I struggled with an eating disorder but now I’m an international elite powerlifter

An influencer has spoken about her journey from struggling with an eating disorder to becoming an elite international powerlifter who can lift over 400 pounds.

A full-time powerlifting content creator from Los Angeles, Ru has 278,000 followers on Instagram and 2.6 million followers on TikTok, where she goes by the name Little Beast.

And while she’s capable of lifting at least double her body weight, which is 123 pounds, that wasn’t always the case before, Ru told the Know Your Strength podcast.

She said she was recording figure skating when she was 11 – what she describes as a “beautiful” but “toxic” sport – and she competed for about 8 years.

She had a figure skating coach who first introduced her to calorie counting.

Ru said, ‘She was the one who came to me at first and said ‘get rid of this’ and she just squeezed my body and said ‘get rid of this next week’.

“And I was like, I don’t know how. I’m literally in seventh grade. I’m maybe 11 so I’d ask her and she’d tell my mom to put me on a 400 calorie diet.”

Ru would train in the ring about 27 to 30 hours a week in addition to school and said her coaches would tell her, “If you had less legs, if you had less butt, if you had less belly, you could to land this jump cleanly.’

While her eating disorder continued throughout her years, she was so malnourished that one day she fell to the floor and sustained her two stress fractures, which marked the end of her figure skating career.

This then led to the decision to go to university, although that was not her plan at first. She went to USC and said that at the time, the beauty standards were “washboard abs” and “thigh splits.”

She then moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she experienced “culture shock” as beauty standards in the South meant you could have more “meat on the bone.” Ru said if you looked skinny they would encourage you to eat, something she hadn’t experienced before.

She said there weren’t many hobbies available where she found herself, so she signed up for a gym and started out as a “typical cardio bunny” spending “hours on the treadmill.”

Ru then started looking at female weightlifters on YouTube, which piqued her curiosity, and so she stepped into the free weights section of the gym one day and hasn’t looked back since.

She then joined a gym that was mostly full of powerlifters who saw her talent and encouraged her to compete.

But Ru said she didn’t want to worry about micromanaging her food intake. They then convinced her that powerlifting was not about aesthetics, but more about performance.

Ru often posts powerful photos and videos of herself squatting, deadlifting and benching an incredible amount of weight

She said, “It’s liberating and you just have to focus on moving as much weight as possible.”

She then won her first powerlifting competition, moving into the national competitions where she amazingly broke a number of records.

Ru said, “I was just in a daze from just being able to focus on what my body can do was a big factor for me moving from seeing food as something I have to punish myself for by train to see it as fuel.’

Ru is now an elite international powerlifter, meaning she is one of the top lifters in her weight class.

She often posts empowering photos and videos of herself squatting, deadlifting, and benching with an incredible amount of weight, and they usually include quotes encouraging others to be the best version of themselves they can be.

She recently posted a video of her deadlifting a whopping 405 pounds with the caption, “We got the 4 plate club fan ahhhh!!!!”

She also uploads stunning videos of her dancing, which her fans love to see.

One commented, “Obsessed is an understatement.”

Another wrote: “You motivate me to exercise and now this… I definitely want to learn how to dance like that too.”

A third said, “This brightened my day. Thank you!!’

If you are concerned about your own health or that of someone else, please contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or visit beatingdisorders.org.uk