Ten years ago, Eugene Teo was obsessed with lifting weights. But, gradually, he realised his extreme mindset was making him unhappy. So he changed his outlook
E
ugene Teo, 34, began lifting weights at the age of 13, looking for validation. “I was short, skinny and I thought it would give me confidence,” he says. “Bodybuilding for me was the ultimate expression of that.”
Now living on the Gold Coast in Australia, with his partner and daughter, the fitness coach spent from age 16 to 24 training and competing. At times, he lifted weights for up to four hours a day, aiming to get as muscular and lean as possible. The ideal he was chasing? “If you grab your eyelid and feel that skin,” he says, “that’s the skin thinness you want on your bum and abs.”
That quest became an obsession: “How can I push myself to these extreme points, and then do it again and again and become better than last time?” He followed unsafe protocols shared by bodybuilding gurus to make his muscles pop, dangerously dehydrating his body ahead of competitions. He ate six to 10 times a day, restricting his diet to foods considered “clean” by the community at the time: sweet potato, brown rice, broccoli and boiled chicken breast. He skipped his own birthday for years to avoid eating off-plan and took scales to Christmas dinner to weigh out his turkey. “There were a lot of dysmorphic associations around food,” he says.
