Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez overcame years of binge-eating and purging to focus on being strong, not skinny

• Laurie Hernandez took a two-year break from gymnastics to recover from emotional abuse by a coach.
• She needed time to reframe her relationship with food, her body, and the sport.
• After coming back, Hernandez injured her knee just before the Olympic trials. She won't go to Tokyo.

When the 2020 Olympics were postponed, US gymnast Laurie Hernandez was caught off guard.

She told Insider she had been poised to return to the sport after a two-year break to recover from the emotional and verbal abuse she said she experienced while training with her now former coach.

But the delay meant her long-anticipated return to the sport would have to wait another year.

"It takes a lot of time to get prepped for something as big as the Olympics, so to have to stop and delay it then start over, it just felt really overwhelming at the time," she said.

The Olympic gold medalist told Insider in May that she was feeling stronger than ever and that although she felt more pressure to perform in Tokyo after an extra year away, she was "super excited."

"There's going to be such high energy this summer because it's what we've all been waiting for," Hernandez, 21, said.

Unfortunately, she suffered a knee injury in June and pulled out of the Olympic trials.

Though the Tokyo dream won't become a reality for Hernandez, she told USA Today that she was applying to schools and thinking about trying acting; she said it was too overwhelming to think about Paris 2024.

Hernandez didn't want to make a second comeback

When gyms closed during the pandemic, Hernandez had to take a break from training for a couple of months.

"I remember calling my coaches and being like, 'So, no practice tomorrow, I guess,'" she said. "It was a lot."

Hernandez redirected her focus to the silver linings of the pandemic, including the six months she got to spend with her family in New Jersey during lockdown.

She kept active by stretching and running through routines mentally at home.

"I put rugs and mats on the floor in the kitchen and tried to do some aerials and backhand springs in the living room, just so I could keep my body going," she said.

After a while, she was invited into a gym where she could train alone.

"It was such a pain in the butt," Hernandez said. "Comebacks are so romanticized, like it's going to be this great thing. But no, it's going to be hard."

Back in the gym, Hernandez's regimen involved physical therapy two or three mornings a week and four- to five-hour gym sessions on weekday afternoons and some Saturdays.

"My coaches have been awesome in the sense that they don't really give me a time that practice ends," she said. "They just give me the assignments, and then when I get them done, I can go home."

But Hernandez's training isn't finished when she leaves the gym - when training, she makes time to stretch, run, and do yoga at home.

"Recovery is huge," Hernandez said. She uses a Hyperice Hypervolt massage gun to work out the kinks in her muscles.

Hernandez overcame binge-eating and purging

Over the past few years, Hernandez changed her approach to food.

Leading up to the 2016 Rio Olympics, she was counting calories and "really obsessive" about her food, she said. This behavior led to binge-eating and purging.

"With gymnastics being a sport where everything must be perfect - your hair, routines, body, face, all of it - it was just a lot," she said.

She said her coach regularly criticized her body shape when she was a teen. She has spoken out about the emotional abuse she says she was subjected to. The coach, Maggie Haney, was suspended for eight years in April 2020. (The suspension was later reduced to five years.)

Hernandez said she worked to undo this mentality and is now more relaxed. She eats intuitively, focusing on healthy foods and prepping meals as much as she can.

"If I want more carbs, then my body is clearly asking for more carbs. If I want more protein, my body is asking for more protein," she said, adding that she has a soft spot for breakfast foods at any time of the day.

Hernandez's focus is on getting stronger, not smaller

When Hernandez returned to the gym in 2018, she did so consciously, with a fresh mindset: The focus was on getting stronger, not smaller.

"When I was 16, the goal was to lose weight, look good, and fit in with the other girls," Hernandez said. "Now I want to be strong and be able to rely on my body."

She was self-conscious at first, wearing baggy T-shirts and leggings to the gym before she built up the confidence to wear a sports bra and shorts to practice.

She said her new coaches encouraged her to fuel her body right, build muscle, and use it to her advantage.

"My coaches were like: 'Your body's changed, but all the muscle and extra mass that you have now is going to allow you to hit the floor when you tumble. It's going to bend the bars and throw you up. You're going to learn how to use it. You don't have to lose weight, you just have to get strong.' And that was everything to me," Hernandez said.

Hernandez used the break to prioritize her mental health

Hernandez's break from gymnastics was driven by her mental health.

"I had done gymnastics for so long that I wanted literally anything else," she said. "I just wanted time to experience life and meet new people."

So she went on "Dancing with the Stars," wrote two books, presented TV shows, and voiced a character for a Nickelodeon series.

"It felt scary because gymnastics was all I knew, but it was good," Hernandez said.

Initially, she wasn't sure whether she'd ever return to the sport. But she realized the problem had been the people and the environment, not gymnastics itself.

"It's taken time, and trial and effort, to understand what my brain does when I'm nervous and how I can tackle that," she said.

On the hard days, Hernandez focuses on the community of people supporting her and reminds herself she always has a choice.

"If you want to stop, you can. You're not stuck anywhere. You can change things," she said she reminds herself. "And as soon as I give myself the option, I realize, 'No, I really want to stay. I just had a bad day. I think tomorrow is going to be better.'"