A love letter to my 17 year old self
I think there has been a lot of light shown on diet culture today, and I’m happy that there is more conversation about its toxicity. If you are someone who knows me, or knows our gym, you know that we do not subscribe to any specific diet or hardcore nutritional strategies to “get our clients results.” I get asked quite often why I don’t measure my clients or make them have monthly “weigh-ins.”
I’ve given some brief answers to this over the years, but this is the first time I’m sharing just how passionately I hate the topic of dieting, and how deep seeded this trauma is for me. As a coach, I always want to teach from real experience, in order to help people become their strongest and healthiest selves, as it relates to longevity, and long-term health. With that goal in mind, today I will tell you a really hard story that shaped me into the person and trainer I am today.
Before I get started, I would like to take a moment to admire the women who successfully compete in bodybuilding shows without the negative psychological side effects. I think it’s incredible and something very rare. Props to you! My journey wasn’t that…
I was entering my senior year of high school when I decided I wanted to compete in my first ever bodybuilding show. I was 17, and would be 18 by the time I hit the stage. My senior project was coming up and I wanted to BE my project. I worked with a personal trainer who was a bodybuilder himself, and over an 8 month period I followed to an absolute T, whatever this steroid-induced muscle bag told me to do (I really did like this guy by the way, he was pretty cool).
When I first started training, it was fun to push myself, I was getting stronger and I thought weighing food was a cool thing to do. I felt pretty cool rolling up to school with my perfectly weighed chicken and sweet potatoes. Then about halfway through, it was not fun anymore. The closer I got to competing, the harder the diet got, the weaker I started feeling, and the more I started picking my body apart. I knew what these girls looked like, who I would be on stage next to, who I would literally be compared to, and as far as I was concerned… I was fat. I was 17.
I spent what should have been a fun and care-free time of my life, manipulating every aspect of my diet and habits to achieve some unachievable version of a body. At the time, I thought I was doing something incredible. My pride was telling me I was developing a work ethic that not a lot of people ever developed, but my body was fighting me every step of the way.
I remember at one point I had to switch my training time from 4pm after school, to 5am before school because I could barely stand at the end of the day because I was so depleted. When I was about 2 weeks from competing I was a shell of a person. I had to have my mom pick me up from school during lunch, so that I could just drive around with her. I was too agitated to be around anyone, and the smell of the cafeteria was too much for my cravings to handle. I was miserable, but still very justified in my pursuit for the stage.
I made it to the stage. I do remember show day being very fun with all the makeup, extreme fake tanner, sparkly bikinis, and jewelry but that was a bright spot at the beginning of something very dark.
When I got the professional photos back from the show, I cried. I was so embarrassed because I thought the girl in the photo was embarrassingly fat. I was 109 lbs for that show– to put into perspective how distorted my mind was about my body. It was the perfect storm for disordered eating.
I graduated high school, and in the fall I started my freshman year at MSU playing golf. I was at the peak of my disordered eating and excessive exercise phase. My relationship with myself was horrible and my performance in school and the sport I loved plummeted. Everything was so bad that year I almost quit. I didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing with my life.
Then my Sophomore year came around and things started to shift for me. Our team strength coach started introducing barbell lifts into our programming and I fell in love. I loved seeing progress in my physical strength improve. It was the first time I discovered a version of exercise that made me feel good about myself, instead of doing exercise because I hated myself.
As I focused on performance based goals, like squatting 200 lbs, and improving my form on hang cleans, the rest of my life started to change with it. I started improving my golf game again, my focus in class improved, I declared my Kinesiology major, and my confidence started to grow. For the first time in my life I felt strong and healthy, and it was one of those “ah ha” moments that happen so infrequently in life, that shifted my whole universe.
Everything I chose to do from there was with the intention to help people find their way towards better health. Knowing what I know, and going through what I went through, I cannot subscribe my clients to strict macro counting and dieting. It’s unsustainable and doesn’t bring about any sort of health or happiness in the long-term.
I’m of the belief that if you choose exercise that makes you feel strong, powerful, and capable, you will naturally start to choose better for yourself. I certainly found this to be the case. When I started to feel better, I started treating my body better. Today, I’m the fittest I’ve ever been but only because I’ve fallen in love with lifting and lifting heavy things makes me feel good from the inside out.
I have found that the relationship I have with myself determines how well I take care of myself, and I coach by that perspective. If I can help people feel physically strong, that sets the stage for a positive chain reaction towards lasting and sustainable health results because they love themselves, not because they hate what they see in the mirror. There’s not a single scale on this planet that can give that kind of self-worth that every person deserves.
I kept a journal through my whole bodybuilding prep that I still have to this day. To be honest, I can’t really read it all the way through. It’s heartbreaking. There’s so many entries where I compare my measurements, body fat, and progress picture and completely base my happiness, self-worth, and even the success of a whole day on if those biometrics went down or not.
There’s an entry dated April 7th, 2011 that says, “I have made huge strides in my own life. I have turned that chubby girl I used to be into someone confident and someone who is finally happy with herself. How could I not be?”
Oh baby girl, how I wish I could hug you and tell you you were perfect to begin with. That no matter what the scale says, you are always enough. I think this is the first time I’m really facing what an impactful moment in time this was for that girl who is still very much a part of me. To this day, I feel so protective of her, and I feel so bad that it’s taken me this long to honor her courageous pursuit of something that, at the time, she thought was the right path.
So, I would like to take this moment and thank 17 year old me for all her hard work. Little B, you are seen, you are worthy, you are beautiful, and I’m so sorry it’s taken me 13 years to love you. Through your dedication to find your way through this world, we have created a physical space where others can find theirs. I promise to honor you everyday through my commitment to helping others just like you.
Thank you for helping me create a gym and business that makes people feel safe, when you didn’t have the same. You went through something uniquely hard so that other people would have the freedom and guidance to embrace their strength. I would not be where I am today without your vulnerability, unstoppable commitment, and unwavering belief in yourself.
Little B, you did great.
2011 Bikini Division (left), Today: happy, healthy, strong (right)