Under crushing pressure to stay thin, Aly Raisman would sneak into airplane lavatories to eat Power Bars where no one could see her. She was an Olympic champion publicly, and starving in secret.
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At 33:30 · chapter starts 20:50
This is the most viscerally shocking chapter of the episode. Aly opens carefully, emphasising she is not a medical expert and that athletes should fuel their bodies — but then details exactly what was expected of her. At 16, her body fat was 8%, and the evaluating professional told her women should be around 18–20%; he said he had never seen anyone under 12%. By the 2016 Rio Olympics, it had fallen to 5%. The professional working with NFL players — who had tested Aly — told her he had never seen a number this low even in men, called it dangerous, and said she could get seriously injured. She told him she needed reassurance, not warnings; he couldn't give it. [1] — Aly Raisman "Before the 2016 Rio Olympics, Aly Raisman's body fat was measured at 5% — lower than some NFL players — and the medical professional conduc…" 31:00 The practical reality of maintaining this weight under coaching scrutiny was that she would sneak into airplane lavatories to eat Power Bars in private, fearing anyone on staff would see her eating. [2] — Aly Raisman "Under crushing pressure to stay thin, Aly Raisman would sneak into airplane lavatories to eat Power Bars where no one could see her. She wa…" 33:30 She was also waking up dry heaving from nausea — being so thin made eating nearly impossible — while her muscles cramped during practice and her Achilles was chronically sore. She describes the whole period as one of dissociation: she had to survive it, so she stopped feeling it. Alex honours the complexity, noting that extraordinary success and extraordinary suffering were happening simultaneously.
Before the 2016 Rio Olympics, Aly Raisman's body fat was measured at 5% — lower than some NFL players — and the medical professional conducting the test refused to reassure her. She was already dealing with a sore Achilles, extreme nausea, and muscle cramps. Her body was failing her even as she went on to compete at the highest level.
Exposure therapy rebuilds comfort with trauma triggers through graduated contact — a children's book with an abuser's name, a familiar smell encountered daily. Aly Raisman had to pause her homework sessions as Paris approaches because being back in gymnastics environments is already overwhelming enough.
At age 16, Aly Raisman's body fat was measured at 8%, well below the healthy female range of approximately 18–20%, alarming her medical evaluator.
Aly Raisman paused her daily exposure therapy homework because her body's physical response to stress made it too difficult to sustain alongside public events like Olympic trials.
Aly Raisman's body fat was measured at 5% before the 2016 Rio Olympics, lower than many NFL players, prompting serious medical concern.
Under pressure to stay thin, Aly Raisman would secretly eat Power Bars in airplane lavatories so coaches and staff wouldn't see her eating.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
Spencer Greenberg was once so socially anxious his heart pounded just approaching a stranger. His therapist gave him homework: go to a bar alone, talk to 5 strangers. Starting with asking for the time, he worked up to asking men for hugs — and his anxiety fell dramatically in 6 months.
A person who flies regularly but obsessively checks weather forecasts before every flight is not doing exposure therapy — they're teaching their brain that flying is only safe with the ritual. Safety behaviors prevent the brain from ever learning that the feared thing is actually fine.
The worry-time technique assigns all worries to one scheduled slot (e.g. 5 PM). Every time a worry surfaces, you write it down and ban yourself from engaging with it until that time. When 5 PM arrives, most worries feel trivial and the act of batch-worrying exposes how little it actually accomplishes.
In a randomized study of 20 habit techniques, 'habit reflection' stood out: recall a past habit you successfully built, write down what helped you succeed, then apply those same strategies to your new habit. It works because it's self-adapting — it uses whatever worked for YOU.
The tiny habits technique — always having a minimal version of your habit you can do when life gets in the way — keeps the mental machinery of habit formation from breaking. Paradoxically, people given a tiny-habit fallback option were MORE successful at the full habit, not less.
Fears and worries act like playground bullies — they want to ambush you. But when you deliberately seek them out and choose the time of engagement, they lose their power. The volitional act of starting the fight on your own terms is one of CBT's most underappreciated insights.
Most downtime defaults are things you regret immediately after — phone scrolling, binge TV. 'Glad you did it' activities meet the same need for rest but leave you feeling like you spent your time well. The switch from a bad screen to a documentary, a book, or a walk costs almost no extra effort but compounds into identity over time.
You rarely control your first reactive thought. But you can train your second thought — the response to the trigger — by asking whether your initial reaction is the most helpful one and replacing it with something equally true but more constructive. Over time, that second thought becomes automatic.
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