My Relationship To My Body Through Fitness Over The Years

This week, I'm getting really deep and personal. I'm sharing my entire journey with fitness and my body over the last 10+ years — the story behind my most popular blog post ever.

From dreaming of the WNBA in my fifth grade yearbook, to the ACL tears that shattered my athlete identity, to bodybuilding extremes (chewing and spitting food, tilapia and asparagus for weeks), powerlifting, CrossFit, secret binge eating, and the burnout that led me to close my business and step away from the gym for two whole years.

And then — the healing. How I detangled my worth from my appearance, made peace with food, and rebuilt my relationship with movement from a place of love instead of punishment.

If you've ever tied your self-worth to how your body looks or performs, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• Why my athlete identity was both my superpower and my prison
• The disordered eating patterns I didn't recognize because they were "normal" in fitness culture
• How under-eating fueled my binge eating cycle (even as a dietitian!)
• The two-year reset that changed everything
• What true food and body freedom actually looks like

4-Day mind-body reset designed to change your relationship with food:

Click Here for Our Food Freedom Reset

Are you ready to heal your relationship with your body and soul?
 Click Here to Learn More About Our Signature Program

Our Links:
Follow us on Instagram!
Like us on Facebook! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Hello, hello, Firefam. This week I'm going to be getting really deep and personal on my overall journey around fitness and my relationship to my body. This is something that I wrote in a blog, I think at some point this year, a few months ago, and it is the most popular blog that I wrote, so I thought, why not? This could be a really great time to share this story on the podcast, and hopefully the right people hear it and it unlocks something in anyone that's listening. I think all of us have some degree of connection to our body in the sense where we care a little bit about how our body looks or have at one point in our journey. We are all human, so I accept that there's some degree of vanity we all experience, right? We have a unique self-expression with how we dress, how we do our hair, the music that we listen to, what we spend our time doing, etc. I think it's totally normal to care to some degree how you look. I don't, I don't know if anyone's completely detached from that a hundred percent. So yeah, I think it'd be kind of cool to share. Obviously, there's different degrees on the spectrum of how connected we are and what we make how we look mean about ourselves and our worth. And that's really why I feel it's so important to share this story. Self-worth is something that so many of us tie to how we look and how we perform on different fronts, whether it is related to how the opposite sex sees us or same-sex, you know, whatever your preferences are, it doesn't really matter. The point being that it's about attraction. It is about making sure that we feel comfortable in front of friends and family members. Because I'm a registered dietitian and I talk about this often with clients, this is something that comes up all the time. It's not uncommon that when we start to feel uncomfortable in our body, we start to detach from things and people, relationships that are really important to us because there's a degree of shame about not being comfortable in our own skin. Without further ado, I'm gonna just dive into today's topic. I did my best to do some bullet points, some talking points. So if you're watching this on YouTube and I'm looking down at my list a lot, it is because, you know, honestly, it's it's really hard to be concise about the last 10 years of my life. This isn't a perfect reflection, I would say. I I don't know how to best explain that, but I mean, when you think about the last 10 years, it's hard to keep every exact detail straight. And it's hard to remember 100% what led to one thing, which led to another thing. I definitely really remember a lot of the key points of this. And so when I was writing this blog, it was really helpful to like write it first rather than speak it freely because it was really difficult to make some of these connections. Even as I wrote it, there were things that I was unlocking that I didn't even realize before. Okay. So to start, you know, when when I got really involved in sports, it was in high school. Okay. I loved playing basketball and soccer. Basketball was indeed my favorite sport. I always envisioned myself going really far with basketball. In my fifth grade yearbook, so if you went to high school or I'm I should say elementary school with me, and you look this up, they asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up. And in fifth grade, I wrote that I wanted to be a WNBA player. That is how much I loved basketball. As a kid, that was my vision. I wanted to be a pro athlete. When it came to practicing, I was obsessed with practicing and playing. There was some kind of drive in me that no matter what, I always would come back to like practicing basketball or soccer in my free time. If I was hanging out with friends, I loved shooting around. If I went to practices, I would stay late. And I had this really intense mentality around how I would practice. A quote that I lived by is that you have to do something 100 times in a row. Okay. And I would do this with basketball all the time. If there was a shot that I would miss at a game, I would do it over and over and over and over again. So I didn't just have to make a hundred, I had to do it consecutively. So if I was outside practicing and I made like 98 layups, maybe I was practicing my left-hand layup as an example. I am predominantly right-handed. So doing my left-hand layups, if I made 98 and then I missed that 99th, I would start from zero and work my way up until I did 100 perfectly and made them all. This is how intense I was about playing sports. I really wanted to make it the distance. And I knew that was going to require a lot out of me. And I was that disciplined. I was really raised with that mentality of like, if you're not going to be the best, why not do it? Like, don't do it at all, sort of thing. And yeah, like that was something that my dad would say. And that was so helpful in pushing me to getting really good at sports and really anything that I did in my life. I even had that same mindset with school. You know, I graduated, I think I was third in my class when I graduated. I didn't quite make it to first. I was not valedictorian, but I really pushed. Um, and everything, like I said, that that was just how I lived my life. And while I see how beneficial that was for me in many ways, it also became something that eventually was no longer serving my evolution as a human. But before I get into that point, there's a lot of things that happened in between then. Okay. Coming back to basketball. So I remember very vividly, I would go to like recruitment camps for basketball all the time because I really wanted to play. I wanted to get scouted. And there was a game where I want to say there were scouts there at this game when we had it. My brother came to watch the game. My brother also played a lot of sports, and it was very rare that there was an opportunity for him to come watch me because he was always busy with his own sports. He also was playing a sport every season. And finally, it was exciting. My brother came to watch, and I was really happy to have him there. And of course, I wanted to impress him. You know, I looked up to my brother. He was an amazing athlete as well. He went on to play in college, and I just was really convinced that would also be my destiny. Both of my parents were amazing athletes. Everyone in my family is just naturally gifted to some degree with that athleticism. And I really wanted to take it, like I said, to the next level. So at that game, it was the most traumatic game of my life. Things were going really, really well, and I remember this play exactly. I was the point guard and I was on defense at this moment. So I was one-on-one, one-on-one against the point guard, and I made a steal, and I was running down the court, and I pivoted so hard that I tore my ECL. I didn't know it in the moment, but I did it and I fell to the ground screaming in pain. And I was someone that would tolerate a lot of pain. There was a joke when my team gave me a trophy called Best Floor Cleaner because I would just get thrown around all game all the time. So, like middle school, early high school, people knew, and not to toot my own horn, but I'm gonna just like toot it for like a little moment. Um, like I was pretty good. So a lot of defenses would put two people on me because I just, I don't know. I'm telling you, I was nasty. I would drive, I had a nice free or I'm sorry, three-pointer. Like defenses were structured to keep me from doing those things. And I just got really used to girls kind of playing dirty and like fouling me all the time. So none, like nonetheless, it's like I tolerated a lot of pain. I didn't care. I got up, I acted like nothing happened, and yeah, we just moved on. And this time it was different. I was in excruciating pain and it's kind of blurry. I actually forgot that my brother was there for a while until not even that long ago, maybe a year ago, one of my closest friends, she lives in London now. I went to go visit her, and she reminded me of some of those moments because I'm telling you, it's like when you have these traumatic moments, like you kind of black out a bit. My brother picked me up off of the court and like carried me in to the trainer's room. Oh my gosh, I'm getting like a little choked up because man, you know, no matter how much I look back at this, I still feel like there's little bits of myself that I have to heal because I dedicated so much of myself to sports. There was so much value that I put into it, and it made me feel really strong and powerful. Although I carried myself with a lot of confidence in high school, like I was someone that was very social. I would talk to anyone and everyone. It was very friendly. I just had love for everybody, and that was my personality, my identity. And deep down, I think part of why I gave so much love to everyone around me was because I really struggled to feel confident in myself. And again, you wouldn't really know it from being around me because I was always positive and really cheerful. But yeah, I think there was a sadness in me for a long time that I didn't express to people. I would be funny and optimistic and calm, and I never talked bad about people. And that was really important for my identity because I also wanted to be liked. So there were two parts to that. Not only was like I a bit of a people pleaser, but there was also that love that I wanted to give for the specific reason of wanting everyone to feel like they belonged because I felt like I struggled to belong. You know, I had best friends, um, but I was someone that was kind of like a floater. I'd have multiple friend groups, just depending on the situation. Like I did sports, of course. So I had my sports friend groups, but then, you know, at one point I did theater, so I had my little theater friend group, but I also loved talking to people that were like gamers, not that I gamed much, but I just was so interested in their world. Like I had genuine interest for everyone's interests. Um, I had my art friends because I was really creative and loved doing art. Um, and then I had like my nerdy friends because I did like things like FBLA and chess club and stuff like that. So I was really, I had so many interests. Um, and coming back to this, sports were ultimately really what gave me so much confidence in myself. When I walked onto the court, you could not tell me anything. Like I felt so confident, I felt powerful. I loved it. Like from an ego standpoint, I loved the feeling of stepping on the court, and teams were like planning specific defenses just to stop me. Like that felt great to my ego. I felt strong. Um, and I talk about this in the blog too. I forget exactly how I worded it. Maybe it'll come up in these notes that I took. But I loved how I am and who I am as an athlete. So coming back to the injury, that injury was really painful because it impacted my future in sports. After that injury, once I found out I tore my ACL, I had to get surgery, and things were just never the same after that. I was never the same player. Unconsciously, when I would watch film back, I would see myself limping and you know, I just couldn't run. Like I was the fastest kid on any team in every team in every sport that I played. After that, I was not. I was so afraid to cut. I was so afraid to pivot. I was afraid to go 100% because in that moment I was going 100%. And then I tore my ACL and no one even touched me. I think that's why I even got more angry. It was like there wasn't even any impact someone had on me physically. It was like the impact of my own body that took me so far into that, that led to that injury. I really struggled after that surgery. You know, it was right around Christmas time. I don't know if I would say I was depressed. I've never been clinically diagnosed, but I was super certified sad girl. And I really struggled with that. I didn't share with anyone. You know, I think my siblings would tease me a bit, but deep down, I really was just like, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced, and I hate it so much. But I was still determined. I tried really hard, really, really, really hard to come back from this. So, probably like about nine months after my surgery, I was feeling pretty good. I was really happy. I started playing summer soccer. So it was like winter basketball where I tore it, got the surgery, and then I played in a summer league. And I I remember the surgeon being like, you know what? Basketball is really hard on your knees, but I do think that you could still have a good chance at soccer if you pick feel passionate about that because the ground has a lot more give. So I had it in my mind, like, okay, you know what? Maybe it's not basketball, but I love soccer. Okay, I can do this. So that game was real going really well. And it was like after the 90th minute, and I just remember a very vivid point. I was like running, I was like right in the midfield. I think maybe I was like the goalie had kicked it or something. I don't, I don't remember exactly, but I had the ball, and again, no one touched me, and I heard that same sound of when I tore my ACL and I like fell over. And my first reaction was like, I was angry. I was like, you have to be kidding me. And in my heart, I just freaking knew I did something to my knee again, the same knee. And I was, I just like punched the ground. I remember being so, so mad. And I was like, I cannot believe this. Not again, not freaking again. And I came off the field, and after that, I can't remember the details, like of like going to get an MRI or anything like that. But I I do remember like I partially retore it. So the way they rebuild your ACL in some cases, they took a part of my hamstring and like they take two straps or something of it and like wrap it up. And so I tore one of them. And they said that I didn't have to get it surgically repaired, but you know, if I really focused on building the muscle around it, it would be enough to support it. Cause I was like, I'm not gonna go through surgery again. I just like won't do it. So I kept playing and not that day. I kept playing later. You know, once I felt okay again and focused on strengthening it, I might have taken that season off. I I don't, again, like some of these details are blurry. But it was even worse after that. I really just mentally could not play the same. Um, and it killed me. It killed my ego. Like I went from being like a top player to just being really freaking average, and that bothered me because I wanted to be good. I wanted to go to college and play. But after that injury, oh, I do remember this. This was like the week before I was going to go to a camp. My brother went to Hopkins and there was a girls' soccer camp for soccer. Sorry, to take a sip of water, and I just realized I said soccer twice in a row. Redundant, but there was a camp that following week, and I couldn't go because I was injured and I was again heartbroken because I wanted to go to school where my brother went to school, and you know, I again like everything he did, I wanted to do and probably won up him a bit because I was like, you know, I just saw how much praise and attention he got, and I craved the same. So I wanted to do what he did, and again, just a little bit better, hoping that it would also put me in the spotlight. But, you know, that didn't really work. Um and that's where I really felt like my dreams were just like dying. I felt really lost and I stopped feeling good in my body. So prior to that, I was really confident in my body after the surgery. My body didn't quite look the same. And it's wild because it was like a high school era and I didn't really care. I think I still dressed like I was confident, but I knew that my body was starting to shift. And that's when I first started experimenting with food. I remember seeing like other people do things like skipping lunch or drinking drinks or stuff like that. And I kind of was like, oh, you know what? Like, I want to look fit and I want to be skinny. I think at the time I really just wanted to be skinny because that was like the buzzword, the cool thing. That's what everyone was craving. And I was just like skipping meals and I was like, you know what, whatever. I I think I would maybe skip breakfast and drink like some weird V8 drink. I very vividly remember some kind of like bubbly V8 drink that I would drink in place of my lunch, and then probably like eat dinner or whatever was at home that day. But that's really when I think I started thinking about it a bit more and got really into my nutrition and trying to like control my nutrition. Going into college, I don't really know if I like gained weight during college. I think I kind of stayed the same into freshman year, but again, like I felt confident in my body. I didn't have insecurity in it. Um then when it came to my first job, so now I'm a freshman in college. At the end of my freshman year, I think. Um, so I wanted to get a job at GNC because it was right on campus. I had a lot of interest in it. Um, and so I was like, okay, this would be really cool. So I went in and I got hired at GNC. Shout out to my GNC fam, if any of you guys are listening. Um, that was such a good era of my life, and I still have some good friends from my time at GNC, which is like amazing, and I cherish it so deeply. At that time, my boss was a big bodybuilder, okay. And he was like, You have a natural physique to be a figure competitor. And of course, again, I loved that. I was like, okay, you know what? I love working out. So this is going to be something that will kind of get that need filled for me. I started working at GNC. He offered to train me for free. Um, and it was like, it was great. I loved it. I felt so strong. I felt powerful. And he like gave me like a meal plan that I followed. And I was like, okay, this is awesome. I started to see changes in my body. I got like really into power, oh not powerlifting. I'm sorry, bodybuilding. And I was like, okay, you know what? Like, I really want to do a show. This is so cool. So after maybe like a year or two of doing that, I was like, I'm gonna do a show. I did a figure competition and I got second place, third place, I don't remember, something like that. And I really realized that it was not like competing was really hard. I think that's when I started doing some like weird stuff with my diet that I knew was like too far. But the thing about it is, like all my friends at that time, there was something called the Bodybuilding and Fitness Club, and of course I was part of that. And all my friends, like I shouldn't say all my friends, I had that was one of my friend groups. And so it was so normalized. These like weird dining things that we did were so normalized that I didn't even know that they were like not actually mentally well. Um, you know, and I I was like all about that, like eat, clean, train, dirty. I just remember like hashtagging that on some of my posts. Yikes. If you follow my original account, you could scroll back. And I probably left some of them up there. So you can see young me, young, like 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old me flexing really hard in these images and posting them on the internet very proudly. And this was like my whole identity being that fit chick. And I loved being strong again. I I started to feel powerful and strong again. And I loved that. It felt really amazing, and it really gave me more confidence in myself. Again, the me in the gym was the most confident version of me. Eventually, you know, some of the weird things, I'll share this actually. Some of the weird things that I actually did around food, and I'm thinking of my senior year roommate, uh, Brittany, and we would talk about this. You know, we would get like close to the competition and we were just like so hungry and it was so hard to focus. Like, I'm in a college student, I'm trying to do finals, I'm eating like exclusively tilapia and a Asparagus, and if I was lucky, like a dollop of peanut butter. Like I was barely eating anything right before the show. And I just like needed to taste something else. And I always jokingly say, like, if you offered me cardboard, I probably would have eaten it because I just craved a carbohydrate sensation so badly. But I would do things like chew food and spit it out just so that I could like get a taste of it. And it was crazy. And then like we would do things like cheat meals and like go out to eat and just like eat excessively to the point where I was like physically in pain just so that I could get in all the things that I like quote unquote wasn't supposed to eat. And that's when I really started to feel like, okay, you know, I really hate being judged for my body. I can't do bodybuilding anymore. I just want to lift weights. I just want to be strong and I want to look good, but not to an extreme where I'm losing my mind. I gained weight, I don't know how quickly after my show that I did, but I definitely gained some weight after my show because I mean I lost a good amount before getting on stage because you're essentially supposed to be like super, super lean. But as a girl, it's not really that ideal for you hormonally, healthfully to do that. So um I'm gonna skip over some of this stuff because I realized I'm going in a lot of depth with all of these details, but I do want to just like touch on some of them. Okay, I'm just gonna like check my notes a bit. Okay, so from this point after college, I realized I didn't want to do bodybuilding. I got really into powerlifting because I was, again, naturally very strong. And again, this is something that everyone in my family is just like weirdly freakishly strong, which is very cool. And so when I was doing powerlifting, again, this really ticked me off. I did a powerlifting competition. There was a lot of drama around this show that I did. I was cheated out of a first place that I rightfully earned for reasons that I'm not gonna blast people for. But yeah, I deserved a first place trophy and I was not given it because of a relationship situation that was going on behind closed doors. And so that really sucked for me. I thought that if I did powerlifting, it would get me away from things that were like super subjective because bodybuilding is very subjective. But again, running into that situation, I was like, you know what? I thought no one could take my numbers away from me, but apparently you can. So I was just like, I need to just stop competing. This is too much for me mentally. I'm getting really worked up on this stuff. My business was picking up. I had just opened up Fuel the Fire and I was doing a lot of work around nutrition counseling. That was what my business started as. And so my bill, my book was totally filled. And I was like, you know what, whatever. I'm just gonna do something for fun. I'm not gonna take fitness seriously. I just like want to go and enjoy myself. So I started doing CrossFit. Um, but little did I know I was gonna get roped into that. Not by anyone's fault. It's no one's fault but my own. It was my own choice. It was basically like coming into a space where a lot of people were competing, and I like resisted it for so long. And then, you know, people would make comments to me of like, dude, you're really strong, you know, you should like you're you've just started and you're like really good at a lot of these things, like you should compete. And I was like, no, no, no. Eventually I gave in. I was like, you know what, fine. I did like a maybe like a partner competition or something like that as my first one, and it went really well. So I was like, oh, you know what? This is harmless. This is fun, I'm enjoying it. And again, I took it very far. Um, competed for a few quite a few years, continued to do continued to do CrossFit for a few years. And again, I did well with it, and it felt good to finally feel strong and powerful again. There were certain elements of some competitions that I really struggled with, and I'd really beat myself up over it. It was really hard for me to like not be good at something, especially when it was competitive, and especially if I felt like I was letting my team down. So at this time though, this is where food started to get messy. I didn't know how to eat. Like going from bodybuilding to powerlifting is very different. You expend so much more energy doing um CrossFit. Sorry, I think I mixed it, going from bodybuilding slash powerlifting to CrossFit, very different ways of eating. I was expending, expending so much energy doing CrossFit and I didn't realize it. What started happening was like I was under-eating, and then when I would come home after training, I would like binge eat, but like I really needed, like I wasn't gaining weight, I was like maybe even losing weight. And I was like, oh my gosh, you know, so the binge was almost like validated because I like actually needed the calories. So it wasn't really a problem. It just became a habit. And again, I didn't even think of it as binge eating. It was like me replenishing myself, but I was eating a lot of food all at once. But I was like ravenous, hungry. And again, like my body really did need it because I wasn't eating enough for the training that I was doing. So I again, it was like I started a problem that I didn't even realize I had because, you know, even as a dietitian, I still couldn't like wrap my head around how much I really needed as a female. I think I was probably eating 4,000 calories at least, sometimes even 5,000 calories a day to match my output for CrossFit, which most people would think is like that's insane. That is so much. But I'm telling you again, like that's how I thought too. I was like, mmm, that is way too much food for like I'm like 5'1, almost 5'2. So I just I struggled to believe that this is really appropriate for my intake. But as time went on, I, you know, again, things got really stressful as the business grew. I was still in my 20s. You know, the business was growing and I I really felt like, oh my gosh, you know, I've reached success. I'm an amazing athlete. My business is booming, I look great, and I like I was so confident in everything that I accomplished. But there was a small piece of me that was still internally really, it was almost like things were really good. And then I still tried to, I was really starting to struggle with this feeling of like loneliness, like no one really understood what I was going through because I couldn't really, like, I don't think I really had any friends that fully could connect to what I was feeling. You know, I had friends that were entrepreneurs, but they had a different background, and I had friends with the same background that weren't entrepreneurs, and not very many athlete friends other than the ones that I competed with, who again had like very different lives outside of the gym than I did. So I felt super lost of where to go with the struggles that I was feeling. Um, I realized like, okay, part of this I need to like let go or like loosen the reins on maybe my business or how hard I'm pushing at work and like the gym. And I just want to feel good being like a normal person. I was still like weighing and measuring and tracking my food to make sure that I was nourishing myself enough and I was trying to find that balance and make sure that I was giving my body what it needed. But I still had like a lot of rules around food in the sense that I wanted to be very disciplined and I, you know, I would eat really well all whole foods all week and then allow myself like one cheat meal or cheat day. I don't even like the words cheat meal or cheat day anymore at this point, but then this was the language that I used. I realized like I just want to be a normal person. When I would close my eyes and think about that next version of myself, I wanted to get married, I wanted to have kids, I wanted to sit down and have meals with my family without worrying about how much I was eating and how much does this chicken weigh and all of this stuff. And so I just didn't know how to go from obsessively tracking and being really fit to like being a normal person, just being an average person that's just chilling. So going from athlete to post-athlet life and just living for longevity, health, and wellness. That was a difficult step, and I really struggled emotionally. And that is ultimately why I continued the binge eating. The binging was essentially numbing these emotions. It would bring me some joy while I would do it. I felt happy eating. Um, I got to eat so many different foods that I wouldn't like normally tell myself that it's cool to eat, or just like volumes that I wasn't used to having. But when I started to slow down with my training, I was no longer competing and I was really growing weary and tired of going to the gym all the time. You know, something that once brought me joy. Now I was just feeling like was an obligation and I was exhausted by it. Um, and from that point, things got messy. You know, I started gaining weight and I felt really uncomfortable in my body. I was like, this is not it. I don't feel good. I feel poofy and swollen, and I'm not confident in how I look. And that was much so much of my identity was wrapped up in that. I'm like, I'm a dietitian, I'm a fitness chicky, I have to look good. Otherwise, no one's gonna respect me in any of my fields. And I chose this career path. So this is the sacrifice I have to make. I just have to like really figure this out and buckle down, but I just could not. And that could have been part of why I needed to close the business. I think it was almost like I needed to step away from being a dietitian so I could work this out for myself and figure out what was wrong. Because I didn't really know what was going on. I only know in reflection. Um, and even then, there's like still more layers that come out. I think there's a lot of reasons that I made all of these choices that I did to close my business, walk away from competing. And for two years, I did not go to the gym. I had my business closed physically. I was just doing stuff online. All I did was like go on walks and do yoga for two years. Things finally felt like normal again in my body, and I finally figured out my relationship with food and had a good relationship with it where it looked like balance and I was enjoying the things that I was eating. I I just like I've not binged in years. And it is amazing that I was able to work through it. And I really realized how deep a lot of the roots of these emotional struggles were. You know, there were things from childhood I had to address. There were beliefs about myself that I've been unconsciously carrying so long. You know, I had to work out my relationship with food. I changed the way that I teach nutrition. Once I was really able to detangle my worth from my physical appearance, I felt like I had an actual glow up. Like I became someone that didn't really need to wear makeup all the time, like I used to. My skin got brighter, like I had used to struggle with acne and now I don't. Knock on wood. Don't come back now. But there were many ways that things were just different. Um, and I felt better in my body than I ever have. I don't feel the need to constantly scrutinize myself or judge myself or shame myself for how I look, what I ate, how much I moved. I honor what my body feels it needs. Yes, there are some days that I have to encourage myself lovingly to move my body, even because there's moments that I don't want to, but I choose gentle stuff. I think of like, yeah, you know what? Me working in my garden is movement, me walking is movement, me doing housework is movement, which I used to not count at all. But now I realize these movements are all very beneficial. With food, I incorporate a lot more freedom and play. I don't track calories or measure things anymore. Like I won't say 0% of the time. I do like acknowledge calories exist. I do acknowledge serving sizes. This helps me ensure that, like, yeah, I'm getting enough protein to balance my meals, how much are in things so I know what to add to make sure that I'm getting enough. So I'm not saying you completely ignore these things. I think intuitive eating, there's a lot more depth to it than just trusting your brain. You just have to understand nutrition, be conscious of nutrition, but there wasn't this emotional attachment and judgment I had to foods and how I ate and what that meant about me. That was the most important piece of that healing that I had to do. So I think I go into more depth in the blog about certain points, but I will say, like, there was a time that I started to struggle again. I worked with a startup eating disorder clinic, and it actually complicated my relationship with food in my body. I think I learned a lot, which was really beneficial, but that period of time was really stressful. Um because, you know, again, I, you know, this is really hard to get into depth about because, you know, things were not right internally, morally for me during that experience. And I think it showed up in my body. Our body always points us to things that are out of balance in our life. If we understand the language of our body, we will understand where where we need to put our focus on to grow, to evolve, to heal. My body was really negatively responding to me being in that experience. I was doing things that were going against what felt I shouldn't say I was going against. I was fighting against things that felt morally wrong, but I wasn't being heard. And that was an impossible situation for me. It was the wrong battle for me to fight. I was never gonna win. And I had to realize that my health was deteriorating at that point. Um, I started to notice that I was gaining weight, I couldn't sleep, I had this like terrible eye twitch that would not go away. I was experiencing vertigo, and I would cry. You know, I had an hour drive home every day and I would cry most days leaving because of how hard that struggle was to get things to a standard that I wanted them to be at. And I realized, you know, that's not the goal of this organization, and so I have to make that change. And, you know, I I don't know, like again, I I wish everyone the best. I had a lot of big lessons and teachers during that time, and I have a lot of appreciation and gratitude for many moments that I experienced. It just wasn't the right fit for me. Um, but I hung around longer than I should have. Um because when I commit to something, I like really deeply commit and I didn't want to let go. Um, and there were things that I had hoped that were going to come out of that situation, but they just weren't unfolding the way I had imagined. It made sense, and again, I I think that's why my body was revolting. Um but what I was really proud of myself for is even though no matter how hard that was, I didn't go back to binging, I didn't go back to shaming myself. You know, I still it it just proved to me that even though crazy things can happen, I'm still really far along in my journey. And I really healed those parts of me with my relationship with food and my body. They weeble wobbled, but never went to anything close to what it was before. It really made me re-evaluate and reflect on a lot of language and verbiage that I used and how I talked about food and my body and how to help other people through that. So I'm so grateful I did it because learning more about eating disorders kind of made me realize that I had some disordered eating patterns myself that I never really knew how to put into words. Um yeah. Yeah. Um, I think that part of my journey was necessary and it taught me a lot. So I wouldn't change it at at all, even though many moments were painful. I think these painful moments show you who you are, what you're capable of, and what's important to you. And also, of course, what still needs healing in you. The depths of that story will be for another day, but I was again really overall proud of myself that I had come so far and I was able to hold myself through those. And of course, with the support of my now fiance, my family, my friends, they really helped me make that shift and like super shout out to my dad because when I quit, I was so afraid. You know, I wanted to go full-time with fuel. I was just doing things spottily with fuel, um, very, very part-time with what little energy I had left. I had to pause for a little bit because I was so drained, but I jumped right back into it. I was so excited to be back in my business. And I, you know, I'm really thankful my dad gave me a space to do that. He owned, still owns it, a building, and he let me use one of the offices so that I could start fuel back up again. And I needed that because I was so scared that I wouldn't be able to do it again. You know, I had a tough time trusting myself to start over. And I know we're kind of veering from the topic here, but it's all connected because my work was also tied to, again, my wellness, my nutrition, my body. And I was trying to find a new way to teach nutrition that was in alignment with all of the things that I learned. And I didn't know how it was gonna look. And that's the part that's scary. But I figured it out. I said, you know what, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna stay committed to this. And I'm gonna teach what I learned and I'm gonna stand for what I believe in. And I'm not gonna let my ego go back just because I have some friends in the fitness field or colleagues in the fitness field that maybe still embody some of that old mindset that I no longer have brought with me into this version. It was finding how to integrate things that I almost like was afraid of for a period of time because I associated it with those difficult parts of my life. It was like, how do I go back to the gym and lift weights again without getting caught up in my ego? How do I start to play in the CrossFit realm without risking an injury? You know, how do I eat in a way that's balanced and still feel confident in my body without taking it to an extreme? So this was really the integration period. And it took me time to figure out what that was gonna look like and also to find that flow of my life again, realizing like these are the things that I need to make a priority, and everything else has to be secondary to that. And I said to myself, this time around, like my health is my number one priority. Everything else comes around that. I'm not gonna make excuses that I can't cook, I'm not gonna make excuses that I can't move my body or stretch or meditate. These things are number one. And they have to be. I was afraid again because I didn't want to become obsessed or so ego attached to it. But I look at it from honoring my body, honoring this gift of being in a human body that God gave me. What drives me now is so different than what drove me then. My mission has become so much deeper and so much more integrated into my life. And I love what I get to share with people now. And I do see a correlation, like business was kind of slow, but I was still working it out, still figuring it out. And then once I finally went all in on fuel the fire again, things flourished. Like not overnight, but within months, which is pretty crazy. Once I knew where my heart really was, once I figured out my relationship with nutrition and fitness, you know, now I'm really happy. I love going to the gym and moving my body. I love my walks in nature. I love doing my yoga. I love my stretching. I love doing work in the garden. And I love doing all the little things that I now honor and see and recognize as movement. I've become much more balanced, and that's the Libra in me, I'd like to say. And I love that I can have meals with my friends and my partner that I don't have to weigh and measure or worry about. I love that I can still make nutrition and health a priority without it becoming something that's like toxic, right? Something that allows me to be in my body, to be present, um, to enjoy life for what it is and the whole human experience. To integrate some things that I used to have like a really extreme relationship with. And so now in this space, things look different. Like I used to be someone that would go to the gym for three hours a day to train for a competition, to be the best at something. You know, I was extreme and weighing and measuring and obsessing and judging myself and looking in the mirror all the time. That version of me, I love her and I hold her and I appreciate what she has taught me. And I realized that was an important part of my journey. And I hope to support more people through that because many of us start there. We read things online, we go to the gym, we see results, we see things that are exciting, we feel strong, we feel powerful, and I love that. And you deserve that. And then there's a transition where it's like, okay, how do I hold this while still honoring maybe what I love about life and what I love about the human experience? Maybe there are some things that you have to let go of that don't fit that new version of you. Because that's what I struggled with. Letting go of certain things and then having a period of like being without all of them and then reintegrating them. And what I want to help people with is not to have to go through that like multiple year-long process of the time it took to figure it out. Because if I had asked for help, it probably would have gone a lot smoother, but I didn't because of my shame and embarrassment. Really, like those were the two biggest things. I was so embarrassed that I was going through it because I'm supposed to be the person that knows this. I'm a nutrition and fitness expert. I built a whole business around this. I have an education around this. I have multiple certifications in fitness. How could I not? How could I not know what to do? How could I be struggling? Um, but yeah, now here I am telling the world I am very at peace with that part of my journey. And I know that I will continue to grow in ways from this. And right now I'm so happy with where I'm at. I'm so at peace with where I'm at. And of course, I hope that it continues to evolve. I hope that it only gets better. Um, but yeah, so if you can relate to this and you are someone that is seeking that freedom, I highly encourage you to check out my food freedom reset. It is linked in the show notes. If you're ready to take it to the next level, like I mean, I always say start with the food freedom reset because it's 27 bucks and you can get the cookbook for only $17, which is like the cheapest way to work with me and to enter my world. Um, so if you're listening and you're curious, do it. Um anything after that, you know, I do still take health insurance. So if you are in the state of Pennsylvania, you can work with me through your health insurance. If you're outside of PA, you can still use your HSA to use for services. Um and of course, if you're really just lost in the sauce and you just don't know what to do and which way to look up, I am going to be offering. Um, I know there's 10 more days in July, but you know, I'm still offering it. I'm not saying that this is forever, but you can come in for a one on one free consultation. I'm also going to link that in the show notes. You can sign up for that and talk a little bit about more what it could look like to work with me. Um, but yeah, that's the end of today's episode. I love you guys so much.