Robyn Baker
“We don’t like to tell her too many things like that. We don’t want her to get a big head.”
These were the words of my parents in a dimly lit therapist’s office at the start of round one of inpatient treatment for anorexia at age seventeen. Growing up, my parents very rarely said anything positive about me; my schoolwork, my appearance, my talent for singing were very rarely mentioned in the form of praise or pride.
“She just always does a good job. If we start praising her, she might become full of herself.”
As I sat there in a sweatshirt three sizes too big, a ghost of a girl, scared, freezing, and hopeless, all I desperately wanted to hear was how proud my parents were of me. It wasn’t until years into my recovery that I would learn how the “I love yous” and the “We’re so proud of yous” were only freely given when I was incredibly sick or in distress. And it wasn’t until I discovered and embodied yoga that I learned how that price point was more than I was ever willing to pay again.
The Roots of Perfectionism
I grew up living a very privileged life; both of my parents worked in education and made a good living, and we never had to go without, or at least I never noticed if we did. I also grew up with thin privilege; I never experienced being bullied or teased for my appearance or lack of ability. I was never considered overweight and, as a child, was never concerned about my size. Teachers and mentors would constantly praise my accomplishments, talents, and my “exotic” appearance. Being a mixed race child in the 1980s was pretty rare (and not as accepted as it is today). I was an outgoing child and loved singing and musical theater.
I was the exact opposite of my older brother, who struggled in school, had few friends, was very much introverted, and didn’t participate in many after-school activities. My brother was frequently in trouble with my father for one thing or another, and witnessing the yelling, violence, and punishments he would receive led my young mind to a simple and nearly deadly conclusion: Be perfect and your parents will love you.
I have read that perfectionism is deeply rooted in the DNA of certain unfortunate souls, but I would argue that sometimes it can also be environmental and a learned trait; I believe I was a result of both. The perfectionism I applied to my talents and abilities as a child out of fear of getting punished eventually found its way to my body when I reached high school. During my senior year, life was out of control; I was traveling across the country to audition for performing arts colleges, my sleep was nonexistent between the loads of homework and the hours of rehearsals for the various shows I was participating in, and, above all of this, I still didn’t feel perfect enough to receive the love of my parents. My father’s alcoholism made my home life unpredictable and scary to say the least.
My body was the one thing I could control in a world that felt impossible to deal with. Under the influence of the endless weight-loss marketing campaigns promising me happiness at the end of a ten-pound weight loss rainbow coupled with the anxiety and depression brought on by the internal and external pressure to live up to expectations as a straight A student, talented performer, and perfectly sized teenager, I decided it was time to go on a diet. You know, just to feel better about myself, and maybe everything in my world would get better once I lost a few pounds because that’s what I was being promised; look “better” and your life will be better.
As I began to shrink in size from a lack of adequate nutrition and hydration, I felt strangely empowered and strong. The constant dull ache of hunger helped to numb the other negative feelings in my life and it was an intoxicating sense of relief. When well-intended compliments on my increasingly smaller body from classmates and teachers filled the gaping hole that made up my lack of self-worth and self-esteem, I became addicted. The game of how low could I make the number on the scale go became the one and only thing that mattered and made me feel at peace. Six months later, I was in the hospital nearly dead from anorexia.
The Cost of Chasing the Perfect Body
My first round of in-patient treatment for my eating disorder was a joke. Not only was the program inadequate, I was anything but open and/or committed to receiving the help I was being offered. I was discharged early in order to graduate high school, and I had little to no skills as to how to reenter a “normal” teenage life. I was still fervently counting each calorie that passed my lips, scared to death of weight gain, far below a healthy weight zone, and suffering from a terrible body image. The outlook was not great.
My drive to “perfect” my physical appearance was still the engine fueling my destructive actions. With eating disorders being as tricky and manipulating as they come, I soon found a way to disguise my need for body perfection as a step forward in my recovery. I took up weight lifting. With weight gain ordered by my treatment team, weight lifting seemed like the perfect solution to not only help me gain weight through building muscle, but it also gave me yet another way I could control my body and not be fat (which is what my eating disorder feared more than death). I would sculpt the perfect body from the ground up and everyone would think I was being healthy because my so-called objective would be to add muscle.
My eating disorder and I were in heaven.
I developed a strict and lengthy weight-lifting regimen, which eventually spiraled off into indoor cycling classes and hours spent on the elliptical trainer, obsessively gripping an illusion of something that would make living tolerable and give my existence meaning: the “perfect” body. Yes, there were the rare moments where an honest desire to get off this endless hamster wheel of self-destruction existed. But along with each hopeful thought, ten well-intended but harmful compliments about my dedication, discipline, and “perfect body” would instantly change my mind. It was like making a decision to climb a mountain only to be directed back down after two steps because of bad weather. Eventually, the gym where I fulfilled my obsession hired me as a personal trainer. The manager suggested I work there since I was there so much already, after all. I was hired without an interview or any formal training—just an unrelenting and fanatical obsession with exercise and a steadfast belief that my body would be worthless and unacceptable without it (which in turn would make me a failure and unlovable).
I believed I had finally obtained the perfect socially acceptable system for controlling my body and mind to ultimately obtain a sense of self-worth and importance. The compliments I continued to receive on a daily basis strengthened my disordered thinking and behaviors. Underneath this false sense of superiority and confidence, I desperately wanted out. But I knew what it would cost me to leave; it meant abandoning all I had worked for, including my level of success as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor, a feeling of absolute certainty that my life would be intolerable, and that I would lose everything that gave me a sense of not only control but also importance and meaning. My so-called “perfect” body was everything to me and losing it would be more than I thought I could humanly tolerate.
What I didn’t realize was that underneath it all my body was literally collapsing in on itself. I developed a stress fracture in my hip as a result of the endless pounding of pavement from the hours of running I forced myself to do in order to gain permission to eat. After a bone density scan, I was told that at the age of twenty-four I had developed osteoporosis and my bones were that of a seventy-year-old. Regardless, my obsession continued as I spiraled further downward … until an intervention was orchestrated by my parents and therapist. As a result, I entered back into treatment ten years after the onset of my eating disorder.
There Is No Perfect Pose
Entering treatment for a second time, I knew what to expect, and I also knew that it was up to me to decide whether or not I was going to work the program and commit to recovery. No one else could do it but me. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired; I had lost my dream of performing, my high school sweetheart, and, most importantly, my health. The fear of losing more of my life finally became greater than the fear of losing control over my socially defined “perfect” body. The unknown outcome of committing to recovery finally became the lesser of two evils.
Initially, all forms of exercise were banned during inpatient treatment, as weight stabilization and weight gain were my prescribed objective. But as my health improved and my mental outlook shifted, I was slowly reintroduced to exercise. I was able to do weight lifting, Nia (a form of dance exercise), and, of course, yoga. Of all three exercise options, yoga was my least favorite. I had practiced yoga a few times at the gym where I worked, but I was not a fan. In fact, the only reason I walked into a yoga class in the first place was because my therapist had suggested that I do it on my “rest day” in order to feel like I was still doing something.
I truly couldn’t stand yoga; it was slow, it was relaxing (which was not what I wanted at the time), and it made my blood boil over with anxiety because I thought I could burn more calories elsewhere than during a single yoga session. Yes, I was committed to my recovery, but the thought of focusing on my breath instead of pushing myself to fatigue or perform the best out of everyone else in the class was so incredibly foreign and frustrating to me that I wanted to scream.
The words of the instructor irked me more than anything. Preaching things like, “allow your body to release into the pose” or “there is no perfect pose, so explore what feels best to you” only made me roll my eyes with annoyance.
Of course there is a perfect pose! I can do the pose with prefect form, I am the most flexible and I will be the best at this yoga thing, were all silent responses to my teacher’s little nuggets of wisdom. The worst was when the teacher asked us to be present in our body; doing any such thing was not only something that sounded completely uncomfortable to me, but I didn’t have the slightest idea as to how to actually do it. Plus, with my needed weight gain and feeling my clothes gripping tighter onto my newly expanding body, all I desperately wanted to do was escape my body. The truth was I hadn’t been present in my body for more than a decade, and I didn’t have the slightest idea as to what that even meant. Starvation and my obsessive exercise habits had served to numb the connection between my body and my self. Healing this connection was going to take a lot of time as well as a willingness, which didn’t come until years after I was discharged.
Breathing into Imperfection
Against my treatment team’s recommendations, I eventually made my way back to the fitness industry about a year after being discharged from treatment. They likened my decision as similar to that of the alcoholic working in a bar. I knew it was a risky move, but it was the only thing I could see myself doing for work.
I once again began working as a certified Pilates instructor at a high-end gym and was able to remain in recovery, but it wasn’t easy. With self-imposed body shaming comments coming from clients, mirrors reflecting my image everywhere I turned, and the temptation to fall into the body comparison game, I knew I would have to work incredibly hard to maintain my recovery.
Although my relationship with exercise was still one that I would classify as “it’s complicated,” I was able to stay within the activity parameters set out for me by my team of doctors and therapists. The compulsive urge to literally kill myself through my workouts had dissipated. In its place was a sense of caution and apprehension toward exercise. I did not trust myself nor could I properly identify when I had physically done “enough” without relying on a time limit or the number of sets and repetitions completed. The connection between my body and my self was still nonexistent. Without a quest for the “perfect body” or the need to numb out, my exercise felt aimless and boring. And without the ability to intuitively listen to and be present within my body, my recovery was not yet complete. This is when I happened to rediscover yoga.
I was persuaded to try out yoga by a fellow instructor I had befriended at the gym. She hit the right button when she said I would be great at yoga since I was such a master at Pilates. Under that influence of my ego telling me I would be better than the other students, I decided to give yoga another shot. I had no expectations going in and told myself I would do it just this one time to satisfy the wishes of my friend (and my ego). At one point during the class, we held warrior two for what seemed like forever. As my legs began to shake, I attempted to distract my mind away from the fatigue by thinking of my day ahead and other “monkey mind” thoughts. Just then the instructor called out something that changed my life forever, “Get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.” Was she actually asking to me to pay attention to my fatigue and be okay with it? If I were to do that, how would I ever make it through the class? Disconnecting between my body and my self was what I did, and I was damn good at it.
For purely perfectionistic and ego-satisfying reasons, I went back for more yoga classes. Eventually, I decided to follow the instructor’s cue by attempting to focus on taking deeper breaths in order to stay present in my body. All my mind wanted to do was escape the sensation of fatigue, but as I deepened my breath and felt a sense of calm circulating through my body, I discovered for the first time how to practice allowing my body to physically feel uncomfortable and accept it.
The experience felt real and authentic … and it felt like coming home.
This experience felt different from the rules established by my treatment team and the lists of coping skills I was told to use if I wanted to remain in my recovery. It was as if my body was telling me everything was going to be okay and that I could trust this process. I didn’t have to tune out the discomfort and remain numb. I could sit with it, breathe, and come to center (and even feel calm). It didn’t happen overnight, in fact it didn’t happen within a year, but I eventually discovered that if I could mentally stay present and calm within physical discomfort (be it holding warrior two for eternity or feeling “gross” in my body), I could do the same with my uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. And with practice, just like with the physical practice of yoga, over time the thoughts and feelings that once caused me emotional and mental discomfort became easier to tolerate and let go of.
Creating Perfectly Authentic Work
Eleven years after I was first inducted into the trigger-filled fitness industry via obsession and self-destruction, I came to realize I could no longer pretend that what I was doing was okay. Performing “fitness evolutions” on new members, which included taking their circumference measurements, testing their body fat, and, of course, weighing them on the scale, was completely against everything I had come to believe in and physically stand for. I tolerated it for a painstaking amount of time until one day I was pushed over the edge by a comment I couldn’t ignore.
I was working with a client who was compulsively exercising and asking me to assist her to drop body fat to unhealthy levels. After refusing several times to help her with this, I spoke with her physician, who encouraged me to help her with her body fat goals even after admitting she probably needed help but that there were worse things she could be addicted to. I remembered my yoga and breathed when all I wanted to do was scream at him and cry. It was time for me to create my own space where I could not only guide others through exercise in a body-positive and self-empowering atmosphere but also preserve my own sanity and, most of all, my recovery. The fear of leaving a steady job and going out on my own was on par with going back into treatment, but I knew in my heart it was what I had to do. I knew it was going to be scary, unpredictable, and difficult, and if it wasn’t for the wisdom and trust I gained through my yoga practice, I would have never had the courage to trust my inner wisdom that everything was going to be okay. No matter what the outcome, trusting and honoring my true self, which I had cultivated and connected to through yoga, was always the right answer.
There Is No Perfection, Just Happiness
Our bodies and our lives are in constant flux. As I sit here today, a business owner of the only body-positive and recovery-centered fitness studio in Orange County, California, my belly round and full at the halfway point of my second pregnancy, I must admit that change, especially physical change, can still be a difficult beast. Many times, I feel like I’ve finally made complete peace with my body, only to realize I haven’t because out of the blue maybe a dress doesn’t fit quite the same way or I discover a patch of stretch marks on the back of my legs that I didn’t know existed or a well-intended client makes some slight remark about the size of my body and the negative thoughts and emotions attempt to squeeze their way back into the forefront of my mind. It is then that my yoga reminds me not only to breathe and get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, but also that the things I see and hear about my body are not real nor are they definitive markers of the quality of my heart or the essence of my spirit. And, with that, I am reminded that maintaining a positive and peaceful relationship with my body is an ongoing practice. It’s not an end point or final destination.
There is no such thing as a “perfect pose” and there is no such thing as the “perfect body” that will bestow endless happiness. The “perfect body” and, really, the “perfect life” is what you choose at that moment. The most beautiful thing about that is you can decide it is you right now in this very moment! And that happiness and peace can be obtained without any social media likes or words of praise from parents or others. Choosing happiness is choosing to decide everything in your life, including your body, is perfect in this moment and every moment.
Robyn Baker is the owner and operator of Asteya Fitness, Orange County’s only body-positive fitness studio. After recovering from a decade-long battle with anorexia and exercise addiction, during which she worked as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor, Robyn decided to return to the fitness industry in hopes of changing the way people think about and approach exercise by challenging and someday ending the insidious body-shaming messages propagated within the fitness community. She holds a BS in Kinesiology and is certified in Yoga, Pilates, and Personal Training. Author photo by Austin O’Brien Photography.