To All My Athletes
July 3, 2020
To all my athletes out there. To all my friends who look forward to time in the gym. To all my people who want to move their bodies and enjoy it.
During the early stages of fighting my eating disorder as a varsity highschool athlete, my dietitian wrote down the words pictured above... "Recovery is the foundation of your training." I didn’t believe her. I so strongly believed, in an attempt to take control, that my eating disorder was the foundation of my training. But each day this phrase from my beloved dietitian becomes more and more real for me.
Relationships with movement and exercise can be so difficult to navigate. Coaches who comment on bodies and the food their athletes consume, the “standard” placed on women when it comes to appearance, and social media filled with opinions on how to eat, exercise, lose weight, and look acceptably beautiful. We’re all susceptible to falling prey to the lies of diet culture, but those struggling with an eating disorder take these lies to the extreme, and it’s quite literally deadly.
These comments, opinions, beliefs, recommendations, and expectations… They are everywhere. In conversations around the dinner table with friends, in the gym, grocery store marketing, food labels, social media, and even in recommendations from doctors. So how do we turn a blind eye to the chaos and hold fast to what God, our Creator, says about us?
No matter what you look like, no matter how far you can run or how much you can lift, Jesus looks at you and thinks you are the most beautiful girl He has ever seen. The confidence we carry wherever we walk should not come from our appearance, it should come from the truth that the love Jesus has for us has never been, and will never be, dependent on what we look like. If you think changing your body will give you more confidence, I challenge you to think again. Security will only come from knowing that the King of the universe chooses you no matter what the mirror reflects. Who are we to drool over the setting sun, a blooming flower, ocean water so clear and blue, all created by God, but say we are the exception to His beauty. What makes us so special?!
I’m so thankful that the Lord has continued to cover me with who He says I am. I’m so thankful He’s given me the perspective to know that our battle isn’t against flesh and blood… it isn’t against the food we eat or the workout of the day… our battle is against the liar that tries to take away our worth in Jesus by telling us we are failures for eating a piece of cake at our best friend’s birthday party or missing a workout because our body needed rest that day. We have got to start fighting the enemy.
A question I ask myself when I begin to slip into eating disorder behaviors… Am I agreeing with what the enemy is telling me by making this food or exercise choice? If so, what does the Bible say in opposition to this lie?
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12