Monica Seles has written the kind of book she thinks she’d needed to read in her darkest days, a lesson in conquering the demons of food without that dreaded word diet.
Seles figures she bought every self-help book on the market. She felt sure that if she just found the right diet, if she just hired the right trainer, she’d lose weight and reclaim her tennis career.
Instead Seles would gain it back as quickly as she dropped it, sneaking off on late-night supermarket runs and bingeing on junk food in secret. Seeking refuge from the pain and confusion of dual tragedies, she put on more than 16kg.
“When I started on this journey, I had all the diet books, I knew what to do, I worked with the famous trainers,” Seles said in an interview on Monday. “But yet I couldn’t get it.”
Now the 35-year-old Seles has written a book of her own: Getting a Grip on My Body, My Mind, My Self which was released yesterday. It’s technically a memoir, chronicling her rise from a tennis-loving kid to the No. 1 player in the world.
Seles tried so many diets.
“I could recite them for you sitting here,” she said. “But until I realized that I held that power — not my trainer, not my coach, not my family, but me — that’s when I think I started to shift in the way I thought.”
In April 1993, Seles was 19 years old and had already won nine Grand Slam titles. That life shattered during a match in Hamburg, Germany, when Seles was stabbed by a spectator. Weeks later, her father was diagnosed with cancer. He died in 1998 after a long battle with the disease.
Seles returned to tennis and won one more Grand Slam. But her mind and body weren’t the same. It took her more than nine years, her weight and emotions constantly yo-yoing, before she fully grasped the connection between the two.
“I hired some fantastic trainers, some fantastic nutritionists,” Seles said. “But unfortunately no one paid attention to where these emotions were coming from.”
“I felt weird that I couldn’t control a simple thing like eating,” she said. “I was so in control when you’d watch me on the tennis court, but yet what I put in my mouth I had zero control [over].”
She’s certain that carrying around all that extra weight led to the string of injuries that eventually ended her career.
Her 30th birthday approaching, unable to work out because of injury, Seles panicked that she would gain even more weight. Instead, without any trainers or nutritionists to tell her what to do, she started to relax about food. No more calorie-counting or bingeing
She thought about why the women she saw in Asia and Europe seemed to be thinner than Americans, and she realized it helps that they walk so much. She found she would walk outside because she enjoyed it, not because she felt she had to.
After all those years of wanting to lose weight, Seles accomplished it only after she stopped really trying. She learned to savor food and listen to her appetite, to eat because she’s hungry — not just because something is in front of her.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
Matvei Michkov did not score on Monday, but the Philadelphia rookie had a hand in both goals as hosts the Flyers earned a 2-1 victory over the Nashville Predators. Ryan Poehling and Jamie Drysdale got the goals for the Flyers (31-36-9, 71 points), who won their third straight. Michkov and Travis Konecny assisted on both. Ivan Fedotov stopped 28 shots to earn his first win since March 1, ending a personal six-game losing streak. Zachary L’Heureux got the lone goal for Nashville. Michael McCarron and Brady Skjei got the assists for the Predators (27-39-8, 62 points), who have just four goals in their
RSS