TW: disordered eating behaviours
Chronic Illness
I was born with a Primary Immuneodeficiency and Chronic Lung Disease.
Although this was not diagnosed until the age of four. I was incredibly ill from birth and was treated for cystic fibrosis for the first four years of my life, in and out of the hospital constantly with collapsed lungs, pneumonia and other lung infections.
After my diagnosis, the realisation that I was ill as I did not have an immune system. I was offered to start immunoglobulin infusions, a product of human blood donations that essentially gave me enough immunity to ward off most infections and live a somewhat normal childhood.
At this point, my choice was to start the monthly infusions, which gave me some fighting chance or continue on the path. Where the damage to my lungs would have inevitably resulted in a double lung transplant in my early teens.
The treatment really reduced the number of other hospitalisations I had. But by 7 years old, all my veins had collapsed, and venous access was near impossible to get the treatment. I required a port-a-cath, and I have had one since then. I wasn't a sporty child by any means. Still, the risk of dislodging the port through sport or school PE and the scarring to my lungs meant I could rarely participate in physical activity growing up.
I was on the treatment for 22 years. Due to my monthly treatment admissions, I had never spent more than four weeks out of the hospital. The infections in my lungs grew less frequent until my last infection admission in my early 20s. The treatments, however, massively affected my life and my ability to travel and did play a role in how I felt about my body - a bit broken.
In Dec of 2020, I received my last treatment after an unexpected family emergency caused me to miss an infusion; I did not get sick as I had previously done following a delay in receiving IVIG. My immunologist and I decided to wait it out, to monitor my bloods and see what happened.
We have passed two years now since my last treatment. "A resolved anti-body deficiency" was written on the referral to have my last port-a-cath removed. I don't really know what the future holds for my health or why my immune system decided to turn on when it did. But I feel some of the answers lie within the changes I made to my undertaking of Powerlifting, healthy eating habits and honouring my body for the functionality I did have.
Complex Food
If you had approached me about food 10 years ago, I would have said I loved food, but truthfully - I hated it.
I hated it because I loved it.
My mother's relationship with food and her body fostered my complex relationship with food. Other extrinsic influences like the media's violent vilification of every food group that ever was played a role too. I firmly believed that I had to shrink myself to almost non-existence to be a societal standard of worth.
I, as a teen, tried fad diet after fad diet. Some of the more note-worthy ones being the 5:2 diet, numerous Detox Teas, I Quit Sugar and Paleo. To be honest, it was never health I was seeking. It was to shrink myself further and further. Each time I failed to shrink, I felt so much self-disgust. I felt soul-ripping guilt when I inevitably binged or ate something I wasn't allowing myself to.
This constant failure I internalised as a failure on my behalf; my broken body couldn't do what I wanted it to. Eventually, I resorted to purging each time I broke a pact with myself on whatever diet I was indoctrinated with.
At home, food was the villain, our cupboards were lined with sugar-free, fat-free diet products, and I would never have consumed real butter or whole-fat milk on purpose. When my parents became too busy with work, they would order us each a 1200cal Lite & Easy plan to get us through the school and work days.
Weekends were different.
This is where we got to love food.
These are some of my greatest memories and the gratitude I hold for my mother was created through her endeavour to have my sister, and I experience different foods and food cultures.
She would drive us down to Sydney, a 4-hour round trip, on weekends to take us to different restaurants. One weekend might be Yum Cha at the heart of China Town, and another maybe Turkish or Japanese.
At these times, we got to be present with food, to sit and savour flavours. To love, taste and experience food. No restriction - just the pleasure of food.
This dichotomy of the two food relationships I held maintained for years fuelling the brokenness and hate I felt in myself and in my body.
The Change
In 2017 I had been living in Brisbane by myself for about six months after getting a job as a Nuclear Medicine Scientist in a small private hospital.
I was more conscious about my bodily health at this point and followed influencers who
promoted eating for fuel, a new concept to me, but often took it too far down the dieting path again, cutting out and restricting foods again. The culture within the hospital, however, did not reward those who looked after their health and nourished their body. But did reward those who worked through lunch breaks, which fuels feelings of failure when you take a break to eat food.
At this point, I was practising yoga four to five times a week at a Goodlife gym near my apartment.
Sometimes I would attend the pump or other boppy classes. I remember being in one of these evenings, looking through the glass at the free-weights sections, and feeling the want to go out there and train with weights. But I had absolutely no idea what to do or how to do it, and I was terrified by the weights room.
The one time I went into the weights room before this, I had turned around a corner and nearly bumped into a toned and bronzed girl wearing a hot pink matching gym set. She scoffed when I apologised, looking me up and down before walking away. I was overwhelmed, resulting in me leaving immediately and hard crying in the shower.
My confidence was on the floor.
Fearful of the weight room but eager to get out of the group classes, I decided I needed guidance.
I googled 'Brisbane Strength Coach', and this was the beginning of change.
From here, I sent off an email to the top hit of my search - Lifters League.
I explained I had no experience and was looking for someone to teach me the basics about weights, strength and nutrition, and I was eager to learn. Little did I know this step would change my entire life path in every fantastic way it has.
The Head Coach, Gus Cooke, emailed me back the next day, and I was in for an initial consult later that week.
He set me up on a strength plan and a diet which I followed to a T with no fear of weight gain because I trusted in him and his ability to educate me. In the first year of training with him, I had put on 14kg, which after a lifetime of trying to shrink, was the kindest thing I have ever done for myself.
I began to eat for performance, to fuel myself because I wanted to lift heavier and train better. Most of the weight I gained was muscle after years of neglecting physical activity. This diet was nothing special; it was unbelievably simple: protein oats, rice, mince, almonds and some vegetables. I would have a Guzman n Gomez burrito after the gym on a Friday night.
The focus on the functionality of food and, in turn, my body did wonders for beginning to rebuild trust in it. I could finally see what it could do over what it couldn't. My health began to shift for the first time, too, notably the gain of muscle and adequate food. My blood pressure which had always been abnormally low, stabilised. Around this time, the hospitalisations with lung infections became less and less until there were no more.
Learning to eat through Powerlifting is the foundation of where I am today. Practising as a Nutritionist and working alongside my husband, Gus Cooke.
With my love of flavour and food exploration, I endeavoured to fuse the love of food with the functionality to perform.
Over the last six years, I have redefined my first powerlifter meal plan into an all-encompassing Nutrition Ethos. Supporting performance functionality, body goals, bodily health, and social and communal health. Because Nutrition shouldn't be a singular faceted approach, it is the underpinning of human existence and an essential part of our life experience.
Nutrition is no longer a dichotomy of good and bad but rather a holistic approach to life satisfaction, and I have trust and admiration for my body at any size.
I hope to teach you to feel this way too.
Ruby x
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