Texts from my personal trainer
I've tried every diet except for the one where I'm nice to myself
Trigger warning: This piece touches on eating disorders, body hatred, and fat phobia. Also, for the purpose of privacy, I’ve used a pseudonym for my trainer.
A few weeks before the holidays, I decided to hire a personal trainer. I didn’t want just any regular trainer though. No. I needed someone that specialized in fight sports.
Bonus points if they looked like they could kill me in a street fight.
To my delight, my prayers were answered in a timely manner when I met Armin about a week later. Born in Iran, Armin is an experienced fighter who sometimes gets punched repeatedly while blindfolded as part of his own training.
Perfect.
During our first meeting, we spent some time talking about my fitness goals. “It’s simple really,” I said matter-of-factly. “I want to get back into boxing and I need to drop 50 pounds by Christmas.” This would have been a reasonable timeline if Christmas had been say, 25 weeks away, but it was late October. Snow had fallen and every abandoned warehouse in the city was now a Spirit Halloween.
I knew my request was slightly deluded when I said it but I didn’t care. Sounding crazy was a small price to pay to get my point across: I wasn’t there to have fun. I was there to change the shape of my body as quick as humanly possible.
Before leaving, I headed to the front desk to add an unlimited membership to my account so I could workout as many times as I wanted outside of my personal training sessions. And although some might chalk this up to determination, do not mistake it as that. This was not coming from a place of self-respect.
Extremism has always played a role in my life but when it comes to diet and exercise, it is the star of the show. At any given point, I’m either bingeing or starving. Cancelling gym memberships or spending hours on the Stairmaster. Ordering too much takeout or cancelling dinner plans because I can’t track it in MyFitnessPal.
Over the years, I’ve started to call this weird behavioural pattern, the flip.
The flip is how I describe my jump from one end of the spectrum to the other. When it comes to what triggers it, the truth is, it varies. It could be something as cruel as a stranger calling me a fat pig on the sidewalk or as insignificant as the way it feels to button my jeans in the morning.
Regardless of how big or small the trigger is, what’s to follow is always the same. I hyper-fixate on the size of my body and the space it takes up. I obsess about it, finding any excuse to examine it in a mirror or in the reflection of a window. I take hundreds of images and compare them to images taken months prior. I try on everything in my closet and when I feel the tightness of the fabric, I flip.
Suddenly, I no longer eat carbs and olive oil makes me cry. I only eat one meal a day or I stop eating altogether if I’m resilient enough. I walk everywhere. I do sit ups before I sleep and all of my gym memberships are renewed.
I hire a personal trainer.
*
When you imagine a boxing gym, you might think of an abandoned shipyard with frozen meat hanging from the ceiling but the gym where I trained with Armin was not that kind of place.
It was a brand new facility with Instagram-worthy design and expensive hand soap in the bathroom. Everyone who went there was either fit, beautiful, or a combination of the two.
While I wrapped my hands trepidatiously, I felt compelled to remind Armin that I used to be in good shape but that I’m probably awful now. As if saying this repeatedly would somehow help me throughout the next hour.
As we moved through the session, I found myself apologizing profusely for missing a combo or needing a break or messing up the footwork. "Your body needs a bit of time to remember, Taylor. Be easy on yourself. You’re doing really well.”
I decided to stay for a group class after our session and then walked around the city until the little step counter on my phone hit ten thousand.
*
The problem with the flip is that it works.
When you bully yourself into overexercising and food restriction, your body will inevitably change as there's little room for choice. But a word to the wise: as the weight sheds, the toll on your well-being grows, and what's lost in weight is often gained in self-destruction.
Five weeks into my personal training sessions, I was on a high from the results. I felt smaller, I was hitting every combo, and thanks to Armin, I had surpassed a few of the personal records I wanted to hit with weightlifting.
According to the societal constructs of this floating rock we’re on, isn’t that what being healthy is? I may be in a mental prison ruled by my own vicious inner dialogue but I’m shrinking! I’m shrinking everyone!!!
I rest my head easy that night, thinking about how proud the stranger who called me a fat pig would be if he saw all of the progress I’ve made.
*
A few weeks before Christmas, I decided to do a group class before my personal training session. I skipped breakfast so that I could burn as many calories as possible in a fasted state. Work harder and smarter, am I right?
Armin and I would often talk about my relationship with food and my body during our sessions. I was an open book about the past but was careful with the details of how I was currently eating outside of general statements like, “my eating is going good, I’m trying to reduce carbs where I can and prioritize protein.”
After the group class, I changed and headed over to the weightlifting part of the gym. Armin let me know right away that it was going to be a tough workout. Weights, boxing drills, and then a cardio circuit.
Halfway through, I felt exhausted but instead of celebrating what I had done or how far I had come, I could not hear anything beyond the inner dialogue that I so casually let takeover my brain.
If I was smaller, this would be easier. If I hadn’t let myself gain weight, I could finish this. It’s actually really stupid that I’m even trying to do this. I’m so fat. Everyone is probably getting secondhand embarrassment from watching me right now. Is Armin embarrassed by me? I don’t deserve anything. I am nothing.
Mid-burpee I looked at Armin with tears welling up in my eyes and asked if we could stop. Before he had the chance to ask if I was okay, I sprinted to the bathroom with the expensive hand soap, collapsed on the floor, and sobbed.
*
The personal training package I bought was non-refundable. I called to check. I reluctantly showed up to the next workout with my head low.
To the amusement of my inner dialogue, I spent the weekend drinking and eating to the point of discomfort. See? This is who you really are. Ready to stop playing pretend now?
My hope was that we would jump right into the workout, leaving no room for discussion about what had happened but that is not how Armin operates.
He asked about it, kindly. And I told him everything, everything.
He listened very carefully and flinched at some of the words I used, almost as if their cruelty was directed at him instead of me. When I finished, he was quiet for a moment. He thanked me for sharing and proceeded to have a lengthy conversation with me about the importance of self-compassion, especially when it comes to training.
After our session, I went home instead of walking around the city. I prepared one of my favourite meals and slept for the rest of the day.
*
Christmas came and went. I was not 50 pounds lighter and yet I felt lighter in a different way. I wasn’t sure how to describe it but I could feel it in how I was speaking to myself.
I wrote Armin a card thanking him, for everything. I was moving across the country over the holidays so I would no longer be able to train with him but I wanted to let him know that I had gained something important from our time together and that I was very grateful for it.
After settling in from the move, my phone buzzed.
“Happy New Year, Taylor! Thanks for the lovely card and gifts, and more importantly thank you for training with me. You are as strong as you are beautiful, and I hope you see that more in yourself. Take care of your heart, and your body will follow. I hope this year is filled with peace and prosperity and passionate self-discovery. Hope to see you soon.”
Take care of your heart and your body will follow. There it was. A perfect articulation of the lightness I felt. A mantra for the way I should care for myself and a testament to the power of self-compassion in a world that has us convinced that wellness is on the other side of starvation and exhaustion.
It’s the quote I needed years ago and the one that I still need today. A reminder that the most important progress I will ever experience is felt, not seen.
Omg Taylor, what a beautiful well written piece of work! I loved it! That piece of advice from your Personal Trainer is worth it's weight in gold for all of us. We could all use it in our daily lives as women we're too hard on ourselves. We all have that one thing that nags at us but if we all took care of our heart( all our insecurities) then our bodies ( soul) would follow. I love that!
Keep them coming!!
Taylor!!!!…. I love your stories, they’re not stories, they’re creative expressions that go straight to my heart!!! Seriously, I continue to read them over and over again, you are truly gifted!! Also because I’m y Auntie Susie , my heart breaks when I read your experiences too. I only wish you could see what I see ! You are so beautiful in every way, but as much as I know what you go through with the constant battle of liking ourselves when we lose weight. Anyone can make themselves look amazing on the outside, but you my dear, are a true beauty inside and out!!… I love how you make me feel when I’m around you, you have the most delightful personality I have ever met!!!… you always make me feel special and beautiful, you’re so hilarious, kind, loving, smart,creative,talented,hardworking,adventurous, determined, and my list goes on and on about you and how lovely and loved you are! Taylor, I love you so much and I’m so proud of your accomplishments.
Auntie Sue