Bicycle Touring’s Impact on Body Image

An adapted Instagram diary entry from January 9th, 2024, from my New Zealand Bike tour.

Today I realized I loved my body. 

I pedaled a total of 130km from Lake Rotorua to Kaiteriteri so I could make it to Abel Tasman a bit earlier, and perhaps, to Nelson too. My legs were tired. Each hill felt twice as steep as it was. It was as if I had a parachute on all day. But I pedaled on, taking many breaks, and not rushing myself when I wanted to look at the cows or eat a snack while sitting down instead of on the bike. 

At Kaiteriteri, I went for a swim. I was bloated from the heat and hard day, but realized after a couple of hours I only cared about the bloating for the minor discomfort it caused me- I had no care at all for how it made me look. 

I realized I loved how my body looked. How it took me all the way from Lake Rotorua to Kaiteriteri in a single day. How, despite the hardship of the day, it kept up with my antics, pushing despite not wanting to. How, from all of the lakes I’ve dove into on this trip, my appearance never crossed my mind. The size of my stomach. Breasts, legs, and arms. I realized that I literally would just put on a swimsuit and go for a dip. No body checks. No sucking in. No tugging at my suit to go here or sit there. 

When I was a sophomore in high school I began starving myself on the anorexic pursuit towards beauty, reaching 117lbs as a 5’10”, three season athlete. I would weigh myself over a dozen times a day. Before eating a snack, and right after. I would put dishes in the dishwasher to make it look like I had eaten breakfast. I would frantically give away food at lunch to friends. If I had seven servings of carbs instead of six, I would freak out, cry, and think I was a failure for lacking self control, and probably do a thirty minute ab routine in my bedroom, trying my best not to breath hard so no one would know what I was doing. The rituals I created, the tricks I learned, I could go on and on. I was deeply anorexic- a master in the art of self-starvation. 

It took many years of work to heal my relationship with my body and food. I won’t go too deep into the details, but there were many ups and downs. Force feeding myself. Crying over fruit snacks. Binge eating at the college cafeteria. I have since found a homeostasis, and learned the art of intuitive eating. 

After joining the pro-ana club at 14 years old, I can say now, at 24, that I have not possessed those horrid beliefs and tendencies for many years. My body is the vessel in which I will reside in until the day that I die. I take care of it, I nourish it, and it does incredible things every day. My body quite literally takes me across countries and continents through the art of pedal power. I love it for everything it has done for me. 

To anyone out there fighting disordered eating, please know that things can and will get better. 

.