While all athletes regardless of discipline are, to a degree, conscious of their weight, I believe that athletes in aesthetic sports (i.e. gymnastics, figure skating, synchronized swimming, dance, etc.) face greater pressure to maintain the "ideal" body shape, as these are not just sports-- they are art forms. Art forms which place a huge emphasis on aesthetic appeal.

I have been involved competitively in artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, ballet, and Latin dance throughout the course of my life, and I have experienced firsthand the distorted and destructive thinking many of my fellow athletes have regarding their bodies. The twisted views they have on their own personal physical appearance often leads them to live dangerously unhealthy lifestyles.

To give you guys a better sense of the paranoia with body image that is so prevalent in sports-- aesthetic sports in particular-- I will go back to summer of 2011, when I trained with the ZhuHai rhythmic gymnastics team in China.

Each morning before training, all the Chinese gymnasts would line up behind an electronic scale to weigh themselves. At the end of the day, after six hours of training, the same ritual would be repeated. The point of this was to ensure that the girls were staying stick-thin and losing enough weight per practice. One time, while we were taking a break mid-practice, the girls started a game to see who had the least number of love-handle "folds" when they bent over to the side. The winner, the girl with the least number of fat folds, would be rewarded with pride and admiration from fellow teammates. While this was merely a game, the premise behind the practice was sick. It showed that these girls, from the day they were selected to join this sports institution, that extreme thinness is valued as beauty above all else and that they should be ashamed of even their natural womanly curves.

For the longest time, I was a victim of this horrible obsession with body image. During my time as a gymnast, I hated my body. I constantly yearned to be skinnier, to have the "perfect" slender, long-legged, Balanchine figure.

2012 was the year I became dangerously thin. This was my peak year in rhythmic gymnastics, and so I faced increasing pressure to look "better" for competitions. My family and I vacationed on a cruise in Europe that summer and I was utterly terrified of gaining weight because of it. So determined was I to not gain a single pound during that cruise, that every day, I went to the gym at opening time, 6 a.m., worked out for a couple hours, then for the rest of the day, abstained from the wonderful cuisines the cruise had to offer. Every free minute on that vacation, you knew where to find me-- the gym. I lost over five pounds on that ten-day cruise trip. Did I regret that, in doing so, I spent little time with loved ones during our family vacation, deprived myself of European delicacies, and risked my health? At the time, the low number on the scale-- 90 lbs-- was enough to make me forget all I had sacrificed for the sake of transitory “beauty”.

In retrospect, I regret that once upon a time, I was so obsessed with something as superficial as body image that I nearly became anorexic. However, my story is not unique within the world of competitive athletics and our image-obsessed society. It is easy to look back and say, “Man, I was stupid for giving up my health and well-being for the sake of looking way too skinny”, but at the time, I was living under a delusion. Yes, it is partly the nature of gymnastics that forced me into my obsession with body image. However, this is not the sole reason why I persisted in my quest to being thin.

There was something addicting about that low number on the glass scale sitting in my parents’ bathroom. You lose a pound after fasting for a day or exercising for several hours, and the reward for such hard work is visible and clear-- a lower number. That’s when you start to get greedy. You’re down to a hundred and five-- but wouldn’t it be cool to get the number a bit lower? Just go one more pound. Yeah, a hundred and four is good. Then your friends and peers start to notice, and they shower you with compliments on your “great” appearance . Self-esteem points go up. It's a simple case of operant conditioning: your weight loss wins you praise and recognition. So let’s go down more, and maybe more praise and recognition from others will follow. Before you know it, you are down to ninety-five. You feel the physical symptoms of malnutrition-- dizziness, weakness, drowsiness. But now you’re addicted to that low number. You cannot bear to see the number rise, even a bit, for that would erase all the hard work and sacrifice you made to get there. There’s a false sense of control you get from self-starvation. Things in your life-- family, school, work, financial issues-- may be spiraling out of control, but the one thing you have control over is your weight. In reality, though, those with eating disorders are not in control at all. The demons have control of them.

When I stopped gymnastics, my obsession over body image diminished, but I would be lying if I said that I love my body. The remnants of my athletes’ body-obsessed mindset manifest itself to this day. I still have insecurities. I still feel guilty after indulging in chocolate cake. I still feel the spark of relief when I step on the scale and see that I’ve lost weight, or maintained a satisfactory number. But I’m working on it. I’m fighting to keep the demons at bay and love my body the way it is.

In the words of life coach, speaker, and best-selling author Steve Maraboli:

“There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself-- comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.”