Functional Beauty

August 4, 2017

Andréa Maria Cecil

Two of CrossFit’s elite women talk about overcoming eating disorders.

At 15, Valerie Voboril started working out and restricting her food.

When the summer ended and she went back to high school, the flattery seemed endless—friends and teachers kept telling her how good she looked at a slimmer frame.

Teenaged Voboril loved the attention.

She wondered, “How do I keep the compliments coming and keep eating?”

The solution was simple, 39-year-old Voboril recounted.

“Oh, I can throw it all up.”

Valerie Voboril on the O-Course

Alexis Johnson, meanwhile, was a competitive gymnast for nine years.

After she left the sport and went to college, she had an identity crisis.

“I didn’t know what to do with my time,” the now-20-year-old explained.

Johnson became depressed. Shortly thereafter she became preoccupied with food. She was eating less and less. At her lightest, Johnson was 88 lb. at 5-foot-2.

She had little energy and when given the choice would stay home—where she could control her food—over anything that required leaving the house.

On Friday, both women were in their second day of competition at the CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin. That afternoon, Voboril snatched 150 lb. and Johnson lifted 176 lb. Voboril is a five-time competitor, and this is Johnson’s second consecutive Games.

To say things have changed is an understatement.

At 5-foot-2, Voboril weighs nearly 140 lb. It took her seven years to get healthy.

“It’s a weird little piece of my life,” she said after finishing the 1RM Snatch event inside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Alliant Energy Center. “There are so many other ways to deal with life on life’s terms.”

Both she and Johnson came to a crossroads in their lives where they realized they had to get healthy or risk dire consequences.

“’I want to live,’” Voboril remembered thinking. “It was at that point.”

With some help from a treatment center and a college counselor, Voboril started righting herself at 19. She was 26 when she finally ridded herself of bulimia.

Johnson remembered feeling helpless.

“You have to make a decision at one point to get healthier.”

And she did.

Johnson now weighs 141 lb.

Today both women are among CrossFit’s elite and examples of what Founder Greg Glassman calls “a better beautiful."

“It’s awesome that women can appreciate what their bodies can do,” Johnson said, “as opposed to how (they) look.”

Society no longer holds influence over Johnson, said her coach, Logan Clarke.

“There’s so much in the world today telling women what’s cool, what’s important, what’s successful, and I believe that comes from a marketing machine.”

Voboril expressed similar sentiments, saying social media can be a source of “surreal ideas” on what life’s really like.

If she could go back in time, she’d tell her teenage self what’s important in life.

“It’s who you are, not what you look like.”