Madelyn Moon - Confessions of a Fitness Model: The Ugly Truth about the New Standard for Beauty

Confessions of a Fitness Model

The Ugly Truth about the New Standard for Beauty

Written by Madelyn Moon

MaddyMoon.com

Copyright 2015 Madelyn Moon

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Foreword

By Matt Stone

www.180degreehealth.com

Resolve. Fitness. Health. Beauty. Sexiness. Discipline. Drive.

Thats but a short list of qualities and characteristics needed for someone to become a successful fitness competitor. It reads like a list of English words with the most positive connotation. Its no wonder that those who become successful fitness competitors and models are indeed held so high up on a pedestal for the rest of us mortals to worship.

But should we worship them? Are fitness models really elite specimens who represent the best of humankind?

And are the extreme feats of discipline with bland, unsatisfying food and multiple grueling workouts per day, something to be marveled at and glorified? Or is this really just a greater manifestation of a society that is sickmentally, emotionally, and physically? Ill let you come to your own conclusions on that, but I will say I find it quite oddkind of scary, reallythat it has become so fashionable of late to glorify self-denial. From Gandhi to the latest ultramarathon winner, it seems we cant give enough praise to those who suffer voluntarily.

And while vanity and the finest physical specimens of any species, humans included, have always been celebrated, weve become fixated on it recently beyond the threshold of normalcy. Or maybe I spend too much time on the internet? Dont we all, though.

Weve also reached new heights of fixation on food and fitness in recent times. Who would have thought a few decades ago that some of the most popular television shows on earth would be about people losing weight? Or that the most popular male comedian (Jim Gaffigan) and the most popular female comedian (Amy Schumer) would be building their acts around their physical appearance and food? Gaffigan has a bestselling book and comedy tour called Dad is Fat . Just recently Amy Schumers interview on Ellen is being hailed as the best ever. She talked mostly about her slightly fat arms and how she engulfs popcorn.

Im telling you. We, as a society, are becoming downright obsessed with food, fitness, and physique. Hey, dont get the idea that Im criticizing you personally if youre particularly fixated on these things. Ive been as caught up in it as just about anyone on earth, and it started when I was only six years old. In fact, when asked at my kindergarten graduation what I wanted to be when I grew up, I proudly belted out my wish to become a black boxer. It wasnt that the sport was so entertaining to me. I greatly preferred to watch other sports. It was all about getting bumps in my stomach. To look like one of those sweaty, glistening, ripped black guys under the lights in the ringthats what I wanted more than anything in the world as just a kid!

I dont profess to have the cure to this problem either. The first step in fixing it is developing some awareness that we are all nuts. Ill happily confess to this characteristic when it comes to food, fitness, and physique. Ive tried every crazy diet on earth, am a human encyclopedia of useless nutritional information, and I still cant break the addiction of watching shirtless YouTubers talking about what they eat and how they train.

This insanity has taken quite a toll on my body and mind over the years. But you think I have it bad? Fitness competitors and models are the ones truly caught in this obsessions crosshairs, and what they put themselves through comes at a much higher expense than the public realizes.

Ill never forget the first time I met a fitness competitor. She showed me pictures of herself on stage, but at the time, she had rolls of fat with stretch marks hanging over the waistline of her pants, and her hair had thinned out enough to see the top of her scalp. She couldnt have been more than 32-33 years old tops. And she spoke repetitively like a crazy person about how she needed to really get back into shape. To get back on her supplements. To follow the diet that her trainer had put her on back in the dayan all-almond diet. Yikes.

It surprised me quite a bit to later learn that problems with weight gain, falling hair, and obsessive preoccupation with body image was not rare, but par for the course amongst many fitness competitors. It shouldnt have surprised me. I did reach the point of having bumps in my stomach once, only to become obsessive about food, spend over an hour per day just looking at myself in the mirror, lose my libido amongst other problems, balloon back up in just a couple of weeks after getting down to around 5 percent body fat, and start waking up to a pillow covered in my own lost hair.

Youll be surprised, too, as you read a very personal, in-depth revelation of the fitness underbelly by Maddy Moon. This is very courageous of her to write. In fact, I was the one that originally encouraged her to write this book with this very title, but she didnt want to. Its not easy to revisit past traumatic experiences.

But she quickly realized that this story needs to be told, all in one place, and told vividly and personally. Thats what youre about to get as you jump into her work, which is her finest yet. We all owe her a debt of gratitudeaspiring fitness models, fitness voyeurs like myself, and armchair observers alikefor having written it so passionately and purposefully.

No matter who you are, the life of a fitness modelwhat its really likeis an interesting world to be taken into. Thank goodness Maddy can take us all there without us having to go through the tightly scheduled diet with fewer foods in it than most of us have in a single meal! Spray tans dont sound very fun either.

Thank you so much, Maddy, for candidly sharing your story. Many will be entertained. Many will be informed. Many will be prevented from doing great harm to themselves. Many will begin to unravel the tightly knit scarf of body and food obsession that they currently have wrapped around their throats. We all thank you for what youve done and what you continue to do, which is help lead the world, one person at a time, towards the more meaningful and healthy existence that lies beyond the world of physique obsession.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

What will you have? asked the Hopdoddy Burger Bar cashier standing over the greasy counter. I could practically feel her judgmental eyes stripping me down, sequin by sequin, down to the last thread of my bikini suit.

I mean, I was painted orange.

This was the moment I had been waiting for, the moment when I could finally have the food I had been avoiding for the past eighteen weeks.

After waiting in line at the burger joint for fifteen minutes, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Is it really over?

My eighteen weeks of pure torture all led up to this ?

Ill have a cheeseburger, fries, and a salted caramel milkshake, I said, feeling embarrassed. Who eats that much?

But I deserve it! I thought to myself.

I have been starving for months and now its my time to eat what I want.

I tried to hide my nerves from my family. My mom and sister were talking about how much fun they had at my first fitness competition, while I was nervously glancing left to right to see who may have heard me order my meal.