Sophia Thiel
She speaks openly about her eating disorder
In 2018, Sophia Thiel was particularly active in bodybuilding – in retrospect, she admits that she was suffering from an eating disorder at the time.
© imago images / Eventpress
Fitness YouTuber Sophia Thiel speaks about her eating disorder for the first time in her “probably most private” video.
Fitness influencer Sophia Thiel (26) surprises her fans on her YouTube channel with an open confession. “I have an eating disorder,” says the title of the video that she posted on Sunday (April 25). published on the video platform. In it, the young woman speaks for the first time about her disturbed eating behavior and her past with unhealthy weight loss.
The 26-year-old introduces the video as “probably the most private, intimate, emotional and personally most important to me” that she has uploaded so far, before she reports on the course of her illness.
Although she could not say exactly when her eating behavior changed pathologically for the first time, she had already suffered from “very unstable eating behavior” in her childhood. “I even slipped into the anorexia direction during my school days.” With a height of 1.72 meters, she weighed less than 50 kilos at the time. According to the body mass index, this corresponds to being severely underweight.
After being diagnosed with bulimia, she began psychotherapy
Then she discovered bodybuilding for herself, which she later made nationally known. “I thought I found the key for myself. In bodybuilding with this perfectionist approach, with this black and white thinking, I can shape my body exactly the way I want it,” she admits in the video.
However, she was never enough for herself. An interplay of numerous factors, such as the influence of social media and your personal demands, increasingly developed into an eating disorder that should be taken seriously. Therefore, Sophia Thiel decided in 2019 to take a break.
She finally received the diagnosis of “bulimia nervosa”, colloquially known as bulimia, and began psychotherapy in 2020, which in retrospect she called the “best I could have done”. She is very proud that she can speak so openly about her illness today, Thiel explains. She decided to take the step to help other affected people, encourage them and show that they are not alone.