Gymnastics didn't break me -- Losing it did.
- Katherine Jetleb
- Apr 8
- 8 min read
When I first sat down with my therapist, I told her my deepest, darkest secret: I have a raging eating disorder, and it's taking over my life.
Just minutes earlier, I had been telling her about my past as a competitive gymnast — how it had been my entire world until COVID hit and I left for university.
Almost immediately, I could see all her assumptions forming. To her, the connection probably seemed obvious, textbook even. Gymnastics is notoriously associated with eating disorders. To her, this must be the cause. Right?
Maybe that’s true for some. But it wasn’t exactly true for me.
I stopped her before she could say it out loud. “Before you say anything, I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But gymnastics didn’t cause this. If anything, it was the number one thing holding me together.
2017 International Aerobic Gymnastics Championships in Phoenix, Arizona - My first time representing Canada!
The Role of Competitive Gymnastics in My Life
Artistic & Aerobic Gymnastics
I began recreational gymnastics at age four, quickly becoming obsessed. I constantly practiced at home and dreamt of competing. Although the cost and time commitment made that difficult, my parents found a way to enrol me in a competitive program at age 12. I competed for four years across all events, but as I grew taller, I became frustrated with the physical limitations of the apparatuses and increasingly self-conscious.
At 16, I let my frustrations and low self-confidence win, and decided to step away from the sport. Soon after, my coach recruited me to her new aerobic gymnastics team, featuring a more diverse set of athletes (many of whom were taller and older than me). Aerobic gymnastics, while less known in North America, is gaining ground in Asia, South America, and some parts of Europe. Performed on a spring floor, routines can feature just the individual, partners, or a group. They are extremely fast-paced with high-energy music combining dance, strength, balance, flexibility, lifts (if partner or group) and acrobatics.
*For curious readers, watch my favourite aerobic individual woman routine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfeK3dMXsxU
Aerobics soon became my new passion, and I had the honour of representing Canada at the International Aerobic Championships 3 times, even earning a silver medal for my trio alongside my teammates in 2018.
The Intersection of Sport and Mental Health
I Have Always Struggled With Mental Health
When I was 4 years old, I was diagnosed with low-level autism. As a child, I was selectively mute, noticeably avoided eye contact, had intense, hours-long tantrums, and struggled with severe social anxiety. With the help of some very supportive teachers, friends, and coaches, I gradually grew out of much of this shyness and learned how to navigate social interactions.
Today, no one would ever guess I had autism, and in the rare times I've disclosed it to people, it has always felt as if they somewhat didn't really believe me. Sometimes, I question it myself. I am an extremely high-achiever, top student, have always been somewhat popular in school, never bullied, and I make friends easily. Autism has a stereotype, and clearly, I don't exactly fit that stereotype. It does, however, show up in quieter, invisible ways that are far too easy for others to overlook, but deeply felt.
It is well recognized in the scientific community that autism in females has historically been misunderstood. Emerging research suggests that many girls and women with autism present very differently than males, particularly with lower support needs. Females are more likely to engage in masking or camouflaging behaviours, where they consciously mimic social norms to blend in. We often have strong social skills, but may experience significant internal anxiety, sensory sensitivities, and emotional regulation challenges. As a result, our difficulties can be less visible, while still deeply impactful.
Too self-conscious to ask for help, I spent much of my life struggling quietly, even with deeply supportive parents and friends. These challenges were initially most intense in early childhood, but seemed to level out through middle and high school, coincidentally... as I grew up in the competitive gymnastics world.
In 2020, COVID-19 brought an abrupt end to my gymnastics career. It was then, that my eating disorder began to present itself to me.
The Origins of my Eating Disorder
"You're a gymnast, you must have to eat really healthy all the time"
"No, I'm a gymnast, I'm so active I can eat whatever I want!"
As a child, my brother and I were quite naturally thin, even underweight. Counterintuitively, my family ate fast food multiple times a week and I had a big appetite and sweet tooth, but my metabolism was always way ahead of me. I didn't grow up with an "almond mom". At gymnastics friends’ houses, I sometimes noticed their parents being quite strict about food. I always felt grateful to come from a household where I was free to eat what I wanted, without any perceived restriction feelings.
In high school, I began to gain weight, although I didn’t realize it at the time. If anything, I felt proud of how strong I looked. My upper body strength rivaled my male peers and I could easily outperform the other girls in P.E. When I was forced to quit gymnastics, I had a very detrimental realization: If I wanted to keep my muscle, I had to continue training like I was competing. And I wanted to keep that physique. So, with all that COVID lockdown time on my hands, I did just that. I trained every day, like I was getting ready for the olympics.
Quickly, this spiralled. My 60-minute daily exercise routine soon turned into a self-imposed 3 to 4 hour ordeal, including a daily 10km run followed by hours of weights and cardio at home. I wouldn’t let myself do anything else until I had met my own increasingly rigid and unreasonable standards.
Naturally, my focus then shifted heavily to diet and calories. If there is one turning point I can trace back to, it’s learning what a calorie was, which in hindsight feels like the start of a villain origin story. From that point onwards, my disorderly eating patterns and thoughts took many different forms, but no matter how long each phase lasted, it always returned, often stronger than the last time.
In my third year of University, I began to feel my anxiety and depression hit me hard, once again. I was bored without sport and I didn't particularly like the new degree I switched into: Recreation Management. I felt out of control with my life, just as I was about to move to Singapore for my University exchange. I felt out of control with everything, so I needed to be in control of something: how I look. I was determined to use my exchange as a channel to lose weight "in a healthy way" (as I swore to myself). I would walk more, start a workout routine again, party and drink less, eat healthy foods, and get my life back on track.
But Singapore did not do that for me. It did the opposite.
My first two weeks at the National University of Singapore were a mix of exploration, making international friends, and intense over-exercising paired with severe food restriction. My intention to lose weight in a healthy way quickly spiralled, and I soon found myself once again, in the depths of classic anorexia.
Learning to Snowboard
A Realization I had
A couple months ago, I was honoured to join the Shames Mountain team as their ski school director and rental shop manager for my recreation management university internship. Yet - I had never skied, snowboarded, or even been to a ski hill/resort!
I was excited, but to be honest, I don't remember much of my beginning days at the hill. I was still in a very bad spot with my eating disorder, and had virtually no mental or physical capacity left to think or anticipate the job ahead of me. However, all of a sudden, I was waxing skis and boards in the rental shop on top of a snow-capped mountain in Northern British Columbia. I loved my internship, it was the best job I've ever had and the best organization I've ever worked for. I was able to learn how to ski and snowboard for free all season, and I quickly became fully immersed in a new sport and welcoming community.
I have fallen in love with skiing and snowboarding. It gave me something to work at, something to look forward to, something to use my body for, and something to feel grounded in. As I grew deeper into the sport, my anorexia slowly began to retreat, once again.
Was the immersion in a new sport all I needed to begin loosening its grip, or was it simply giving me back a sense of purpose I had been missing all along? Or could it be that I was never really looking for a way out at all, but rather something that made life feel worth staying present in?
As my internship at Shames comes to an end, I find my anorexia, anxiety, and depression creeping back in once again. That dreaded new degree I switched into (recreation management) has actually been a blessing in disguise. I love this field, I love recreation, sports, tourism, hospitality, outdoor activities, and I couldn't imagine myself working in any other field.
But with the end of my internship, comes the end of my university career, and I am now once again, at a crossroad.
Present Days
Anorexia is widely thought to be the deadliest psychiatric illness in the world, producing the highest mortality rate of patients, and one of the hardest mental disorders to treat (Chesney, Goodwin, & Fazel, 2014).
Although I am now receiving help, I still struggle today. It will be a long journey to complete recovery, but I remain motivated and hopeful, although sometimes it feels completely overwhelming and impossible. I already miss snowboarding and my time working at the hill, and every night I find myself wishing for just one more run. It’s hard knowing I have to wait half a year to get back on the slopes.
Snowboarding gave me an outlet, a coping mechanism, and a distraction. It gave me a reason to get up each day, something to look forward to and something to work toward. Being on a board reminded me of my gymnastics days; my body was always sore, and I moved constantly through cycles of exhilaration, fear, and accomplishment.
It is now that I realize, sport, to me, is not an instigator of anorexia, depression, or anxiety. It is my anchor.
Conclusion
I now see clearly how sport can change someone’s life. For some, it builds friendships, confidence, discipline, or community. For others, it becomes a safe place during difficult times of life. For me, sport has been all of those things at different times. It has given me purpose when I felt lost, structure when life felt chaotic, and hope when things felt heavy.
It has challenged me physically, grew me mentally, and introduced me to new people, communities, and opportunities that I would have never found without it. Now, that most certainly does not mean sport is the all-encompassing cure of mental health. For many, including myself, it doesn't even always ease or erase feelings of struggle.
But now, I see what it can do: It can foster powerful human and environmental connection, give your life meaning, provide momentum and motivation in every day life tasks, and provide a reason to keep moving forward, and to keep waking up.
I have lived both with sport active in my life, and without it. And now, looking back and reflecting, it is undeniable how sport has changed my life for the better. It is one of the reasons I care so deeply about recreation inclusivity and accessibility today. Access to sport and recreation is not just about fun or fitness, it can shape one's identity, wellbeing, belonging, and the overall course of a person’s life.
As I move into my future career, that belief will stay with me. Whether through community recreation, tourism, or sport, I want to be part of creating environments where other people can experience that same sense of growth, belonging, and possibility. Sometimes all it takes is one opportunity, one welcoming space, or one new passion to change your mental health for the better.
References
Chesney, E., Goodwin, G. M., & Fazel, S. (2014). Risks of all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders: a meta-review. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 13(2), 153–160. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20128
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