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Editor’s note: This story contains details of eating disorders. If you are struggling with disordered eating contact the National Eating Disorder Awareness hotline by calling 800-931-2237 or by going to https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/.

Nicole Cox is a senior broadcast and digital journalism major at SU who is passionate about health, wellness and most importantly, weightlifting. Cox will give her second TEDx talk — with the first having occurred at TEDxYouth@Sammamish — about how weightlifting helped her recover from an eating disorder and allow her to trust and appreciate her body again. Cox will speak about how daunting it can be as a woman in the weight room and how to overcome the fear of embarrassment and be confident as a beginner because that is where everybody was once.

The transcript of the interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Daily Orange:

Can you explain a little bit about what your TED Talk is about?

Nicole Cox:

My TED Talk is mostly about my personal experiences with both anorexia and learning how to weight lift. I dealt with anorexia from when I was 13 until 17. I at least had disordered eating during those years, and it wasn’t until I found weightlifting that I felt like I actually really recovered. I was definitely kind of teetering the line for a while and trying to get better and slowly making improvements, but it wasn’t until I started weightlifting that I actually fully recovered and started to heal my relationship with food and exercise.

My talk is just really about how I think, for a lot of us women, we were never properly introduced to the gym and by the time we actually go, we’re there for the sole purpose of changing our bodies. We’re not there because we want to exercise because it’s healthy for us, we’re conditioned to believe that working out is simply for weight loss, which is absolutely not the case. I just found it to be really empowering the more I started going and lifting. It was kind of the first time I started to realize how capable my body was.

The D.O.:

What drew you to weightlifting specifically rather than any other form of exercise?

N.C.:

I had gone to the gym for years but I was mostly on the StairMaster or the treadmill. My mom had a friend of hers who was one of the personal trainers at the gym I used to go to, and she had some personal training sessions for some reason that she wasn’t using. So she asked her friend who was the trainer if she would kind of show me the ropes, because my whole family has always been very active.

I was so young when I developed an eating disorder and I thankfully have a very open relationship with my family and we’re able to talk about everything. My mom knew that I just needed some help and she was hoping to get me out of the cardio section, so she asked her friend who was a trainer if she could just show me a couple things and get the ball rolling. So then I learned just kind of the basic movement patterns from her and just really enjoyed it. It wasn’t like I learned and then immediately fell in love with weightlifting and stopped doing cardio altogether. It was definitely more of a gradual thing that I had to build my confidence up towards.

The D.O.:

How did you get involved with TEDx here?

N.C.:

I delivered a TED Talk back in 2017, but it was more about my eating disorder itself, not necessarily about weightlifting or recovery. One of my friends is the coordinator of TEDx and knew that I did a TED Talk before. I am a broadcast major so public speaking is definitely something I need to get better at.

The D.O.:

Were you ever an athlete before?

N.C.:

My whole family always played sports. I was enrolled in sports camp at 5 (years old), and I played basketball and softball growing up. I was kind of constantly playing sports and doing stuff, so I always grew up really loving exercise and I never correlated exercise to weight loss. It was just something I did for fun.

As I got older, it definitely kind of took on another thing and working out became entirely different. I think it’s also hard as a female at a young age when you’re forced to workout because you just work so intensely. It can sometimes create these negative connotations around exercise in the gym. So it’s definitely a very fine line and it’s what I’m struggling with right now. I don’t want to be telling people, especially if they’ve had an eating disorder, to go from one extreme to the next extreme. So when I talk about women in weightlifting, I’m never talking about bodybuilding or tracking macros, or doing any of those things. It’s literally just the act of lifting weights and going to the gym — you never want it to become another obsession. There’s definitely a fine line.

The D.O.:

What do you wish you knew earlier?

N.C.:

I wish I knew earlier how beneficial weight training could be for me, because it really shifted my mindset around everything and I’m so grateful for it. I really don’t think I would, frankly, be alive if I hadn’t found it. I was very, very sick. I almost died. So weightlifting is powerful, not just in what it can do for your body, but what it can do for your mental health. So I’m just really excited to give this talk because hopefully, it’ll push people that maybe needed a little push in the right direction of recovery being real and worth it and this could be a potential step for them into finding that.

Literally, every single person in the gym was a beginner at one point — the biggest guy in the room, the girl with the most insane physique — every single person there was a beginner and anyone that judges you at the gym, that’s on them, not you. We are all there to better ourselves, we are all there for a purpose, for a reason and oftentimes it’s to become the best versions of who we are, whether that be, both physically and mentally.

The gym is for everyone. It’s not just a space for people that already know what they’re doing. That’s the whole point of having public gyms, so everyone can go and utilize it and enjoy it and grow into the realm.

The D.O.:

Why do you think this topic is important to the SU community?

April 9 :x::thought_balloon:

A photo posted by tedxsyracuseuniversity

N.C.:

When I was a freshman here at SU, I remember being literally one of a couple girls in the weight room. It was very daunting being a young woman in the weight room, but fast forward four years and there are so many women that I feel like are getting more into weight training and trying out lifting. So even from a personal perspective of just what I’ve seen since I started doing it until now, there’s been so much growth and that’s just a message we need to keep pushing.

I’ve talked to so many other women like me who also found a lot of comfort in learning how to weight lift, and it’s really helped them change their perspective (about their bodies). I think there’s no quick fix to eating disorders. They take time and recovery is a lifelong process that’s not linear. But, if I can help people with some tools, or some things that maybe they didn’t think of, that could help them kind of get out of that space is really important. That’s the message that needs to be shared.

The D.O.:

What advice do you have for SU women who are afraid to work out at the Barnes Center at The Arch?

N.C.:

The Barnes Center is very facey for sure and I think that’s definitely an added stressor of walking in there. Not knowing what you’re doing and seeing the guy in your math class next to you can feel uncomfortable.

The biggest thing I would say for any beginner is to follow these steps: number one is to wear something you’re comfortable in, if that’s a big baggy t-shirt or a sports bra, whatever it may be, be comfortable.

Next thing I would say is to have a good playlist. I like to have music that pumps you up and makes you excited, that gets your energy up. Then I would go in with a plan. That may mean finding an Instagram workout online beforehand and watching and writing down all the exercises you’re going to do. You can even take it a step further and look up form cues on all those exercises you want to do. So you kind of know what exercise you’re doing and how you’re going to do them before you even get to the gym.

The last thing to do is to grab two pairs of dumbbells and bring them to a secluded area of the gym. The second floor of Barnes is really great if you’re new to weight training because it’s not as busy and male-dominated. So grab some pairs of dumbbells, take it to a secluded corner where you’re not feeling watched and just do your workout in a place that’s not as crowded, where you can feel like it’s okay to make a mistake.

Like anything in life, you’re never gonna feel 100% ready to start doing something new. There’s always gonna be nerves. It’s always gonna be a little scary. But that doesn’t mean you don’t do it. It just means you modify and you go about it in a certain way. I was horrified the first time I ever walked into the weight room, but now I’m giving a TED Talk on how it literally changed my life.

Published on April 7, 2022 at 2:19 am