(Yahoo Entertainment) Shawn Johnson East is opening up about her struggles with body image after the 2008 Olympics and how suffering a miscarriage and later giving birth to daughter Drew affected her journey.
Shawn, 28, explained in a new YouTube video, Body Image Issues: 110 Lbs. to Pregnant, that the conclusion of the 2008 Olympics left her feeling lost and without purpose — and that the rigorous training and strict diet that she had been following up until that point gave her an unrealistic idea of what her body should look like.
“When I went on Dancing with the Stars and I had my period for the first time, and I had to deal with going through puberty on national television, I hit a very low spot,” Shawn said in the video. “I’d gained about 15 lbs. after the Olympics and I thought that that was the worst thing in the entire world — which it wasn’t, it was healthy and normal.”
Shawn said that waking up the first morning after competing in Beijing — where she won a gold medal for her balance beam routine — she felt like she had “run straight into a brick wall full speed.”
Shawn Johnson did a ‘White Chair Film’ from ‘I Am Second’ back in 2016. You can view it below.