New Beginnings

Sophie Halper: Vanderbilt Swimming 2020

I was 12 years old when my coach called me “one of the bigger girls” for the first time - he was explaining to me why I had to wear a tech suit to in-season meets when the rest of the girls were allowed to compete in practice suits.

“You’re a bigger girl, you don’t move through the water like the smaller girls.”

I remember leaving practice that day thinking to myself that I would never eat again. While the development of an eating disorder cannot be attributed to one reason alone, I’ve come to realize that that comment was a pivotal moment in my relationship with my body. I remember spending hours online every night researching “thinspiration” and diet plans, learning the calorie information in every single food item I ate, and planning out what I would eat days in advance. Come high school, I would heavily restrict my food through the school day and after school, I was so exhausted I could barely make it through practice and simply making it through practice was unacceptable to my coach – I wasn’t heavy in the water, I was running on fumes.

“Why are you so slow? Did you eat too much before practice, you look heavy in the water.”

I got stuck in a vicious cycle: I wasn’t performing because I was under-fueled and I restricted myself further because if I wasn’t performing, it had to be because I was too big.

Going to college and being away from home gave me a lot more liberty to indulge the eating disorder voice in my head – no more family dinner meant no obligation to eat dinner and my mom not handing me a bagel for breakfast on my way out the door in the morning meant no obligation to eat breakfast. I remember being so excited when I realized this newfound freedom, I could finally break 5 minutes in the 500 free, I could finally cut through the water like the smaller girls.

For a long time, I lived in a state of denial. I didn’t have an eating disorder, I was eating to excel at my sport, and to excel at my sport I had to be skinny. Halfway through college, I thought I had found the perfect balance. In reality, I was eating a fraction of what I needed to sustain the active lifestyle of a D1 collegiate athlete. As a result, I was stuck in the same cycle I found myself in during high school – undereating and underperforming.

“You burn thousands of calories at practice, you can eat whatever you want.”

After my senior season, I stopped swimming and due to COVID-19 and quarantine, could no longer work out, but the relationship between food and exercise I had developed over the past 10 years – exercise allows you to have food – followed me. Since I wasn’t burning thousands of calories, I couldn’t eat whatever I wanted and the food I “allowed” myself when I was exercising had to be cut out.

I was 22, just shy of a year from my final competition when I found myself in a cardiologist’s office; I was experiencing 5-10 episodes of heart arrhythmias and dizziness a day and I was scared. The day I got the diagnosis of mitral valve prolapse (a very common complication of eating disorders long-term), and I realized I couldn’t live in my comfortable state of denial, I had to face the facts. I was not being healthy, I was slowly shutting my body down.

Recovery is a much more complex process than one moment, but just like the comment my coach had made 10 years ago, this appointment was a pivotal moment in my relationship with food and my body but this time for the better.

Since starting my recovery, it’s been hard not to let regret get the best of me. What could I have done in the pool in those 10 years that I lost out on because I was underfeeding myself and ignoring the signs my body kept sending my way; what could I have done in school if my mind hadn’t been so preoccupied with food and my body and inspecting every inch of myself in the mirror. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that it’s not the past that matters but it’s about what I can do for both myself and others now that I am coming out the other side.

Reframing how I think about food has not been easy – a 10-year habit of restriction does not disappear overnight – but reevaluating the fundamental relationship between food and exercise has been instrumental in the process of changing the way I treat my body.

Exercise does not “allow” you food, food allows you to exercise, it gives you the carbs and proteins, and fats your body needs not only to function but to thrive. Every day for 10 years I lived the toxic mindset that food was my enemy and I’m so tired of it, so now it’s my time to change it.

I don’t really know how to end this post because the way I see it, there is no end. Recovery is a daily process and a daily fight and it’s one I’ve just started. What I do know, however, is that I feel better, both mentally and physically, than I ever have before and I cannot wait to see where that takes me.