Despite Warm Homecoming & Unreal Redemption Against Coaches, Ronda Rousey Was Mentally and Physically Lost & “Dissatisfied” With Life in 2009

Ronda Rousey would be an idol for many aspiring Judokas and fighters today. She has had an amazing career in Judo, representing the United States. She also made a great career in the UFC cage and managed to follow it up in WWE as a superstar. All this, however, wasn’t easy for Ronda Rousey. She recounted her struggles with weight and mental dilemmas in her memoir, My Fight/Your Fight. ‘Rowdy’ remembered how things were just not fine for her, despite having a string of good performances. Even a reunion with her couch couldn’t help her feel at ease in 2006. Rousey had once run away from her home to pursue Judo training after being thrown out of her gym by her coach and being admonished by her mother.

The time Rousey spent outside her comfort zone made her tougher. She went on to win the Swedish open and the USJA winter championships. In the USJA winter championships, ‘Rowdy’ fought at 33 pounds over her typical weight class in a foreign division. While the good performances got her an offer from her former coach, Big Jim, to join the gym back after being thrown out after being caught with her boyfriend, she wasn’t in her element and struggled physically and mentally.

Ronda Rousey’s struggle with appetite and weight

Ronda Rousey remembers how her coach asked her to come back following her dominant performance. She mentions in her book how her coach welcomed her back to the gym, “‘Things are really different back at the club,'” Jimmy said. ‘We’ve got a lot of good people training out there. We’ve got a house where all of the athletes are living. It’s going really well. We would love to have you come back out and train with us.'”

While these words assured her that she was on the right track and in a better position from what she had left the gym as, she was worried about her appetite. Remembering her struggle with weight, she wrote, “I tried everything to suppress my appetite: water, black coffee, sucking on ice. And the highlight of my day was what I ate. It wasn’t that I had discipline issues or self-control issues or that I was a weak person. It was that I was so dissatisfied with my life that the best part of my day was what I ate. Things were looking up, but life wasn’t completely better.”

Ronda Rousey was struggling physically and mentally

Ronda Rousey recounts that she was dealing with an eating disorder. She was trying her best to curb her appetite, but nothing helped. There was a point where Rousey weight 160 pounds and had to cut 22 pounds before her competition. ‘The former UFC champ had been dealing with Bulimia for a while. The constant pressure of cutting down weight was weighing heavily on her; she mentioned how she felt physically and mentally.

Read More: After Gambling on Herself Against the World, Ronda Rousey Made a Tough Call to Her Mother to Get Back With Her

In her memoir, she wrote, “The toll of trying to take off that much weight that you don’t have to lose was getting to me mentally and physically.” Like many other challenges in life Ronda Rousey rose to it and went on to become one of the greatest female fighters of all time. 

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