Rethinking Body Image and Nutrition in CrossFit

This marks the eighth episode of a special CrossFit Podcast collaboration with the CrossFit Medical Society. 

CrossFit Podcast producer Maggie Mullen steps out from backstage for a raw, unfiltered conversation about body image, nutrition, and the culture of CrossFit. From her early days as a competitor and fueling to perform, to finding balance, Maggie opens up about food neurosis, body dysmorphia, and an alternative view of diet culture.

This episode digs into the tension between discipline and obsession, aesthetics and health, and what it really means to chase your best self inside the gym and out.

TOPICS INCLUDED

• How CrossFit reshaped Maggie’s relationship with food and body image
• Body positivity vs. fat shaming — and finding a “third way”
• The role of CrossFit in building self-awareness and resilience
• CrossFit as moving meditation and mental health therapy

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• M2 Performance Nutrition 

Community Highlight

Duncan Seawell is a clinical psychologist and the president of Forging Youth Resilience (FYR), a nonprofit helping gyms open their doors to kids who otherwise couldn’t access CrossFit.

He launched a Steve’s Club chapter in Denver in 2015 and helped shape FYR into what it is today: a network of 20 active clubs reaching thousands of youth, from foster care to incarceration to kids just trying to find their place.

FYR partners with schools, gyms, and foster homes to deliver trauma-informed CrossFit, covering coaching, transportation, and nutrition. But its heart is FYR Camp, a week-long mountain retreat where kids train, hike, and sit in nightly circles to share their stories.

“It’s sort of a group therapy light context,” Duncan says. “One kid says, ‘I’ve been through this,’ and another says, ‘Me too.’ The power of that connection is amazing.”

As Duncan puts it: “Kids are growing unhealthier in all kinds of ways — physical, mental, metabolic. The solution is prevention. Our job is to make sure no kid is kept out of a gym because of money.”

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