If I Could Start Over: What I’d Do Differently as a Fighter Healing from Disordered Eating

The first time I decided to “go on a diet,” I was 12 years old.

I went through puberty earlier than most of my peers, which meant I was always a bit taller and bigger. That made me incredibly self-conscious. My family members would comment on my weight, telling me I looked “chubby” sometimes. Looking back, I wasn’t. I was healthy. I was growing. I was strong. But I internalized every word.

And how could I not? When the world around you is obsessed with subtraction, you learn very quickly that taking up space is a problem. It was the magazines on the rack, the “healthy” tips on the news, and the way every movie heroine looked like she was carved out of air. Every headline that screamed “Shred” or “Shrink” felt like a direct order. It seemed like everywhere I looked and turned, I was being told to make myself as small as possible, to the point of disappearing.

Comments from family members who were glued to their ideals from their home countries, feeling like they were entitled to comment and judge my body as part of their conversations, rather than seeing it as both a transitional period of my life and a growing body being able to support itself.

I also had acne. I felt ugly. And because I couldn’t control my skin, I fixated on the one thing I thought I could control: my weight. That morphed into a sick sense of control and a goal-oriented obsession with losing as much weight as possible.

By the time I found Muay Thai at 19 years old, I was already a veteran of self-loathing.

Bad Advice from Uninformed Coaches

One of my coaches suggested I follow his approach to cutting weight. In hindsight, he was the last person I should have been taking advice from. He was a classic yo-yo dieter who would blow up 40-50 pounds between his own fights, only to eat close to nothing during camp just to make weight. He eventually fizzled out due to injuries and an unsustainable way of training and eating.

But at the time, I thought he knew the “secret.”

And it wasn’t just him. Everyone else in the gym was doing the same thing. Water loading for over a month. Cutting out salt completely for long periods. Training in sauna suits every day. Believing that sweating more meant actual weight loss instead of just temporary water. Barely eating anything during fight camp. Treating temporary weight gain from rest and food as “getting so fat.”

Body checking was constant. We talked about our bodies constantly. And every conversation fed the disorder I was already drowning in.

The Normalization of Disorders

The fight world only made my issues worse, especially surrounding my obsession with numbers.

In hindsight, combat sports doesn’t just attract people who are already struggling with food and body image – it’s a breeding ground for disordered thinking in otherwise healthy individuals. We take the idea of “fighter discipline” and use it to normalize behavior that would be a red flag anywhere else.

We call starvation “fight camp.” We compliment people for looking lean while ignoring that they’re falling apart mentally and emotionally. We treat extreme restriction as dedication and suffering as proof of commitment.

For a long time, I believed I had to “earn” my food. If it was a rest day, I didn’t think I warranted a full meal. All the explicit and implicit messaging of the combat sports space made me internalize the idea that my body had to look a certain way to be taken seriously.

Even when I was performing well, I was constantly anxious about the scale, about calories, about macros. I was chasing an impossible version of “fighting fit”. One of my first coaches told me I should fight at 105 pounds, a weight I hadn’t seen since before I hit puberty. It wasn’t based on my body composition, my performance, or my health. It was just because I was 5’2″ and he thought I “should” be in that weight class.

I chased that number for a long time. When I first wanted to fight, he told me to get down to around 115 so I could fight at 110. No matter what drastic measures he told me to take, it wasn’t happening. My first fight ended up being at 115. I fought at 115 for a few more fights, and then they wanted me to make 110. Again, I couldn’t do it. My body wouldn’t do it despite months of dieting.

The numbers became a loop in my head that never shut off. It was a daily interrogation. How much do you weigh? How much do you have left to cut? What was the number yesterday? What will it be tomorrow? I’d wake up and the first thing I’d do, was step on the scale. Every meal was a math equation I couldn’t solve. If I eat these 200 calories now, how many grams will I be up by 6:00 AM? If I skip the water now, how much closer am I to that 110? It wasn’t even about being a fighter anymore; I was just a walking calculator, constantly checking my “math” against a scale that never seemed satisfied.

I lost my mind trying to lose weight during that fight camp. I ended up with a bad bone bruise that I had to pull out of the fight anyway.

Hitting Rock Bottom

What changed for me wasn’t a single realization. It was hitting rock bottom after a decade of this.

By that point, I had heard every “hack” in the book. Everyone in the gym was talking about something more extreme than the last. People casually discussing how easy it was for them to lose weight. Their drastic methods, like boiling chicken with no seasoning and eating nothing else. Talking about weight gain when it was just temporary water retention.

I was deep in a dark, depressive episode. And although a huge part of me still wanted to keep going to the gym and focus on losing those 10 pounds my coach had suggested, an internal voice told me that this was the time to step away. That I had to say “screw it” to trying to lose weight if I didn’t want this mentality to imprison me for the rest of my life (and possibly, make even a darker turn for the worse).

I didn’t have to listen to that voice. But I’m very, very happy I did.

I disappeared from Muay Thai for over a year. I just ran and moved my body without tracking calories. I had restricted and controlled myself for so long that I just needed to let go of the control.

It came with extreme guilt. Binge-purge tendencies. I gained a lot of weight, which was my worst fear at the time. It was chaotic and messy, and the whispers of people talking about my weight gain behind my back didn’t help.

But stepping away from the gym, away from those triggering conversations, away from the constant body talk, was the only way I could start to heal. I wasn’t sure what was happening to me. I just knew needed time away to gain perspective, and something inside me told me that if I kept training in that environment, I would break further.

Thailand Changed Everything

Eventually, I moved to Thailand. That was the real unlearning.

My first Thai trainer absolutely hated the Western way of starving for a fight. He’d look at me and say, “You no eat, you no power! Eat, have more power.” He made fun of Western fight camps and told me not to do things that way now that I was in Thailand. He didn’t care about the aesthetic. He cared about performance.

At first, it felt confusing. The body dysmorphia and the disordered eating habits still had a fair grip on me when I first heard it, so my priority still seemed to be losing weight, not “having power.” I didn’t have any fighters around me back home who role-modeled that concept either. Everyone had been starving themselves for fight camp.

But my Thai trainer was persistent. He encouraged me to eat more. He told me the weight would figure itself out. It was a refreshing take and the kind of support I needed to give myself permission to try. And because I was training on a professional schedule in Thailand, I had to eat more than I was used to just to function. I was eating more than I ever had in my life, and I was able to eventually, after many months, keep up with the Thai fighters who had been training their whole lives.

I had so much energy. It felt amazing. And I wasn’t thinking about food all the time.

When I gave myself permission to eat more and stress less, my fight weight actually became easier to maintain. My energy stabilized. My focus sharpened. And mentally, I felt so much freer. That internal noise quieted down enough for me to finally focus on training and improving again, rather than constantly monitoring my weight and focusing on an arbitrary number.

At several points, various people within the gym told me to try to fight at a lower weight class. I was told to try to make that weight. But by then, I was smarter. I knew my body didn’t work that way, and it wasn’t worth losing my mind again. “No,” I firmly said each and every time. After some resistance (afterall, they were used to people just nodding along, no matter the cost), they accepted that it wasn’t going to happen.

If I Were Starting Fresh Today

This isn’t a roadmap. Healing looks different for everyone. But if I could go back and do things differently (or if I were starting fresh today) here’s what I’d do:

1. Accept that weight goes up, down, and all around.

Weight naturally fluctuates. Water, sodium, hormones… they all play a role. Fighters literally manipulate water levels during fight week. A 5-pound shift overnight isn’t a crisis. It’s not permanent.

I spent years treating every fluctuation like a moral failure. If I could go back, I’d remind myself: your weight is not a measure of your worth.

2. Stop associating the purpose of training with weight loss.

Training is for skill development, for strengthening your body, for fun. It is NOT punishment. You don’t need to earn your food.

This one is tough, especially in a weight-based sport. But your body deserves better than that kind of relationship.

For more on reframing your relationship with weight in Muay Thai, I wrote about it here.

3. Give yourself permission to eat the foods you like.

All-or-nothing mindsets only backfire. One cookie or a weekly burger isn’t going to destroy your fight career. Restriction often leads to obsession, and that’s how disordered eating starts.

4. STOP fucking “cutting weight” all the time.

If you’re always in a deficit or constantly deprived, something’s off. Either you’re fighting at the wrong weight class, or your habits are unsustainable.

You can’t build longevity if you’re constantly running on empty.

When I finally stopped chasing 105 pounds and let my body settle where it wanted to be, I just stated the weight I wanted to fight at and declined anything lower. I didn’t negotiate. I didn’t explain. I just said no.

5. Make your mental health and overall well-being your priority.

If you still hate yourself through the process, what’s the point?

When you start prioritizing how you feel (your power, your recovery, your energy) over how you look, everything else becomes a lot more manageable. Trust me on this one.

6. Be consistent and persistent in telling others not to comment on your body.

This one is hard, especially in gyms where body talk is normalized. But being “in shape” doesn’t have one look, and no one has the right to make your body part of their casual conversation.

When people bring up my weight or my body, I change the topic. If it keeps coming up, I tell them directly: “My body isn’t a topic of conversation,” or “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Some people react like children when you set boundaries. Others apologize and get curious about why. Either way, you’re teaching people how to treat you. And more importantly, you are teaching them what you will accept.

7. Consider therapy. Seriously.

If you’re struggling with disordered eating, body dysmorphia, or the mental load of being a fighter, go to therapy. Get help. These issues are part of a much bigger problem, and trying to fix them alone while staying in a triggering environment is incredibly difficult. When I first learned about eating disorders while studying for my degree, the professor mentioned that many develop them for a sense of control. I didn’t identify with that statement at the time, but I can see in hindsight that it was the only sense of control I had for a very long time.

Muay Thai will be there for you. Your health has to come first.

8. Understand that balance is part of fighter discipline.

Fighter discipline isn’t just about pushing through pain or deprivation. It’s about knowing when to rest, when to fuel, when to step back.

Balance means not going to one extreme or the other. Not feeling deprived. Having balance with time, training, and social life. Not eliminating major food groups. Not following viral diets or trends.

Balance is what allows you to do this for years, not just for one fight camp.

The Unspoken Struggle

This is for anyone who’s experienced any form of body dysmorphia. I know most fighters have. Some people enter gym spaces with pre-existing issues, like me. Others develop them because of the pressure of making weight, cutting weight, and looking a certain way.

Either way, you’re not alone.

You don’t have to hate your body to be a good fighter. You don’t have to starve yourself to prove your discipline. You don’t have to chase someone else’s idea of what a fighter should look like.

More people understand than you know. Things will get better. You are resourceful, smart, and intuitive. And you don’t have to fix yourself by shrinking.

Go to therapy. Get help. Heal. Muay Thai will still be there for you.

And if I could tell you, whoever you are, reading this right now, anything, it’s this: You deserve to feel strong, fueled, and free. Not small, deprived, and anxious.

The sport doesn’t require you to hate yourself. The people who told you it does? They were wrong.

Start there.

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