part of my job. This knowledge also gave me the power over my better health.
Anorexia can come in different forms, eating disorders in general have many faces. Anorexia for me has been starvation, weight loss to extreme and then trying to put it back on after recovery, while training your system how to eat, digest and process food again. This can be painful for me with the other issues involved and I lose fast and easy with a very high metabolism, so gaining has been especially difficult this second time around. This time the starvation was over a period of 3 years up an down but mostly down. Again a death was the trigger. I had a short bought after my first dog had passed in 2003 but it was 3 months and I clued in fast and recovered fast. This time, there was a lot of factors involved which lasted during these 3 years. It left me unable to find enough of a break in time from the stress to grasp anything but a few better days, before being blasted again with extreme stress. This gradually broke my system down to undernourishment.
Up until 2012 I would keep an avg weight of 125lb fit and lean to 135lb 18-20% body fat. I was 129lbs lean in the beginning of 2012 and came into my best comp season ever even with the beginnings of this 3 year drama, a fully blown knee and having to leave town several times for my safety.
I had found myself this past summer at 105lb, my dog Diva had cancer for over a year, needing progressively more and more hands on care until she passed on April 1st 2015. I struggled through 2015 trying to gain, trying to eat again, now that the stresses were over and gone from around me. But mentally and emotionally I was still trapped and had a few heartaches along the way which worsened things.
So here I am. Over the past few months, with a lot of '2 lbs up, 4 more down' type of days…….I managed to get myself back up to 117lbs on avg. I tried to do some easy training though the summer of 2015 but no matter what I tried or how mild I worked out, I would drop 2 lbs the next day. I had to back off a little bit longer until I could hold my weight.
At this point I was introduced to some asthma medications that allowed me the freedom of exercise without attacks. I had the asthma under control for the first time in my life. I felt like a caged animal, freed!
I trained, competed, tried it all, every diet, every category, every federation and learned so much!
Immediately I was recruited into fitness modeling, magazine appearances and photo shoots.
My goals changed and as I achieved, I wanted more! I won trophies and Pro cards throughout the ranks, federations and different categories but Fitness was always my main drive. The rest was for fun. Sometimes If I had an injury I would try another physique category so I could keep competing and learning yet competing in something less agile as fitness, such as Figure or Bodybuilding.
I had the normal stuff like sprained fingers, toes, wrists, shoulder and groin issues, blew my knees and had them both reconstructed, but in 2009 after a few years of nagging my doctor, he finally took me seriously and discovered I had osteoarthritis in my neck and lower back. It had crippled me for a year or so and I was not sure I would ever come back. I kept working on it with acupuncture, deep tissue massage, fascia massage and different types of chiropractic. Over a couple years I had eliminated the chronic pain. A few car accidents in between all this did not help. Of course the osteo will react if I do not care for it properly and work with it but you can still be almost normal and do what you like athletically if you work with the body rather than force or fight it…….a lesson I learned from always being the force and fight type.
I went on to coach athletes, judge and host a few competitions myself.
Personal training was also born after my initial recovery and grew fast from 1993 onward, while working with medical practitioners and their patients, injuries, health issues, athletes and everyone in between. This was what I was meant to do, it came easy and naturally. I loved it and enjoy the outcome of positive results with everyone I am blessed to work with. Empowering others and watching them achieve things they did not think they could and may have never tried, that is the best part of my job. This knowledge also gave me the power over my better health.
Anorexia can come in different forms, eating disorders in general have many faces. Anorexia for me has been starvation, weight loss to extreme and then trying to put it back on after recovery, while training your system how to eat, digest and process food again. This can be painful for me with the other issues involved and I lose fast and easy with a very high metabolism, so gaining has been especially difficult this second time around. This time the starvation was over a period of 3 years up an down but mostly down. Again a death was the trigger. I had a short bought after my first dog had passed in 2003 but it was 3 months and I clued in fast and recovered fast. This time, there was a lot of factors involved which lasted during these 3 years. It left me unable to find enough of a break in time from the stress to grasp anything but a few better days, before being blasted again with extreme stress. This gradually broke my system down to undernourishment.
Up until 2012 I would keep an avg weight of 125lb fit and lean to 135lb 18-20% body fat. I was 129lbs lean in the beginning of 2012 and came into my best comp season ever even with the beginnings of this 3 year drama, a fully blown knee and having to leave town several times for my safety.
I had found myself this past summer at 105lb, my dog Diva had cancer for over a year, needing progressively more and more hands on care until she passed on April 1st 2015. I struggled through 2015 trying to gain, trying to eat again, now that the stresses were over and gone from around me. But mentally and emotionally I was still trapped and had a few heartaches along the way which worsened things.
So here I am. Over the past few months, with a lot of '2 lbs up, 4 more down' type of days…….I managed to get myself back up to 117lbs on avg. I tried to do some easy training though the summer of 2015 but no matter what I tried or how mild I worked out, I would drop 2 lbs the next day. I had to back off a little bit longer until I could hold my weight.
I need to train to get the eating on track but holding weight at the same time, that’s the trick now.
This is a little bit new to me since my experiences in the past had never run this long.
First the trick was to get food down, convince my body to keep it and hope for no pain. This was my summer and most of my fall for 2015. This is still prevalent.
I am now at the cusp to move forward and decided to share since its like starting over in a sense, something we are all familiar with. Maybe some of you are in a same starting or restart point so why not join me?
Tomorrow I am going to talk about 'the plan'. How I will be using my fitness goals to inspire my action, improve my health issues, heal my mental / emotional state, reversing some of the effects and damages, my plan of attack and what works for me.
The end results and my present body atm is very common to being unfit in general with: loose skin, muscle loss, poor body composition and shape, saggy triceps and glutes, loose thighs, but I will get into this and the other things tomorrow.
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