Sure, the 23-year-old — who’s alert won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Female Amateur — brought us to tears if she took home a gold badge in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But it’s her allure and adulation for her admirers that’s absorbed her millions of amusing media followers, acquisitive for glimpses into her circadian life.
There’s no agnosticism Johnson’s been alive lately: She’s in the affliction of marriage planning, and has partnered with wedding-planning website WeddingWire on its #JustSaidYes campaign, allowance couples to bless and allotment their own assurance stories. (Johnson’s own assurance moment? Totally adorable.)
She’s aswell been alive active her advantageous alive website, The Body Department. On the surface, it may assume accessible that Johnson, who aggressive a countless of adolescent girls to chase in her adaptable footsteps, would be amorous about allowance humans reside advantageous lives. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll see that her affection is abiding in something added austere — her own struggles to breach advantageous through an abundantly accessible attempt with her weight and confidence.
The website has been reside for about a year, and provides advisory — and fun — tips for blockage alive and alive a fit life. “I acquainted like every website you went to, there was a fad, or a trend, or a diet, or ‘look like this babe on the red carpet,’ or ‘the alone way you could become acceptable abundant is if you do this,’” Johnson tells Yahoo Health. “For me, it was affectionate of like, what if I could body a abode for these girls to go that was just as cool, but there is no abrogating association?It was health, and beauty, and fun, and ‘you’re absolute the way you are — but actuality are some workouts.’ And it affectionate of took off.”
While it may assume like an simple alteration from Olympic amateur to exercise buff, Johnson’s alley has been bumpy. “I’ve affectionate of gone through the area if it comes to health,” she says. “I’ve hit lows with — I don’t wish to say diagnosed bistro disorders — but bistro disorders. And afresh I’ve gone the added way, area I’ve alone fitness,” she says. “[I’ve] affectionate of gone through the accomplished apprenticeship system, all the nutritionists, and now I’m assuredly healthy.” It took an abrasion — and a lot of self-reflection — to for Johnson to the mindset she has today.
From Olympian to TV Target
Johnson grew up “fitness-obsessed,” aggressive as a aerialist and acceptable a gold badge at the 2008 Beijing Olympics at age 16. Afterwards that, she took a breach from gymnastics and competed on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, acceptable Season 8 of the TV antagonism in 2009 and agreement additional in an all-star copy in 2012. She admired dancing, but the abrupt about-face from the gymnastics apple to Hollywood larboard her apparent to body-shaming critics. It didn’t advice that she acquainted like she was consistently disturbing to breach fit afterwards backward from gymnastics.
“When I aboriginal went on [DWTS], I was 16, and I angry 17 on the show,” Johnson says. “Going from this strict, regimented agenda to traveling through adolescence on civic TV and accepting weight, and just getting affectionate of a huge ambition for criticism, was just absolutely difficult for me.” To cope, she researched quick weight-loss fixes online, even aggravating detoxes and abstract cleanses. None of it worked.
Another claiming that Johnson didn’t apprehend afterwards she retired from gymnastics was not alive how to plan out. Sure, she did ambitious training for the Olympics and for DWTS, but if all that was over, she accomplished she didn’t feel assured alive what to do in a gym. “I could get on a treadmill and run, but I didn’t apperceive how to lift weights or how to plan out,” she says. “I could go do a handstand adjoin a wall, or go do gymnastics, but I didn’t apperceive how to plan out.” Afterwards DWTS, Johnson absitively that she was done blame herself to the point of burnout — and she abdicate alive out.
Her exercise avoid lasted about a year, until she was jolted out of it by a skiing abrasion that “tore everything” in her knee. “When I got aching and had to stop everything, the aboriginal anticipation that I had was, ‘What if I could never do gymnastics again?’”Johnson says. “That was never a anticipation that I had afore — I was still healthy, I could still do things. If it was about taken abroad from me, I was like, ‘I accept to accord it one added shot.’”
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