My Short Stories 3B - by Annie: September 2014

Sunday 14 September 2014

Chapter 5G - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

I know how worried my loved ones were, even my trainer and physiotherapist, and everyone was telling how thin I had become, but not as a compliment. But, I didn’t care, and what’s worse is that I didn’t believe them. There were still pounds to lose, and I was still nowhere near being a size zero, which was the ultimate goal. I went from a size six to a size two in the blink of an eye, too fast to maintain, but I was on a mission.

I don’t know how I even had enough energy for the amount of work I put my body through. I can only think that it was the adrenaline of being so close to the end of the tunnel that carried me. I picked up the worst habits you could think of, like running on Red Bull. And, believe me, it does give you wings! Caffeine became my middle name. So dangerous. So stupid. There were days when I would look at myself in the mirror after a hot shower and write in the mirror the words I couldn’t say:

“I hate you.”

“Help.”

“I don’t want to die.”

The fuzzy silhouette of my face was barely visible as I wiped those words away, those thoughts from my head. “Just a few more weeks,” I kept telling myself, “you’re so strong, you can do this”. I kept packets of honey in my purse for when I felt so faint I needed a shot of sugar to keep me from dropping. Yet it was so easy.

I was travelling all over the world on my own, never under supervision, never accountable to anyone or anything besides showing up in the gym and doing my job. As long as I did that and competed well, no one asked questions. I was a young woman who should have known better, but the years of emotional abuse had warped my own morality. When I walked into World Championships, the thinnest I’d ever been, I gave it my all, and everyone noticed. It couldn’t have been more perfect, and I had the best competition of my life. When I qualified for the Beijing Olympic Games, I came back to life, woke up from the nightmare I was living, and opened my big eyes.

What I looked like didn’t matter anymore. I was free. I have never felt so alive, and gave in to all my senses. I stayed up all night celebrating with my family and teammates who had come to Greece to watch me. I ate and drank in excess, toasting the year and the place I had come from. I met my best friend the next week and had ten days on the beach in Greece to enjoy myself and relax. I came home a new woman, and was done with feeling vulnerable and scared, and now needed to concentrate on me and only me: my health, my body, my mind and soul. I needed to come to terms with what I had done to myself, and to start healing, and lean on my family. It was easier to run away and disappear for weeks at a time when I was struggling than to drag them into it. I know now that I can’t do everything on my own, and for those of you who stuck around long enough for me to realize that, you will be in my heart forever.

2008 was a year of learning and growth. I gained back most of my weight and almost had a career-ending injury mere months before the Olympics. The injury became my main focus, and my weight was a distant second for once. I cared more about being able to walk than what I looked like in my bathing suit, and was eye opening for me. After I got to the Games with my ankles both taped up so tightly that they were being held together, I knew that what I had overcome to get there meant more to me than what I looked like. I slid into those competitive suits one last time, and walked out there with no body image issues, no regrets, and no looking back.

(End of Chapter 5 – Rock Bottom – Alexandra Orlando’s Life as a Young Female Athlete)

Chapter 5F - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

After the meet, we had a two-day camp in Montreal with the team that would be going to Australia. I didn’t even participate. We were all warming up that cold February morning when I got pulled into a “meeting”. I walked into a room full of people with no one on my side. If I didn’t lose weight, I would not be able to compete at the Commonwealth Games. It was unacceptable to look the way I did and represent the country. I now take in that sentence, slowly this time, letting the words sink in. At the time, as an eighteen-year-old girl, I was hysterical, and couldn’t even talk. It was one of those full body cries that turn you into a blubbering mess. It was awful. The last year had built up inside of me, and I just let it out.

They directed me to Jenny Craig: an elite athlete, a national champion, having to call Jenny Craig to tell them I was fat and needed help. I couldn’t train, I couldn’t think. I got out of there so fast that my teammates knew exactly what had happened. To see them feel for me so strongly gave me hope that I could get through this, maybe.

No one would actually have stopped me from competing in Australia, but they poked and prodded me at every opportunity they could get. I went down there and won six gold medals, breaking a world record for my sport…at my size. That moment meant more to me than anything. What I looked like didn’t have to matter, and I wanted to show all those young girls out there that they don’t have to fit a mould to be accepted. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t do something.

I had accepted that I would never look like those girls I envied, but I would do whatever I could to get into the best shape I possibly could. This newfound plan seemed to work well for me mentally, but not physically. I would train for four hours, then hit the elliptical and treadmill each day for at least an hour and a half, and then go back to the gym to train again. I started working out with the greatest trainer I know, and without him, I never would have stayed sane. He was careful to let me do my thing, but he guided me. He was absolutely incredible, and not only was he my trainer, but my psychologist, mentor and friend. It was a breath of fresh air coming to see him every other day during those hard couple of months. He couldn’t care less what they told me, and thought that those people telling me I was overweight were crazy.

I was strong, powerful and dynamic, and he saw how beautiful that was and asked me if I wanted to be the best gymnast out there, one who could turn heads with her power and strength. I couldn’t help but smile. So that’s exactly what we did. When I was with him, I have never felt more healthy and athletic in my life. He brought me back to life, and I will never be able to thank him enough for that. When they broke me down, he picked me back up, and I would spend hour and hours at the gym with him because it felt like home.

After our sessions, he would sit down with me and make sure I ate properly, adding some chicken or protein to my plate, trying to make me understand how important it was to fuel my body with foods that would help, not hinder my potential. I was at my healthiest with him by my side. You get blinded when you are surrounded with so much negativity that you don’t know how to be positive anymore, and you become unable to understand the other side. I could hardly believe that there was any other way to look at myself. It didn’t matter how many times my parents told me I was beautiful or my sister tried to make me see how incredible I was – nothing worked. I could nod my head and say I understood, but I didn’t really believe it. Inside, I was twisted and torn up, making scrapbooks of models that I wanted to look like, and diaries of my food intake and body measurements. I would have probably kept that measuring tape under my pillow if I thought my mom wouldn’t have found it. I was leading this secret life and shutting the rest of the world out, not letting anyone get too close to me.

As it got closer to Olympic Qualifiers, the stress I placed on myself was more than I could bear. I was having the best training of my life and hitting personal bests in Europe and all over the world, but the pressure to be thin enough to make it to the Olympics caught up to me. I could now count down the weeks until I walked into Greece for the World Championships, and it all of a sudden dawned on me that there was not more fooling around with this weight thing. No more just monitoring the situation and making sure I was stable and healthy – I needed to do something drastic. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do it, but it’s scary what you can put your mind to when you feel so strongly about something. So, I did the unthinkable.

I starved myself until I could see the pounds melt off, only eating in front of people to make it seem as though everything was okay. The headaches and stomach torture were worth it, I told myself; and the more praise I received for losing weight, the more motivated I became. For the first time in my life, people were looking at me and smiling again, sighing in relief that I had finally cut weight. It was as if they thought I sat at home and stuffed my face with chocolate and pizza, Italian home-cooked meals and anything else I could find, being greedy, inconsiderate and careless, like I didn’t care, like I didn’t want to the Olympics bad enough…like I chose to be fat. I could see it on their faces. I was in complete denial the entire year, training eight hours a day on five hundred calories or less, trying to avoid water to dehydrate myself before I competed. It became so normal that I didn’t think anything of it. I loved it. No one dared to say a word, and the next, precious few months could be the end of it all.

(to be continued in Part G)

Chapter 5E - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

There were nights that I sat alone on the edge of the bathtub in my washroom, shaking, and holding a toothbrush in my hand, always just one step away from sticking it down my throat like so many girls I knew. The thought that would run through my mind terrified me. I would run the water to try and drown them out: “How hard could it be? You eat, then throw up and get rid of it as if it never happened. Other girls did it. It wasn’t abnormal. It was something to be proud of. The skinnier you got, the more other girls were in awe of you.” It was sick. I would overhear girls whining that they couldn’t do it, that they had spent hours in the bathroom trying to make their gag reflex kick in, but it just wouldn’t work. Their bodies were holding strong. This was a typical dinner conversation for us. You learned to admire the girls who were deathly skinny, asking yourself why you couldn’t look like that. But, even worse was figuring out how you were going to look like that against all odds.

Every competition that did not go well was almost always blamed on my weight. I would be called into hotel rooms and hear that I would be nowhere, no one, if things didn’t change. When I would miraculously lose weight, even though I didn’t perform well, the performance never mattered. I could do no wrong then, the mistakes weren’t as big of a deal. In the mind of a young girl, this pattern became ingrained in my head, and losing weight became the number one obstacle standing in my way. Even the weight I lost didn’t make me happy, it was never good enough. There was always more fat to lose, more inches to come off, and a smaller size to fit into. I would hole myself up on the top bunk in a tiny Parisian room, earphones in, and a supply of gum that would soothe the hunger pains, and I would furiously write in my journal until my head would ache, ignoring the pile of school work I had photocopied and lugged halfway around the world with me. This wasn’t real life, I couldn’t concentrate on school.

Those days, I would wake up in the morning and take the local bus to the gym alone, where I had to work out with a trainer who didn’t speak a word of English. He trained French boxers, and I was just along for the ride. My lunch break was my only alone time, and I would run across to the little convenience store from the sports complex, so mad, tired and upset, that I would buy individual packages of chocolate cake and eat them as if I hadn’t eaten in days. The locals passing me on the street would look at me like I was crazy. I would wolf it down as I walked back to the gym, knowing that I had to finish it or throw it away before I turned the corner and would be in sight of any potential onlookers from the gym. I walked back into the gym with a smirk on my face, thinking I had won some secret battle in my head, and I had tricked them. In the end, it was only putting me further into the ground, burying me deeper until I was so far over my head that nothing seemed real anymore.

I pride myself on never stepping on a scale in front of anyone, despite them desperately trying to get me to do so. I refused to subject myself to that in front of my teammates and everyone who mattered in our sport. I wouldn’t let them take my pride from me in that way. They took it in other ways, but I would never offer it up willingly. Today, I can’t look at a scale again as it brings back so many horrible memories of wishing and hoping that that little screen would flash a lower number, believing that it was lying to me. The very thought of standing on one gives me goose bumps, and I shudder when I have to step onto one for my doctor at my annual checkup. I don’t even look, I just let her write that number down and be done with it.

I’ll never define myself with a number ever again. It’s just a number, an insignificant few digits that can’t say anything about who you are, what you believe in or what you love. It doesn’t make you any more or less of a person. You are you, regardless of what the scale says. Don’t let it dictate your life. I learned how that “special” little number and the approval of others swayed my mood, my mindset, and my whole persona. The power it held was instrumental in the choices I made and how I perceived myself. I lost friends, potential boyfriends, even the relationship with some of my family members over what this was doing to me. Anything I put into my mouth would start me imagining where it would be going on my body the next day. Another piece of cheese would mean another thirty minutes on the elliptical. Was it worth it? That became my thought process, every minute of every day.

By the start of 2006, things hadn’t gotten any better. I was still too heavy, and the Commonwealth Games were coming up in Australia. These were my first, big multi-sport Games since the 2003 Pan American Games when I was just an inexperienced gymnast thrown into the spotlight. These Games were important for my country, and I needed to come out guns blazing and take it. During the last Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England, Canada won five gold medals out the possible six in rhythmic gymnastics, and so I had a reputation to live up to. My whole team knew it. We walked into the selection meet knowing that the judges were keeping in mind who should be heading Down Under, and who would make the top three that weekend. The pressure was on, and I came out on top, but there was something different about me and everyone saw it. I had lost my heart, my fire. I was a robot out there going through the motions because I had to. But, that love I had for the sport was missing.

(to be continued in Part F)

Chapter 5D - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

In a performance sport, you have to want to be noticed, and go out there and show them that. In these early years of battling my weight, I lost that special part of me, that fighter. Every day at the hotel of whatever city we happened to be in that week, Kiev, Paris or Moscow, there would be special room for everyone at the competition with buffets of food. Any time I came close to the buffet table, the eyes would be on me. I would scan the room seeing who was in there, how they were related to me, and if they knew our coaches or would rat me out. I stuck with lettuce and maybe some meat. There were days when I was so hungry that I would sneak a small piece of bread into the pocket of my Canadian tracksuit jacket, sweating over the anxiety of getting caught.

At the end of the year, my mother would find stale pieces of crumbled bread in my jackets. Something that once seemed normal was so horrific to me now. I would sew snacks into the lining of my suitcase should anyone ever come to my room unexpectedly. I became so crafty that I had a whole system down of how I was going to survive. I would starve myself for them; and it took years to admit it, but I did. Not only did I turn to coffee, but gum too. This should have been a dead giveaway to people, but I don’t think they wanted to believe it; and if they did know, what were they going to say? I had wanted one thing my entire life, and my weight, one of the worst issues a teenage girl can have, was the only thing standing in my way.

I was going to lose that weight in whatever way I could, and my teammates watched me do it. They were the ones that really saw what happened behind those closed hotel doors, our makeshift homes. They saw the real me. Those girls – Yana, Carly, Stef, Ali, Demi,… – you got me through it. You held my hand through the lowest part of my life, you wanted my dream to come true as much as I did, and you are all my beautiful sisters.

It was a vicious cycle that I seemed caught in for years. I think back to that scared little girl alone in my head. I was trying to be so strong, and knew that this weight issue was the reality of my sport. I chose this life. No one was forcing me to be there. My parents just wanted me to be happy. Never in my life did they push me to continue, and if anything, there were times when I’m sure they would have welcomed my retirement. Both 2005 and 2006 were rocky years for me where I was nowhere near the shape I should’ve been in. I couldn’t compete, and it was as if my head shut down my body. Negativity coursed through my veins, my self-confidence plummeted, and I dreaded walking off the floor after my event to face “them”.

At this level, it’s not just you and your coach anymore. It’s you and all the judges, gymnasts all around the world, your sport’s entire organization and the Olympic Committee in Canada – the people who are giving you money because you were supposed to be able to perform. Every mistake you make is observed, analyzed, and thanks to technology, replayed over and over again. Rankings and scores are flashed the second they happen, and broadcast into homes across the globe. Chat rooms and international Web forums scrutinize every gymnast, and I could never get the courage to look. My weight had become an international scandal. Forget that I was one of the best rhythmic gymnasts out there, that didn’t matter. The size of my thighs was way more important.

At my lowest, I would always be sent away for weeks at a time to compete and train in Europe, with only coaches for company. I remember feeling like I wanted to run away and never look back. The minute I sat down in the front seat of the loaded car, with my mom starting the very familiar drive to the airport, I turned into this miserable, sour thing. I knew exactly what I was walking into, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to get through it. Behind closed doors, thousands of miles from those people who could protect me, I felt hopeless. My life was in other hands – what I did, what I ate, where I slept. It was all carefully planned so that I would be whipped into shape no matter what the cost.

In some small town in France outside of Paris, or some Eastern European city, I would live day in and day out in my own little dungeon in my head. My coach would push me until I cracked, until I found that fourth wind out of pure anger and spite, wanting to show her that I wasn’t weak, that I could do it and wouldn’t give up. Those breakthroughs, those hours of pure adrenaline and raw drive to keep my legs moving – they were the best times of my life. The satisfaction of knowing that you could push through was better than any medal.

If I’d had a different body, I may have reached even greater heights, and I truly believe that. My weight brought any success I had a little notch back down, with more pressure mounting up. I dragged it around with me, felt it in my legs and my heart. I would have nightmares of feeling paralyzed, and awake in the middle of the night in cold sweats, imagining myself so heavy that I couldn’t move, so big that no one could bear to look at me. It’s a horrible feeling to get out of bed in the morning and have to strategically pick out what to wear to hide yourself from people. No matter how I would create an illusion that I was thinner, if my face didn’t thin out, then no one would believe it anyway. These are weeks of my life that I’ve blacked out from my memory, pretending like they never happened.

(to be continued in Part E)

Chapter 5C - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

No matter what I did, nothing seemed to work. It got to a point where I became so depressed I would lie awake in bed at night, numb, praying that I would wake up and miraculously everything would be like it used to be, that I would be one of the skinny girls. Food became a hot topic in my house, with my mother having to make different meals for all of us. I put my family through so much, I would come home from training and one little thing in the kitchen would set me off: Italian bread cut up for my dad and sister, pasta being served, or anything that I couldn’t eat. My temper was so short that my mood swings became unbearable in the house. I took all my anger, all of my hurt out on my mother, and she took it graciously and lovingly knowing that she couldn’t help me, when that’s all she wanted to do. She was always there with open arms.

The problem is that I never wanted them. It was weak in my mind, and I couldn’t believe that I had let all the pressure get to me. I was stronger than that, I was tougher than that, and I hated who I had become and couldn’t face myself, so I could never let anyone in to help me. There were days when I would rifle through the fridge screaming that there was no food, being a selfish, inconsiderate brat, throwing a temper tantrum and storming out of the kitchen, leaving my mother to break down – only to come back hours later when she wasn’t around, and eat as much as I could.

It made no sense, but I took everything out on my mother. Some days I would find her at the kitchen table silently crying, and I knew it was me. Her tears slowly ran down her face, hitting the countertop effortlessly. Just being in the kitchen was emotionally draining for me as everything became a forbidden enemy. I would avoid the room as much as I could, hoping to trick my stomach into thinking it didn’t need food. When my parents didn’t know what else to do with me, they took me to see a nutritionist. This backfired miserably. Not only did she tell me to eat more – but, to eat foods I was strictly not allowed: bread, potatoes - carbs.

Everything I put in my body was scrutinized and watched by everyone: my teammates, my parents, my coaches, our judges, anyone in the gymnastics world. It was as if it was disapproving to even eat, and I became paranoid. I could see people watching my portion sizes or what I drank. “How many calories were in that Gatorade?” I turned to Splenda and aspartame to get any flavor in anything, and would load it into my plain yogurt, coffee, tea, and cereal. Anything to give me flavour and cut calories. Let’s see how few calorie Alex could eat in one day without passing out.

And, when I could see what I could do and survive, it only fuelled me to keep going. I was burning a hole in my stomach with my habits, turning to coffee to keep me going through the day. I would wake up and hold out on eating for as long as possible, sometimes drinking eight cups of coffee a day to keep my head up in class and my body moving in training. When I caved, I would try and eat as healthy as possible, finding that I could lose 5 pounds in a week this way. I was never happier than when I was losing weight.

But then, I would get to day ten and crash, my stomach twisting, my body completely giving out and holding on to fat for dear life; and I would binge eat on anything I could find. It was disgusting, stuffing my face with literally anything, including whole boxes of cereal or crackers. I would feel so awful afterwards that I could barely contain myself, so disappointed that I could do that to myself. I put my body on this roller coaster for years, yo-yoing up and down, being able to gain or lose 10 pounds week to week. The worst part was that my performance suffered, and I was never truly comfortable competing again.

In my sport, you have to do the World Cup circuit with the other countries’ national champions. You had to be out there in front of the judges, consistently putting in solid performances to keep up with everyone else. It was a political nightmare, but it had to be done. The more you competed, the better you got and the more chances you had to be seen as one of them, the best in the world. At a competition with only twenty or twenty-five of the best rhythmic gymnasts in the world, I was always the biggest. Even if I lost a few pounds, I was still the fattest. I couldn’t compare to the 5’10” 100 pound girls who topped the podium. They would look at me as if I was an outcast, and would snicker and laugh when they saw me. I knew what they were thinking: “Is this fat cow actually any good? What is she doing here?” It ate slowly away at my confidence, and I would warm up and stay in the corner of the practice gym not wanting to be noticed.

(to be continued in Part D)

Chapter 5B - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

To be clear, I was muscular, almost 17 years old at 5’7” and about 130 pounds; which is pretty normal. I’m not saying I came back grossly overweight for my age. In fact, the very idea that I was “overweight” was disgusting and hysterical. I can only see it like that now, years later after I’ve had time to come to as much peace as I can with what was done to me, and what I was made to believe.

Unfortunately, for my sport, what you look like is just as important as what you do out there on the floor. The typical rhythmic gymnast should be as tall and as skinny as she can possibly be: a deadly stereotype that has driven girls to the hospital. The top girls look more like starved ballerinas than athletes. Even when my weight wasn’t an issue, I still never looked like that. I always had muscle and a body type that was not accepted but tolerated. Now, all of a sudden, after I just had the worst year of my life, not only was I not good enough to make it to the Olympics, but now I was too heavy to be competing for Canada.

I had come back to the gym in the fall with a few months to train before my first national competition in front of our whole community. Until then, I loved being among my teammates from coast to coast, showing the judges and coaches how much I had improved and how much I wanted to be there vying for the top spot. I was at my best when I was at a competition getting ready to do my thing; I lived to perform. It was my time.

Within two seconds of walking into the gym, all eyes were on me. I could hear the whispers, and feel the once-overs scanning me up and down, in shock at this new Alex. “What happened?” was the question of the week. My coach got attacked by everyone: parents, coaches and judges. The looks of pity, sadness, and just plain confusion were priceless. My confidence plummeted. Hit rock bottom. And then I had to squeeze myself into a skintight suit that left nothing to the imagination, and parade in front of hundreds of people who thought I was fat, and attempt to perform at my best. That small pain inside my chest that day was just the start of a hole that was being created inside me; the beginning of the eventual damage it would all cause, leaving me hollow and empty inside.

After the competition was over, and I had won my second national title regardless of being so “overweight”, I couldn’t even be proud of it as I saw them come right for me: coaches, judges and advisors. All I remember from those “meetings” were certain words: “heavy”, “lose weight”, “eating habits”, etc. I could barely look any of them in the eyes, and I sat there like a stone, head hung so low, biting back my tears and only moving slightly to lift my chest and take in small breaths. But, I could never hold them back.

I began to look at myself differently from that very first day, and would never see my own beauty through my own eyes again. It was gone, not that I didn’t try and fight them. From that moment on, the conversation was always about my weight. I saw their eyes on my thighs, my face. It was as if they knew exactly where that pound I gained yesterday went on my body. And, if I lost a pound, it didn’t matter because if it wasn’t 10 pounds, then it wasn’t worth a comment. I would show up in the gym to train every day, and cringe as I rolled on my thin black tights, tiny shorts and sports bra. Only this time, instead of the snug tank top I used to put on, I began to hide within my clothes, finding baggy t-shirts to throw on instead. I would layer and layer to somehow shrink inside them: thigh-high leg warmers, loose shirts…anything that hugged my curves was thrown under my bed and kept there.

My family must have seen what was going on, but what could they do? I was a quiet, moody, private, high performance 16-year-old athlete. I came home right after training, and the last thing I wanted to do was talk about my weight. My mother saw the inevitable breakdown, and how it went from bad to worse faster than she could have imagined. There were too many triggers and emotional traumas to count, but enough to get me to a point where I hated myself, and where hurting myself seemed the only option.

Those first international competitions with “The New Alex” brought ever more attention and more pressure for my immediate weight loss. There were no nutritionist consultations, no intelligent, healthy advice – just lose at least 5 kg by next week or the next competition. It was as if I was supposed to change dramatically overnight. With straight and absolutely dead serious faces, they would say that if I just at lettuce and some lean protein, then all our problems would be gone. I wasn’t sure if they ever really cared about me as a person, or cared more about what I could do for them. The future of our sport was on my shoulders, it seemed, and I felt the hawks hovering over me.

The funny thing was that I would never admit how deeply damaged I was. My friends and family knew I was battling with my body, trying to lose weight and make everyone happy, and they were there for me in the only way they knew how to be. My girlfriends would always watch me to make sure I was eating; and, if I wasn’t, they would gently confront me about it. And I thank them for that. It must’ve been so hard to watch me self-destruct, but also be so strong at the same time. I got pretty good at making people think that everything was really “okay, I swear”. It became a part of my life, a persona that I took on that hid my dirty little secret.

I poured my heart out in journals that I can’t even read today, and masked my problem from the world. I would pretend that I didn’t care, getting angry instead of hurt in front of my teammates, and using an “I could care less” attitude in public when actually, all I cared about was my body. I became obsessed with mirrors, trying to catch a glimpse of myself in windows, making sure I looked okay, that I was hiding myself, and that everything was perfectly in place. I would spend hours devising outfits to look like I didn’t hate my body, when all I did was pick myself apart. I was never happy with what I saw staring back at me. Shopping became a horror where I hated anything I put on and overanalyzed the sizes. Nothing was ever good enough, and I couldn’t lose weight as fast as I wanted, and didn’t understand why it was so hard.

I would stand in front of my mirror at home pinching my fat, sucking everything in and imagining what it would be like if I was that thin. I would take pictures of myself and compare them from week to week, getting a sick pleasure out of seeing my body shrink in front of my eyes, only to gain it all back in a few days. This was my crash diet phase. All I could think of was how to lose weight. It consumed me. All the while, I was training like a maniac and starting university, thrown into a new world of pressures to face. I read every magazine, every article, every piece of advice on speeding up your metabolism, shrinking sizes and dropping weight. I would see my girlfriends around me able to do it, so why couldn’t I? It was infuriating to wake up every day and hate myself, never wearing jeans because it showed too much of my body. Long sweaters became my life.

(to be continued in Part C)

Chapter 5A - Alexandra Orlando's Life as a Young Female Athlete - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits: An Olympian Uncovered”,

(beginning of Chapter 5 – Rock Bottom)

As related by Ms. Orlando (prior to the 2004 Olympic Qualifiers):

For any young person growing up in today’s cluttered, commercialized world, the pressure to be beautiful is all around us. What we really define as beauty has been twisted and contorted to mean something artificial, unattainable, and unhealthy. It fills our minds from the moment we wake up in the morning and see our favourite celebrities telling us what yogurt to eat or shampoo to use, to the girls at school or work that starve themselves to fit into a size zero. Even on a crowded subway, there are magazines in your face with images of “beauty” plastered all over them, re-shaped and re-coloured to look different, but in the end they’re all the same. The obsession with being thin is unfortunately here to stay. No matter how many designers say they won’t put deathly skinny models in their runway shows to help young women with their self-confidence, it doesn’t matter. It has seeped so far into our society and subconscious that I’ve seen 12-year-olds throwing up after they eat, or calling other girls fat.

How I loathe that word “fat”. A word that stings even as I say it. A word so small, yet powerful enough to make someone break down inside so slowing that they lose who they are. A meaning that can hit someone so hard, they will feel forever as though the wind has been knocked out of them when they look in the mirror; a constant reminder that they’re not good enough. The very use of that word from other women makes me sick to my stomach, especially when I see girls who are also struggling with coming into their own, bully the unpopular ones: the girls who look different, who are bigger. They use it against each other when competing for a job or a relationship.

The judgment that has begun to take over our lives hurts us as women more that we can possibly imagine. We judge a girl even before we know her: “There’s the fat girl no one thinks is going to be popular, so why would I want to spend time with her?” Or, they think that picking on her is so easy and makes them feel better about themselves. These are statements I’ve heard from the young women I coach and mentor, girls I passed in the hallways of the high school I worked in, and the business women gossiping at lunch. We use this language and then we laugh as if it’s acceptable. No one seems to have a problem with it at all, and the fact that women think it’s okay just allows men to do the same.

We’ve all been in a group of people when we’ve heard a guy describe some girl walking in as fat, and laughing. The response is usually well received at the table with the girls rolling their eyes, but accepting it, and most of the time joining in to make themselves feel more attractive. Does that really make you feel better knowing that you’ve hurt someone, knowing that they’ll cringe a little more when they look at themselves? Knowing that because of what you said or did, they will hide their bodies with layers of clothes and try and become invisible. I would know. I’ve been there.

My life in gymnastics revolved around what I looked like. Forget the inner beauty pep talk because that didn’t matter at all. How thin I should be was the most important question. When I was a little girl playing sports, I had no concept of how skinny I was and if that was a good thing or why that would even matter. I was so completely oblivious to the stress it caused women and the pressure they put on themselves. I believe the longer you stay in this bubble of self-love, the better grounded you are growing up, and the more likely you are to keep a good head on your shoulders when faced with adversity. When you’re exposed to people who accept others for who they are, you keep an open mind about embracing people who are different from you, whether it’s based on race, religion, or appearance.

That horrible, gut-wrenching feeling you get when someone attacks your racial background is the same as an attack on your appearance. The ability to make someone feel as low as they possibly can is a talent I never hope to master. I was a tiny little kid, and stayed pretty small throughout my adolescence. I was the shortest in my class, muscular but lean. I was what I wanted, whether it was trendy or not, and didn’t think twice about it. Those were the days. As I got older, I was still the happy tomboy, racing the guys and never being the one they looked at in “that” way. I was fit and an athlete, so the girls didn’t judge me either, and I was fortunate to never really be bullied or picked on. Sport was my saving grace.

It all happened so fast once I turned twelve and propelled into my high performance career. By fifteen, I was novice national champion and two-time junior Canadian national champion, racking up international trophies and medals, jetting around the world, climbing higher and higher. Life was good, and I never expected things to change because I was riding so fast and so high that I was just flying. Then, my entire life came crashing down all around me.

I missed qualifying for the 2004 Olympics; I tore two ligaments in my left ankle while tripping down the front steps of my house, rushing to practice. Not only was I recovering from the biggest disappointment of my life, and trying to put this crushing defeat behind me, but having to sit at home for three months on my couch nursing an ankle that would not cooperate with me, was hell. So, instead of being in the gym where I loved to be, and getting my mind off Athens, I was parked on my couch with too much time to think.

As a young female athlete, this age is always the trickiest. Your body starts to change, and for gymnasts, this can be career ending. If you grow too much too quickly, it can throw off your balance. And, if you spend a season trying to get used to it, you can miss your chance, and before you know it, you watch your career fizzle out in the blink of an eye. My problem wasn’t my height. I was growing slowly, still all legs, but those three months of “rest” drastically changed my body type. No longer was I this little bodiless girl. Breasts, hips and thighs later, I was the definition of a young woman. Not something my coaches were too pleased about.

I cursed my Italian ancestors for giving me this curvy shape and the worst thing was that I didn’t really notice my body changing until it was too late. I will never forget the look on their faces when I walked back into the gym for the first time. A mixture of disgust, confusion and panic, I think. Just what a self-conscious teenager really needs. From that day on everything changed, and my body became my obsession, my weakness.

(to be continued in Part B)