Paul Archuleta/FilmMagicShawn Johnson recalls battling eating disorders in the past and says that today, she's "finally healthy."
The 23-year-old earned four Olympic medals for gymnastics at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and three world titles. She won ABC's Dancing With the Stars in 2009. A year later, Johnson tore her ACL while skiing, had surgery, and then returned to gymnastics.
In 2012, Johnson retired from gymnastics. She now runs a healthy living website, The Body Department. As a former competitive gymnast, not to mention a woman living in today's society, body image and weight struggles are problems Johnson knows too well. But she has not been comfortable talking about all of her battles until recently.
"I've kind of gone through the gamut when it comes to health," she told Yahoo Health! in comments published on Tuesday. "I've hit lows with—I don't want to say diagnosed eating disorders—but eating disorders. And then I've gone the other way, where I've rejected fitness."
"[I've] kind of gone through the whole education system, all the nutritionists, and now I'm finally healthy," she said.
In 2012, Johnson was asked in an interview with the Reuters news wire if she ever struggled with any eating disorders.
"I never did, I swear on everything on that," she said. "I was luckily strong enough to not fall into any of that. The mental part of it can be harder because I kept everything to myself. I was six percent body fat and I still thought I had to change something. That is so wrong. It's scary and so many girls go through it and they shouldn't."
She also told Reuters she had battled insecurities about her body image, saying, "I definitely think gymnastics is what brought it out, the insecurities. But I think gymnastics is what helped it as well. Because it strips you down and makes you find confidence in yourself. It was hard."
She also said Dancing With the Stars made her insecurities worse.
"Because in gymnastics, I'd earned the respect of the world by how hard I had worked," she told Reuters. "DWTS was more glamorous, people weren't as forgiving."
Johnson told Yahoo! Health that when she competed on Dancing With the Stars, she became "kind of a huge target for criticism," namely from body shamers. She said she had gained weight after hitting puberty and tried detoxes and juice cleanses to try to lose the pounds. After she retired from gymnastics, she realized she "didn't know how to lift weights or how to work out" and stopped exercising.
She has since adopted a healthier lifestyle, eating nutritious meals and working out.
"The most important thing that I would have wished had been ingrained in me when I was little is: Everything in moderation," Johnson told Yahoo! Health.
Meanwhile, she has much to be happy about in her life: She's getting married. Johnson's boyfriend Andrew East proposed to her in July on the field at a baseball game.