Erin is a 32-year old copywriter from Calgary, Alberta (Canada), who also teaches a variety of fitness classes in her spare time. A lover of sports, fitness and movement in general, she remembers making a rather sharp shift toward wellness sometime in her late 20s. It continues to be a struggle for her as she wrestles with the demons of years of eating disorders, exercise obsession and body image issues, but every day she wakes up and vows to try to celebrate even her very smallest achievements toward wellness.
What was the catalyst that shifted you toward wellness?
It was a combination of debilitating injuries from too much exercise, a heart rate that was out of control due to abusing ephedrine-based fat-burners and my general state of unwell due to my disordered eating patterns.
The specific incident, though, that snapped me back to reality, was when my resting heart rate spontaneously shot up to about 160 beats per minute. This was due to the ephedrine in my system, and it caused me incredible panic. I remember from some of the medical training I had taken when I was in the military, that one of the signs and symptoms of a heart attack is "a sense of doom." I can only describe my panic as a doom sensation. I think I was saved from death that day. And I realize how hokey that sounds, but if you've ever experienced that "sense of doom" that your brain sends out when your heart is in trouble, then you'd know. I was 26. At that moment, I realized how ridiculous the Pursuit of Skinniness was, and I stopped.
What has been your wellness recipe?
Finding movement that inspires me. I'm lucky, I guess, in that I love to move. I love getting my heart rate up and pushing myself to my physical limits.
Despite my love of aggressive physical pursuits, dance and yoga have actually been two big ingredients in my recipe, with a little bit of martial arts sprinkled on top for flavour. The quiet, inner strength I get from these disciplines really helps to keep me focused on my ongoing journey toward wellness. I like to celebrate the amazing things my body can do. It keeps me grounded, and away from obsessing about every calorie in, every calorie out.
Oh, and because this response is getting a little too Zen for my liking, let me also add that I looooove weight training. I love that feeling of being strong and capable.
I have to be careful to take a certain amount of time away from the gym, too. It's been incredibly important for me to have a couple of rest days per week, and to take up some new (not-fitness-related) hobbies.
What have been some of your greatest personal struggles on this journey?
Body image is such an ongoing struggle of mine. A combination of factors contribute to this:
- I'm tall. I'm big-boned. My skeleton is bigger than the average woman. I'm large and in charge, and I always will be. It's hard to be big in a world where women strive to be as teeny as possible.
- I'm a fitness instructor, and so are almost all of my friends. As a group, fitness instructors tend to be leaner than the average woman. Almost everyone in my life is on the extreme end of leanness. I'm surrounded by people who remind me of "the old Erin."
- My history with eating disorders. I know so many quick, easy and mind-blowingly unhealthy solutions for getting really skinny, really fast. But, obviously, I'm not going to go there.
What have you done to try to get past these challenges?
I try to think about the message I'm sending people around me. People who come to my fitness classes are looking to me to help them on their path to wellness. If I'm abusing ephedrine, starving myself and doing 6+ hours of cardio every day just to look lean, I am in no way, shape or form a good role model. I want everyone in the world to be truly WELL; in order to be authentic, I need to keep myself in the spectrum of healthy wellness.
Sometimes I remember back to how fixated, obsessed and self-absorbed I was. My whole world revolved around how I looked in the mirror. How sad is that? I don't consider myself a vain person at all, and yet for most of my young adult life, I fixated on every inch of flesh on my body - and this saddens me. It was an enormous waste of some of the potentially best years of my life (thankfully I have a lot of great years left - and I intend to enjoy them!). I am a better person than that. We all have a lot more to offer the world than just a good-looking container.
What is your wellness vision for your future? And what's your next step?
In my Future Perfect, I'm competely nonpartisan about how my body looks in comparison to everyone else. I don't need to love my body, but I don't want to hate it either. I want to simply acccept it and then quit thinking about it altogether.
One quick step I could take to make this happen is to unsubscribe to my (embarrasing) celebrity gossip blog feeds. The last thing I need is to watch Lindsay Lohan successfully starve herself down to perfect size 0 nymphette-ness via a diet of cigarettes and Red Bull.
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Do you want to share your Wellness Shift in Progress? If so, send me an email at erin@thewellnessshift.com. Your story can remain as anonymous as you like.
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