About Your Coach, Azul

This is a transformation story.

But it’s not your typical fitness transformation story.

It's how I went from dieting, counting calories, and over-training, anxious and miserable in my body to loving, caring, appreciating, and using food and fitness to take care of my body - becoming the happiest and healthiest I've ever been - and why I made it my mission to help others do the same.

I hope if you see a part of yourself in this story, you come to understand, as I did, that you are enough as you are, right now, and that your body is worth taking care of, not fighting against.

“Beautiful” Beginnings

As a kid, I can remember always having people comment on how I looked. I can recognize in some ways this seems like a privilege, and in some ways it is, I’m not going to even deny that. But this isn’t a “woe is me, feel bad because I was told I was pretty” story, so please keep reading. What I will say is having everyone always focus on your appearance does come with its own issues. We’ve got to do better at acknowledging and celebrating who people are instead of what they look like. My sense of self-worth was tied to how I looked. Not how smart I was. Not how funny I was. Not how kind I was. Not how good of a daughter or friend I was. I grew up very aware of how I looked at all times. My relationship with myself and my body was solely based on how it looked, and it had to look a certain way. But bodies change, that’s the miracle of life, so, here lies the beginning of a huge problem.

Not a Role Model in Sight

At some point in high school, a family member commented on a body part of mine and I completely spiraled. I became hyper-aware of every comment about my body from then on. Every time I saw certain family members they’d either comment on how good I looked and asked if I lost weight or they’d ask if I gained weight and make no comment thereafter. That happens, still to this day. Truth be told, even if this comment had never been made, I probably still would have gone down this path - I was surrounded by women that only ever had negative things to say about their bodies. Not once did I ever hear a woman say how much they loved something about themselves, or simply, not comment on their body at all. We don’t realize the impact of what we say and how it affects everyone around us, especially children. That coupled with the fact that I grew up in the 90s - the era of “heroin chic” - was a recipe for disaster.

Calorie Counting and Anxiety

In college, it got worse. I started working out every day, sometimes for 2-3 hrs, either going to the gym or going for a run. I started dieting and restricting my calorie intake. I got mad at my best friend once for baking cookies for me. I started and stopped different diets. I started giving food morals: “bad” vs good” and decided if I was a better or worse person based on what I ate. I judged others for what they ate. Whenever I looked in the mirror I’d pick at something I hated about my body. I was tracking everything I ate on MyFitnessPal - counting almonds, freaking out about whether I was supposed to weigh (yes, I bought a food scale) my chicken cooked or pre-cooked, asking what kind of oil they used at the restaurant I was at, trying to remember the number of chips I ate, googling nutrition labels that I could scan online if I forgot to earlier that day, etc. I started getting really anxious about eating out because I couldn’t control my meals. I truly was the worst person to be around food with. I think about my younger sister who grew up with her role model always judging and critiquing the things we ate, and listening to me spew self-hate, and it truly hurts. I missed out on so much in life during this time because I was so obsessed with myself and how I looked. I wish I had been more present during that time in my life and given people I loved the attention they deserved. But that’s what this is, an obsession with the self.

It Worked Until It Didn’t

It all worked, at first, like it usually does. I lost weight. I had abs. I thought I looked good. Then, I developed a binge eating disorder. I would eat my food and then my roommates’ food without them knowing (because they bought all the good snacks I didn’t let myself have). I would hide food and sneak away to eat when no one was looking. It was embarrassing. I was so ashamed of myself but I couldn’t help it. To give you an idea of what binge eating looks like (because it’s not the same thing as overeating): It feels like someone else has taken over your body and you can’t stop no matter how much you kick or scream. The voice inside your head is pleading with you to stop, but there is no stopping. If you don’t have food, you cook or you bake food or you go out and buy food. You eat other people’s food and you hide the evidence. You start to feel physically ill, but you don’t stop there, because now you feel like you deserve to punish yourself by continuing to eat. You don’t stop until you literally can’t eat anymore and then you lie there, feeling like you have to vomit, disgusted with yourself. You’re sad. You’re angry. You’re ashamed. You’re embarrassed. You feel broken. And in my case, I wouldn’t let myself vomit because I believed I deserved to feel all those things. Sit with what I had done.

It’s truly a terribly dark place to be.

Then you decide the next day, you have to make up for everything you ate by working out more and eating less, and on and on the vicious cycle continues.

This lasted a few years. Some months were worse than others.

Exercising To Stay Thin

During this entire time, my relationship with exercise was terrible as well. The only reason I worked out was to be skinnier. Forget being strong. Forget being healthy. Working out is how I earned my food or how I punished myself when I over-ate. I was terrified of what would happen if I stopped. I didn’t enjoy what I was doing, I did it because it made me look a certain way, and as long as I looked a certain way, I could be happy. The caveat was that I wasn’t. No one tells you that, when you hit your goal weight, you might be happy for a moment, but then you get used to how you look in the mirror and convince yourself you need to lose more - constantly chasing the “last 5 lbs,” and you’ll always be so scared to gain it all back. It never ends and you live with this constant fear. I didn’t know that confidence and body image have nothing to do with what size you are, there’s no physical fix, it’s a mental one.

The Beginning of the End

After college, I developed some GI issues (I won’t get too detailed). I had to start taking laxatives every once in a while because I’d go a week without going to the bathroom. I was convinced I had SIBO or IBS because I was ALWAYS bloated. I took some tests and everything came back normal. I went to see a nutritionist and she had me do a food journal, and to my surprise, the issue wasn’t what I was eating, it was that I wasn’t eating enough. That’s where I first learned that 1200 calories wasn’t the magic number I thought it was. I learned the importance of all the macro-nutrients (protein, carbs, and fats) as well as fiber, hydration, etc. From there I became really interested in nutrition and decided to enroll in the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. I wanted to learn all about nutrition (for the wrong reasons, I’ll admit) and that course forever changed my life. That’s when I started to understand that health is so much more than what you eat and how often you exercise.

Wait, Not Everyone Thinks Like This?

I started to recognize that my relationship with nutrition and exercise wasn’t a healthy one and I wanted to learn more. You mean, not everyone thinks about food every second of the day? I started following certain Instagram accounts, reading books, listening to podcasts, researching articles online, taking free courses, etc. I was fascinated by the health and wellness world. I started bringing up my concerns about my mental health and eating disorder to my family and friends, but no one took me seriously because I was, at the end of the day, thin. I was known as the “healthy” one and people came to me for advice. They looked up to me because I was always eating really healthy and working out. It made me take myself less seriously and I never got diagnosed because I thought what I was going through was so silly and stupid. Finally, my boyfriend at the time who was a med school student sent me a questionnaire he just learned about in one of his classes. I filled it out, and that’s when I came face to face with the realization that I struggled with a binge eating disorder coupled with orthorexia. That moment helped me see myself, but honestly, it was hard, because since I didn’t really know how to help myself, I didn’t know how to tell people to help me either. It almost made it worse. If they tried to get me to eat, I’d get upset. If they took something away from me, I’d get upset. It was like walking on eggshells. Truth be told, if I could do it all over, I would have sought professional help out much sooner.

I would love to say that’s where I finally got better, but it took years after that.

The Moment

I’ll never forget the day it all changed for me though. The beginning of something new.

I had a binge-eating episode, and it was so bad I had to call out of work sick. I was so mad at myself, but then I stopped and remembered everything that I had learned - change starts with how you respond after, that’s how you break the cycle. I had to be who I needed right there and then. I hugged myself in a fetal position and told myself, “You’re okay.” I repeated that over and over again. I told myself I loved myself and that everything would be fine. Instead of reverting to my old negative self-talk of, “You’re disgusting. I can’t believe you. Look at you. You deserve to feel like this. Gross.” I decided I didn’t deserve that. I deserved better. I deserved to be on my side. I’m tearing up thinking about that moment now.

After that, it did get easier. I still binged, but it went from 2-3x/week to 1x/week, to a few times a month, to one time a month, to one time a year, to not at all.

Lessons

Here are a few crucial things I learned:

• I learned that I needed to eat more and nourish myself or my body would force me to binge to protect myself.

• I learned to not restrict food groups because it would trigger intense cravings.

• I learned that I needed to be my own best friend so I could get myself through tough times.

• I learned to recognize emotional triggers and how to help myself through them in more ways than just through eating.

• I learned to create boundaries with certain friends and family members.

• I learned the importance of unfollowing certain accounts on Instagram and following more helpful accounts.

• I learned that if I exercised with the right intention, I’d actually enjoy it and therefore do it more often.

• I learned that what I look like will never impact someone’s life, but how I make them feel will.

Through it all, the most important lesson I learned was that the healing journey starts from within.

How you treat yourself. How you talk to yourself. How you see yourself guides all your actions and choices.

I could have never made the shift I did until I understood that who I was at that moment was enough.

New Beginnings

I’m happy to say that my relationship with food, fitness, and myself has completely changed.

I respect and appreciate my body and all that it does and I want to continue to get stronger so I can keep doing the things that I love. I only get one body, and I want to treat it with the love and respect it deserves. My body is more than what it looks like, it’s truly miraculous everything it does on a daily basis without me having to think about it. It’s how I navigate through this world, and I will take care of it the best I can. I will eat enough so that it has energy and nutrients to function and I will eat well so I can help it fight off disease and illness. I will exercise and move often so it stays stronger and sturdy and helps me move through this life with ease, and pain-free. I will keep it hydrated. I will get enough sleep so that it always recovers fully. I will manage my stress, invest in my mental health and make quality connections with others so that it stays happy and young. I will orgasm. I will dress it up sometimes and take it out. I will schedule my yearly doctor visit. I will take hot baths and gift it massages. I will wear things that make me feel good, right now. I will say nice things about it.

This is why I enjoy taking care of myself.

There is no “earning food,” “having to burn x amount of calories,” “buying clothes to fit into when I’m x weight” or “I’ll be happy when.”

There is only me, in this present moment, deserving of love and respect, and care.

This new appreciation and understanding of my body are why I do what I do now.

What Now

My mission is to help people heal their own relationship with food, fitness, and themselves. To shift the way we currently look at exercise and nutrition - as a burden, something we do as a punishment, a means to an end - and instead see them for what they are: acts of self-care. I want people to take care of themselves because they believe they’re worth taking care of.

I believe you can learn about nutrition and how to eat a balanced diet without the shame, guilt, or judgment that comes from “bad” vs. “good” foods.

I believe you can learn about exercise and fall in love with movement, without obsessing over calories burned or losing weight.

I’m not anti-health. I’m not anti-nutrition. I’m not anti-weight loss. I’m anti-diet culture.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my story.

I hope this inspires you to heal your own relationship with food, fitness, and yourself because you truly deserve it.

I would greatly appreciate it if you took a quick moment to support my newsletter by subscribing and spreading the word if any of my content resonates with you.

You can go to (click here) to follow/subscribe and you can find me on Instagram @azulcorajoria