When I was six years old, I started doing gymnastics. I am small and energetic so it was a perfect sport. Ball sports never interested me and in fact, they terrified me. Gymnastics just felt so freeing and powerful. When you stand on the balance beam you are precise and in control. When you swing from the bars, you are agile and free. When you spring from the springboard and glide over the vault you are powerful. Then, you get older and bigger and it isn’t so easy anymore. It all takes more energy and moving across the bean and swinging from the bars is more difficult and more awkward. Then there’s the pressure of what a gymnast should look like; the petite, 4 foot 7 person with no extra body fat and the bony figure. That may be realistic when we are ten years old but as we reach puberty that is no longer realistic nor is it healthy. Nevertheless, that is the expectation. As a 14-year-old gymnast, weighing 100 pounds was certainly not acceptable. A day that changed my life forever occurred. I would not change it because many good things have come out of the experience but it was not easy. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger right?
It was mid- summer after seventh grade. I was at gymnastics practice and my coach informed me that he would no longer be able to spot me because I was now too big. The comment hit me like a ton of bricks. I should’ve thought, “what a jerk, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Instead as an impressionable 14 year old I thought, I need to fix this.
My coach went on vacation and didn’t return for two weeks. During that time I decided that I would prove to him that I was still a capable gymnast. I started by going as long as I could without eating. I made it almost 24 hours before I broke down. I came up with a meal plan that would allow me to survive but maintain a very lean figure. I lost 13 pounds, kept it off for four years, and did not menstruate again until I was 18. There is a misconception that excessive exercise causes amenorrhea. It is actually inadequate calories to fuel that exercise that causes amenorrhea and the subsequent bone loss. During this time I began to break. I went to catch the bars on a mount and broke all of the bones in my right hand broke. That healed and I came back, dismounted the bars, and sprained my ankle very badly. On the small amount I was consuming, I was not strong enough to continue. My career in gymnastics had come to an end. So, what the heck does this all have to do with running? Just keep reading…
I needed to find a sport with a softer landing. As a junior in high school I joined the diving team. Landing in water felt safer. Maybe I won’t continue to break. I didn’t break but I gained weight because I wasn’t getting as much exercise. My slim frame of 87 pounds became 93 and then 98. I panicked. I was approaching the dreaded weight that was so problematic. I decided to join the track team so that I could get more exercise but my intake hadn’t improved so sure enough, illness struck. I came down with mononucleosis. After a month of having my dad read my assignments to me and eat as little as possible because I wasn’t moving at all, I decided it was time to go back. Was it actually time to go back? Probably not. Actually, it was definitely not time to go back. I developed walking pneumonia.
Fast forward to the present, I have obtained a bachelors, masters and doctorate degree in nutrition and have learned, amongst other things, that in order to use your body you have to fuel it. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I love my career as a dietitian and never once have I wanted to be in any other field. It is an extremely rewarding field that allows me to help people of all ages become healthier, have less disease symptoms, live longer and perform better. Did I learn to eat perfectly and not have any fearful thoughts when it comes to food? No, but I got much better.
