My Relationship To My Body Through Fitness Over The Years

Hey Fire Fam 👋

This week on the podcast, I did something a little scary. I sat down and told the whole story — the last 10+ years of my relationship with my body, fitness, and food.

All of it.

The highs, the injuries, the extremes, the healing.

If you've ever tied your worth to how your body looks or performs... this one's for you, love.

The Girl Who Wanted to Go Pro

If you looked at my fifth grade yearbook, you'd see it in my own handwriting: I want to be a WNBA player.

That was me. Obsessed with basketball. I lived by this rule that you had to do something 100 times in a row — if I made 98 left-hand layups and missed the 99th, I started over from zero. That was the intensity I brought to everything. Sports. School. Life.

And honestly? That drive gave me so much. When I stepped on the court, you could not tell me anything.

Teams built entire defenses just to stop me.

I felt strong. Powerful. Confident.

Until the day I wasn't.

The Injury That Changed Everything

I remember the game vividly. My brother was finally in the stands watching me — something that almost never happened. I made a steal, sprinted down the court, pivoted hard... and tore my ACL.

No one touched me. My own body took me down.

My brother carried me off the court. Even now, telling that story, I get choked up.

Nine months post-surgery, I came back through summer soccer. And in the 90th minute of a game — again, no one touched me — I heard that same sound. Same knee. I punched the ground. I was so angry.

I was never the same player after that. And here's what nobody tells you about athletic injuries: it's not just your knee that tears. It's your identity. My dreams were dying, and I stopped feeling good in my body for the first time in my life.

That's when the food stuff started. Skipping meals. Replacing lunch with some bubbly V8 drink. Chasing "skinny" because that's what everyone around me was chasing.

Trading One Extreme for Another

In college, I got a job at GNC (shout out to my GNC fam 💛), and my boss — a bodybuilder — told me I had the natural physique for figure competitions. My ears perked right up. A way to feel strong and powerful again?

Sign me up.

So I dove in.

Meal plans.

Training.

The stage.

I placed in my first show.

But behind the trophies, things got dark:

• Eating exclusively tilapia and asparagus before shows — a dollop of peanut butter if I was lucky

• Chewing food and spitting it out just to taste something

• "Cheat meals" where I ate until I was physically in pain

And here's the wild part: it was all so normalized in my fitness circles that I didn't even recognize it as disordered. I was hashtagging #EatCleanTrainDirty and building my whole identity around being that fit chick.

From bodybuilding I moved to powerlifting, then CrossFit. New sport, same pattern: compete, push, attach my worth to performance.

Meanwhile, my body needed 4,000–5,000 calories a day for my training — and because I couldn't believe a 5'1" woman needed that much, I under-ate all day and binged at night. I didn't even call it binging. I called it "replenishing."

When It All Fell Apart

Eventually I hit a wall. I was exhausted by the gym — something that once brought me pure joy now felt like an obligation. I gained weight. I felt puffy, swollen, disconnected.

And the shame spiral hit hard:

I'm a dietitian. I'm supposed to know this. How could I be struggling?

That shame kept me from asking for help for YEARS, friend. I closed my physical business. I stepped away from competing. For two years, all I did was walk and do yoga.

And you know what? That's when things finally started to shift.

The Healing (and the Glow Up)

Slowing down forced me to face what was actually underneath it all — childhood beliefs, unconscious stories about my worth, the way I'd fused my identity with my output and my appearance.

When I finally detangled my self-worth from my physical appearance, I had an actual glow up. My skin cleared. I stopped needing to perform confidence — I actually felt it. I haven't binged in years. I sit down to meals with my fiancé and my friends without weighing, measuring, or mentally calculating anything.

And here's what I want you to hear: I didn't abandon health to get here. I still lift. I still honor nutrition — I'm literally a registered dietitian and board-certified sports dietitian. But now I count my garden work as movement. My walks. My yoga. I eat with awareness instead of obsession.

My body isn't a project anymore. It's my home. 🏡

What I Wish I'd Known Sooner

If I had asked for help, this journey wouldn't have taken me years. But shame and embarrassment kept me silent — because I was "supposed to be the expert."

So if you're reading this and you see yourself in any part of my story — the identity wrapped up in your body, the food rules, the all-or-nothing swings, the exhaustion of holding it all together — I want you to know:

There is nothing wrong with you. And you don't have to figure this out alone.

Ready to Write Your Own Healing Story?

This is exactly why I created Body and Soul Freedom — my signature 1:1 program that combines real nutrition science with the deeper work: nervous system regulation, belief reprogramming, and reconnecting with your body from the inside out.

It's everything I wish I'd had during those messy middle years.

✨ Book your free Body and Soul Freedom consultation — let's talk about what this could look like for you. No pressure, just a real conversation.

And if you're not ready for 1:1 yet, start with the Food Freedom Reset — it's just $27 and it's the perfect entry point into this work.

Grab the Food Freedom Reset

You can also snag my Meal Prep Cookbook for $27 (or $17 when you guy the Food Freedom Reset through the link above) — every recipe has 30+ grams of protein and zero diet-culture energy. Get the cookbook

🎧 Want the full, unfiltered story? Listen to Episode 58 of the Fuel the Fire podcast

I love you guys so much. Your body was never the problem — and healing is absolutely possible for you, too.

Xo, Shanon 🔥