Eating disorders | The before and after of Jessica Brodeur

Jessica Brodeur is passionate about physical activity, and her social networks are full of “before and after” photos. But not in the usual order. Meeting with the sparkling young woman, ex-competitor of fitness bikiniwho has just published the story of the eating disorders that long controlled his life and his recovery.

Jessica Brodeur welcomes us to her bungalow on the South Shore of Montreal, all smiles, laughing eyes, dressed in a training suit. To take the photo, she takes us to the basement, where her small gym is located. This is where Jessica – a certified instructor – leads virtual workouts.

In person, the 35-year-old exudes the same thing as on her Instagram page (@jessbrod_fit): energy, joy and good humor.

Jessica Brodeur, however, went through a dark period in the not-so-distant past. Five years of eating disorders. Orthorexia, bigorexia, hyperphagia: she experienced periods of great distress, hungry and curled up in a ball on the sofa, ashamed of having eaten a spoonful of almond butter, or even numbed by food orgies.

Gear

Returning from maternity leave, already concerned about her weight, Jessica Brodeur was hired in the marketing department of a large gym company. She decided to use the services available to her (nutritionist, kinesiologist). Why not ? In his recent book, The body I have nowJessica Brodeur talks about this first weigh-in, on a scale that measures fat and muscle levels.

She had just set foot on a path that would lead her, five years later, to seek help, but this time from a psychologist and a nutritionist specializing in eating disorders. Diet, training and body image had come to take “all the space”.

She lost a lot of beautiful moments. With her son, with her lover, with her colleagues, her friends. “My conversations were always focused on that,” she remembers. And it’s also all the control you impose on yourself by seeing others eat. You’re focused on managing all that, and saying to yourself: “So I’m doing the best thing than everyone else…”

Jessica Brodeur admits: she felt a certain feeling of superiority at the time. The competitions of fitness bikini which she participated in (preceded by intense dietary restrictions and followed by equally intense bouts of hyperphagia) gave her a lot of pride. “I was superior, and I was rewarded,” she writes in her book. She realizes it today: it reflected a lack of self-esteem.

Listen to your body

Through her recovery, which she began in 2019, Jessica slowly shed the rigid rules she imposed on herself and her obsession with calories and nutritional values. She learned to feel and listen to the signals her body sends her. “By not respecting what my body told me to do, I was no longer connected,” she summarizes. She’s made peace, too, with foods she’s long obsessed over, like peanut butter and Oreo cookies.

And since the beginning, Jessica Brodeur has shared her experience on her Instagram page, often with humor and lightness, but by addressing real issues: body diversity, medical fatphobia, the importance of not commenting on the appearance of others, inclusion of people of all sizes in the world of physical activity and in society in general, the mirage of “perfect” photos on Instagram…

“What’s hidden behind the ‘before’ photos of me is a lot of distress, discomfort and unpleasant emotions,” she says. And afterwards, I’m happier and healthier than ever. »

“Even if you live in a body that is bigger than the standard body, you do not need to change it, and you have the right to live a happy life, you have the same value as a person,” believes the one who won the ÉquiLibre prize this week, awarded by the organization of the same name dedicated to promoting a positive body image.

The body I have now

Jessica Brodeur

Cardinal

288 pages