‘I looked exceptional but I was out of breath’: the bodybuilder who switched to mindful movement | Body image

Eugene Teo, 34, started lifting weights at the age of 13, seeking validation. “I was short, skinny and thought it would give me confidence,” he says. “For me, bodybuilding was the ultimate expression of that.”

Now living on the Gold Coast in Australia, with his partner and daughter, the fitness trainer spent the ages of 16 to 24 training and competing. Sometimes he lifted weights for up to four hours a day, aiming to become as muscular and lean as possible. The ideal he was pursuing? “If you grab your eyelid and feel that skin,” he says, “that’s the thinness of skin you want on your butt and your abs.”

This quest became an obsession: “How can I go to these extreme points, then do it again and again and become better than the last time?” » He followed dangerous protocols shared by bodybuilding gurus to flex his muscles, dangerously dehydrating his body before competitions. He ate six to ten times a day, limiting his diet to foods considered “clean” by the community at the time: sweet potato, brown rice, broccoli, and boiled chicken breast. He skipped his own birthday for years to avoid eating according to plan and brought scales to Christmas dinner to weigh his turkey. “There were a lot of dysmorphic associations around food,” he says.

His body became a project he focused his entire life on, with little room for flexibility, let alone pleasure. “The driving force behind my bodybuilding was negative body image and self-confidence issues,” he says. “I became alienated. I lost friendships. I lost partners.”

His mother often asked him: “Why can’t you eat what I eat? Why don’t you cook my food?” Home alone, he viewed his body as a critical enemy. Even at his most muscular, he only saw flaws. “I couldn’t even wear clothes without thinking, ‘How do my shoulders feel in this? How do my arms feel?'”

Realization came to Teo slowly, but his body was crying out for an overhaul of his life. “I could lift a lot of weight. I looked exceptional,” he says. “But I was out of breath doing simple tasks.” Walking through the gym with clients caused her lower back pain. Even tying his shoes required him to prepare. “The sheer size of my body didn’t support all the systems adequately,” he says.

Teo changed his training from just muscle size to mobility, power and cardiovascular endurance – adding running, stretching, jumping and cycling to his routine. He began to question whether his extreme state of mind made him happy, accepting that “it’s now an obsessive trait of my personality, and it doesn’t bring me joy.”

A decade later, he’s focused on his relationships and his work as a YouTube fitness coach and app developer, rather than his body. He no longer trains every day and, although he still eats well, he is more relaxed. “If I’m out with my daughter and she wants ice cream, I’ll have one with her.

His body has changed. “It’s definitely smaller,” he said. He lost about 15 kg of muscle. “But in terms of performance and feeling, it’s better night and day. I can move better. I’m more athletic with my daughter.” He can jump twice as high as before and run 5 km in 22 minutes. (He couldn’t even complete a 5K race when he was competing. His first race took 40 minutes.)

“Ten years ago, my body was capable of turning heads in the street,” he says. “It was fun, but it was the only thing he was capable of.” Now, he says, it’s built to work.