I fell in love for the first time when I was 15.

It was exhilarating, a feeling that I can only describe as the warm sensation of being home. Nothing else matters, you are okay right where you are in that moment, totally content in the joy of the energy that love is.

It was unconventional. It was hard at times.

It was also a love that taught me perfection doesn’t look like we think it does. Perfection is being right where you are in the moment but with the belief in tomorrow. Love breeds that, the unending sight line forward.

That took a lot of damn work to understand. Love takes a lot of damn work.

But it was still true love.

It was running.

And running continues to be one of my greatest teachers, one step in front of the other, the integrity of motion helps me carry myself in all areas of my life. Running has been with me through it all, and it was the tough love it brought into my life that helped me through some of the most difficult times. The disordered eating, the starving and the binging, the sleepless nights where my only blanket seemed to be tears, and the seething hatred I felt towards my body. Chewing and spitting food, the exposed ribcage that was almost as harsh as my mood most of the time. The elitism in my excelling running career, winning meets, all fuelled on the cleanest most perfect diet. The 5 am HIIT or core workouts before school, often the first of 3 workouts, including SuperFit in gym and sometimes 2 track practices. The cessation of my period and racing heart rate, that at the time I didn’t give a shit about if it meant the scale read under a certain amount.

 I was sick.

Many saw it. Few spoke about it.

Those that did, did not know how to do it in a way that would connect in my brain. A way that was empathetic or even remotely helpful.

I refused to believe I was not healthy. I ran. That IS health. I never threw up and I ate every day. THAT IS HEALTH.

People ask me why it happened all the time; what caused what I would later accept as my undiagnosed, “not sick enough” eating disorder. Many draw the conclusion that it was the running and the desire for thinness in a sport that seems to cultivate so many broken athletes through time.

I don’t blame running.

I don’t blame coaches.

I blame the culture.

A culture that systematically engrains a disorder in us from a very young age.

A culture that perpetuates an overt predilection for specific bodies.

A culture that teaches us, from the policy level right down to the intrapersonal level, to be dissatisfied with how we exist in the world while being inundated with ways to change our bodies. Ways to be better, look better, how to eat, how to dress. How to be perfect.

I strived for an empty stomach and more miles, faster times, always competing against myself and my body. I was convinced I could magically fuel myself enough in less than 24 hours to make up for my undernourished and incredibly low energy intake. I got angry when anyone tried to help me. I didn’t want help because I DIDN’T need help.

I strived for an empty stomach and more miles, faster times, always competing against myself and my body.

I had just earned a full ride scholarship to a division 1 running program and was about to run with some of the best, and you’re telling me I needed help? Ha! Looks like success to me.

Looks. Always looks.

I think perhaps that was one of the hardest things to understand in retrospect: the idea that when my body did change and just barley tipped the goal number my doctor put out, that I was recovered. The thinking that somehow, the weight I gained solved all the problems, I was magically normal again and that my mental health had nothing to do with my physical body. This was reinforced by everyone and everything around me. I looked healthy.

“You look so much better” and teasing jokes about how I was “looking a little chunky” that would send me spiralling into a claustrophobic day of me suffocating my desire to eat. Suddenly people felt okay addressing me when I looked relatively healthy again.

Yet I was still restricting whole food groups in the name of health. I was hungry so much of the time, counting calories and feeling like an absolute failure.. I would look at my body in the mirror and look at every error, reminiscing on how my smaller body was more acceptable for me. Better. Faster.

Still no period.

Cue the almighty hormonal birth control solution. The magic pill that I was told would help my body regulate itself and give me a normal period.

And oh boy would I be mad when I later begin to understand what birth control in the body actually did and that it was not the solution I was told it was.

When I arrived in college, I was suddenly surrounded by people that were also in love with running. The grind. The 6am wake up to double and the 3 hours allotted to practice in the afternoon. The eat, sleep, breath lifestyle of the college athlete also trying to be a student. Despite this, it became very clear to me, very fast that I was different. What I saw as harder work, better dedication, and a deeper love, others saw as the freshman that didn’t eat normal foods but was strangely preoccupied with them. The freshman that was on the scoring team, fast, but intense to a point of being crazy, because her only love was running.

The freshman that didn’t make it through the season because of a tibial stress fracture less than 2 weeks before conference championships.

The freshman with a now broken heart and identity crisis because the one thing in her life was suddenly stripped away.

Or that’s how I felt at first, broken and in denial. It felt like my world came crashing down. But it was also a moment that I would later understand to be pivotal in my relationship to my sport and to myself. It was a nudge to me that something needed to change and something I continue to reflect on to this day.

I wish I could say it was a 180 and it was an easy transition, but these things hardly are. Though that moment freshman year certainly sparked an energy in me to finally acknowledge myself and my screaming body for nourishment, it took at least 3 more years before I would find peace with my body, nutrition, and clarity in what the hell I was doing with my life. Along the way a changed major, 2 more stress fractures, stress reactions, numerous other injuries, a major foot surgery, and more pool hours than road miles. All the things that only just began to help understand that all these things were not the summation of running breaking my heart, but in fact it was me. Me existing in a very broken system that does not know how to address disordered eating and body image. I look back and wish I had more professional help in tackling my eating disorder and relationship to food. I truly believe I could have found trust in my body sooner than I did. But I was stuck in a system that told me birth control and weight changes were the solutions. I believed them.

 I believed them because this system is built on shushing the voices and body shaming, it celebrates how a body looks, not how it performs. It is built on the business of “wellness” culture and the next best way to fix all the errors we didn’t know we had. It is further perpetuated by poor medical knowledge and professionals that are downright idiots in how to speak to those that are struggling. It is a system, both in the athletic world and greater community that thrives on un-empowered patients who don’t ask questions because they have been taught that they shouldn’t question the professionals.

Above all else I was going to beat my 5 years of amenorrhea. I was going to beat the system that told me amenorrhea was a normal runner thing.

At one point, I did not think I could ever fully recover from my body-food hatred, I thought there would always be some underlying dysfunction with me and freedom from that. It was not until I was empowered enough to want to understand the underlying mechanisms in which our food and body culture operate that I really began to see that full recovery was indeed possible. On top of pursuing a nutrition education and learning the importance of fuel, eating more than I ever thought I could or needed, I had to curate a narrative for myself. A narrative to help me eat even when it was uncomfortable, rest when it was uncomfortable, and listen to my body, not everything around it even when it was uncomfortable. My narrative became not only being the best nutrition professional I could be in my future, but also putting my feminine health front and center. Above all else I was going to beat my 5 years of amenorrhea. I was going to beat the system that told me amenorrhea was a normal runner thing.

I did not magically wake up one day with an overwhelming desire to fight the fucked-up system we live in. Instead, it was a slow shift in perspective that was stimulated by some very important people that I am incredibly privileged to have in my life. They were the people that addressed me beyond an eating disorder and an athlete, they were the ones who listened to me and inspired me to discover myself, take down the walls I had built around what I thought was supposed to be my perfect athletic bubble. Friends that encouraged me to understand my body, live in my body, and respect my body while finding joy in it. One of my closest friends now, was one of the most instrumental people in my life in guiding me to understanding the amazing powers of the female body and menstruation. She opened new doors for me in what empowerment within my own body meant and understanding the unique cycles that are absolutely necessary to consider yourself a healthy female runner.

It wasn’t about fixing the eating disorder. It was about finding who I was beyond the eating disorder and running. Figuring out what other areas of life I could exist in at my fullest expression. I began to realize the more I opened up, the more energy I could bring to the world. The more I challenged the system, the more empowered I became. The more I let go, the more I began to trust my body again. The people who helped me find my voice were the most powerful things that helped me recover. In that voice, I started to share my story, raw and real, the lonely chaos yet erratic control that disordered eating causes.

The more I shared, the more I understood how big this problem was, the disordered culture we are living in with very few resources to combat it. I wrote, I spoke, I shared, I challenged, I raised my voice. I wanted to change something about it. I wanted to give those that needed help finding their voice the support they need, just like I had. I wanted my friends, my sisters, and my teammates to challenge the system too. I didn’t want to have to catch a teammate in my arms after a race again as she cried “you have to be unhealthy to be good here”. I don’t want that. I don’t want my beautiful sport, or any sport, any life to be riddled with the lies that you cannot be simultaneously happy and healthy while successful or that what your body looks like is more important than its health.

And change is what I will bring. I have dedicated my education and future career goals to that. I am not ashamed to say my passion for nutrition and its glorious science was indeed stemmed from my own disorder with it. In fact, I am proud to say that in my recovery I now know that every fiber of my body is here to help others take their own journey in recovery and find their voice. While my experiences are unique to me, disordered eating and disordered body relationships are indeed not even close to being uncommon. I will never stop talking about the untalked about and I will never stop pushing for change in our current food and sport culture.

For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I love you to my own body and my journey. I trust it again. I believe in it again.  Every single experience has been a lesson and I continue to grow in that, learning by reflecting, and growing by sharing it. In that self-trust, it seems so simple to me now, the clarity in how to make change happen to manifest your goals. Our bodies are always there for us, through the shit, through the change, through the resistance, through the discomfort. Trust in that and you will find clarity too.

If you are struggling, talk to someone. I promise you recovery is absolutely possible and absolutely worth the work it takes to get there.

For now, believe in the process and challenge to system. Together we will change it.