By Karolina granda, Velocity Contributor
As a weekly routine, every Wednesday during English class in the eighth grade I would be called out to leave school an hour early.
Just as it does everyday, the clock read 2 p.m. Generally speaking, this isn’t too significant, but today was Wednesday.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt, can we have one of your students come down to the office? Her mom is here to pick her up,” said an employee over the intercom, week after week, month after month.
Of course, over time, other students noticed this pattern as well.
“You’re so lucky to be going home early so often,” a girl in my class told me one day.
I couldn’t formulate much of a response. Seeing the worried look of my mom an hour early each week, being told I was doing something wrong, I couldn’t see much luck in that.
When my mom showed up to pick me up, we drove in relative silence. Another quiet 15-minute drive to the hospital.
Up the elevator we went to the top floor of Advocate Christ Medical Center, the eating disorder clinic.
“Do you realize that you are slowly taking your own life away?” the eating disorder specialist asked me after noting down my weight and pulse.
As the tears my mom held in her eyes began to flow, I genuinely couldn’t care less. It did not matter to me that this had the potential of being my last month on this planet if I didn’t change something; my declining health and mere lack of ability to stand straight without feeling dizzy did not matter to me. To be honest, I didn’t even really care about how much I weighed or what size I wore as long as it was less. Less than yesterday. Less than last week. Smaller. Dizzier. Weaker. Paler. Sadder. Less of me.
Clinically, anorexia is defined as irrational fear of weight gain and restriction of food intake that leads to an underweight BMI. Clinically, this was how I was defined. This was not a part of me; this was me.
Defining yourself by your eating disorder gives you a clear purpose. When you are in desperate need of purpose, it doesn’t matter whether that purpose is detrimental or beneficial. The main goal is to have purpose. For a majority of my life, this was my purpose.
One of my most prominent physical complications that was caused by anorexia were my hands.
On this slightly chilly fall morning I looked down at my “purpose.” My hands, so cold, so purple, so numb, so lifeless. This excessive lack of nutrients lead me to have poor blood flow throughout my body, thus causing my hands to be so cold and purple. On this 50-degree day, I needed to wear gloves in order to comfortably be outdoors, or indoors for that matter. Sadly enough, this state of my hands was a measure of success at the time. My cold, shining trophies.
You can do better. Be colder. Be hungrier. They were colder last time? More purple? Oh no. Oh no. What happened? Are you getting healthier? Colder. Hungrier. Less. 200+300… -600…less. You can be-
*Knock* *knock*
My dad opened the door. “I’m about to head out to the gym. Do you want to go with me?”
“Sure.”
We showed up to the nearby Planet Fitness. To someone who has never been in a gym, this all seemed very overwhelming and crowded. There seemed to be so many machines to choose from. I wondered how people decided which machines they were going to use that day, or how much weight they wanted to add, or how long they used each machine for. The questions were endless.
Thankfully, I had my dad there to show me around. He showed me how to use machines such as leg extensions, leg curls, tricep extensions, and others that would appear relatively simple to most people, yet were foreign to me. He taught me how to gauge how much resistance each exercise required in comparison to other exercises. I was enjoying this. Although it had only been one workout, it felt good to be a little bit stronger, to work a little bit harder, to be a little bit healthier.
Once we got back home, he told my mom, “She did really well at the gym today. You could tell she was putting in the effort to learn and do the exercises.”
New purpose.
After several months of working out at Planet Fitness, I convinced my parents to get me a membership to Moraine Valley’s Health Fitness and Recreation Center. Here, they had free weights as opposed to only smith machines. This was where I truly discovered my new purpose and identity. I had always been a driven person, and this new gym membership allowed me to apply that drive to something meaningful, something that would mentally and physically build me up as opposed to tearing me down, something that allowed me to live freely rather than struggle through survival.
Without even necessarily setting the goal of becoming healthy, my love for lifting allowed me to regain my health. I wanted to lift more, I wanted to feel stronger, look stronger, become energized, and impress myself. In order to accomplish this, I needed to be fueled both mentally and physically.
I began doing research about nutrition and learning about various macro and micro nutrients and their benefits for physical performance and mental clarity. I started learning about lifting programs and strategies. I would create my own training blocks, writing down each exercise and its progression in a notebook that I carried around the gym. I wrote out the weight I lifted, how many sets I completed, how many reps, how fatigued I felt, or how strong I felt. I recorded all my lifts on my phone to watch back and be honest with myself about where improvement was needed, perfecting my form and my strategy.
Along with setting in my nutrition, my love for lifting motivated me to improve my sleep schedule, my study habits, my grades, social outings, family gatherings. Lifting truly lifted me back to life. I regained the energy to experience my life rather than tune it out.
Time passed, and I was now going into my sophomore year at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School. I saw that Stagg had a powerlifting program that began at the end of first semester. Although I was putting a great deal of time and effort into lifting, I was still afraid to make this jump and join the powerlifting program as it would place more pressure and officiality onto my lifts. Nonetheless, I set my fears aside and joined powerlifting.
February 26, 2022. IHSPLA Regional Powerlifting Meet. Time to show how hard I’ve worked.
Time seemed to have flown by so quickly that I hadn’t even taken in how much I’d changed in a matter of months. At the meet, students from other schools came up to me to compliment me on how strong I looked. While I moved weights that were my normal during the meet’s scheduled warm-up period, others watched in disbelief. They were impressed by how much I was lifting.
With chalk on my hands and lifting belt on my waist, there I was. A room full of people, judges and spotters to either side of me, yet all I could see were the weights. I could see myself lifting the weights before I even actually lifted them.
Visualize. Execute. Repeat. Visualize. Execute. Repeat. This was my mentality throughout the meet.
At the end of the competition, individual and school team awards were announced for first and second place based on one’s relative strength which is measured by one’s total poundage lifted in comparison to their body weight. As this meet was held at my high school, our powerlifting coach was the one who announced and provided awards.
“And in first place we have the lifter from the women’s 132 lb weight class with a total of 575 pounds. Congratulations!” my coach called out, smiling at me.
I jumped up to receive my medal. My cold, shiny trophy that I held in my warm, tan-colored hands.
A few months later, IHSPLA hosted another powerlifting meet, state championships. This meet was held at a different high school. Another day to visualize, execute, repeat.
This was a much larger crowd of people. A greater challenge.
Time for awards. Okay, so I may have won regionals, but there I was competing against four other schools as opposed to twenty three at state.
“And in first place is the lifter from the women’s 132-pound weight class with a total of 695 pounds, setting new state records for squat and total! Come on up to receive your award!” announced the high school’s powerlifting coach.
I ran up through the crowd to be awarded my trophy.
As I sat in the crowd while the remainder of awards were declared, I looked down at this shiny, golden piece of plastic with “first place” written on it. This was the first moment where I remember truly being able to take in how much I’ve changed, evolved, progressed. It was the first time I recognized how much strength my mind held alongside the darkness that used to diminish it.
Oftentimes we hear about the power of our own mind and through this experience, I’ve learned that is a concept that you can only have genuine faith in once you overcome your own self. See, you don’t need to be a powerlifter or have “big muscles” to be a strong human being. Your ability to work on evolving and changing your mentality is the greatest strength you can present to yourself and the world.
No matter where you are mentally right now, there is always room to improve. To recognize. To understand. To try. To love. To fear. To overcome. A physical trophy cannot fully represent a win or an ending. The real win comes from the process of evolving rather than its result.
Evolve, as we were meant to do.
Velocity 
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