The Wellness Breakup

I worked out to shrink myself. Then my body pushed back

There was a time when I worked out six days a week and still didn’t feel like I was doing enough.

And to be honest? I was never the most thin. I’ve never had a body I felt proud of—not really. I always felt about 10 to 15 pounds outside of where I wanted to be. Even my doctors would glance me up and down and tell me my BMI was a little high for my height. At the time, I probably weighed around 130-135 pounds, and I’m five-foot-four. Looking back, I was absolutely healthy. I was beautiful. But in 2015, we were all chasing a very different standard. Thinness was the aesthetic, the aspiration, the expectation. Especially if you were in the public eye. It seems to be the aesthetic again. Especially if you were a woman.

So I chased thinness through fitness. I thought working out more, harder, faster, sweatier, was the path to finally arriving in a body I liked. I treated fitness like a competition. Every class was a test. Not just of endurance, but of worth.

I was in a dance cardio class taught by a professional choreographer, someone who trained backup dancers for world tours. It was brutal. The kind of class that pushes your limits just to see if you’ll break. And I didn’t stop there. Every other day of the week I’d head into spin, out of the saddle, sprinting through most of the ride. I wasn’t training. I was punishing.

And then one day, my body said no.

The panic attacks started about a year and a half before I launched Love Wellness. They came on suddenly, usually mid-class. My heart would race before the warm-up was even over. I’d leave early, shaking, completely disoriented. I told myself it was stress. Work. Life. Anything but the workouts. Because I couldn’t not exercise. I couldn’t fall behind. I couldn’t gain weight.

A year or so later, I’d learn that my body was dealing with massive vitamin deficiencies. And those deficiencies were contributing to my hormonal spikes and cortisol rollercoasters. It wasn’t just mental. It was physiological. I was undernourished, overstimulated, and my nervous system was screaming for help.

That was almost nine years ago, and it was the beginning of a breakup. Me and high-intensity cardio.

Here’s what I didn’t know back then: high-intensity workouts trigger a powerful hormonal response. You spike cortisol, adrenaline, and push your nervous system into fight-or-flight. That’s not always bad, especially if you’re well-fed, well-rested, and emotionally regulated. But most of us aren’t walking into class from a place of balance. We’re walking in stressed, tired, nutrient-depleted, and already pushing through.

And when you live in that fight-or-flight state, day after day, class after class, it catches up with you. For women especially, that chronic cortisol elevation can mean stubborn weight gain, hormonal imbalance, fatigue, anxiety, even amenorrhea. It’s not just burnout. It’s your body waving a red flag.

These days, I move differently. I walk. I live in New York and have a dog, so I get a decent number of steps in without even trying. I do Pilates here and there. I do The Class by Taryn Toomey, but I don’t go full out the whole time. Sometimes I modify. Sometimes I pause. Sometimes I cry a little in child’s pose and call it progress.

I’ve traded performance for presence. Sweat for stillness. Control for care.

This was one of my first real wellness breakups. Letting go of something that was once a core part of my identity. Realizing that being fit and being well are not the same thing.

Sometimes wellness means going harder. Sometimes it means walking away.

And the hardest part? Choosing to be healthy in a way that doesn’t always look impressive from the outside.

But this version of health, the one I live in now, feels more honest. More sustainable. More mine.

Talk soon,
Lo

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PS: Have you ever had to break up with a wellness routine that wasn’t serving you? What was your moment of clarity? I’d love to hear in the comments.