Olympic cross-country skier Jesse Diggins is opening up about her eating disorder. Something that she struggled with as a teenager.
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Olympian Says Dealing With Eating Disorder Was Harder Than Winning Gold Medal
This past October, Diggins gave a speech at a mental health advocacy event at Montana State University. The decorated Olympian reflected on her gold medal victory at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games after overcoming an eating disorder as a teen. Diggins said the difficulty of winning a gold medal pales in comparison to the struggles that she had to navigate while dealing with the disorder.
"Winning the Olympics is easy compared to healing your own brain," she said in a transcript obtained by PEOPLE. "I had to learn that it's not only okay, but healthy to allow myself to feel the harder emotions."
She noted that the disorder nearly took her life. Calling it a "terrifying" experience.
"This moment... almost didn't happen at all," she said. "The speed with which it took over my entire life was terrifying. This need to be perfect and desire to find control in a life that was quickly feeling out of my control manifested in an eating disorder."
Diggins Credits Parents With Saving Her Life
Diggins also shared that the disorder had consumed her life to the point that her mother began to fear the worst. She would often come into her bedroom in the middle of the night to make sure that she was still breathing. She called that feeling the "lowest moment of [her] entire life."
"When an eating disorder takes over your brain, it can quickly become more powerful than family, than love, or even the will to live," she continued.
"Without the proper help, I would have died. Maybe not right away, but in a few months or years, my parents would have been burying their child."
The Olympian said it was her parents springing into action that ultimately saved her life. They enrolled her in The Emily Program, an organization that specializes in eating disorder care. Diggins said that the process of her recovery was "long and hard." But thankfully she was able to come out on the winning end of her battle.
"I was there five days a week, all day long," she recalled. "Make no mistake, this was a long and hard process, and it is the hardest I have ever worked at anything my entire life, including the Olympics."
