Olympic figure skater Tara Lipinski says she became aware of her body 'at a young age': 'My body was my tool for my career'

It Figures is Yahoo Life's body image series, delving into the journeys of influential and inspiring figures as they explore what body confidence, body neutrality and self-love mean to them.

Taking home gold at her first ever Olympics for her figure skating performance in Nagano, Japan wasn't just beginner's luck for Tara Lipinski. Although she was just 15 years old at the 1998 Winter Olympics, Lipinski recalls being "acutely aware" of what it would take to be the best in her sport. She also had an understanding of how her body contributed to that outcome.

"I had to realize that my body was my tool for my career, for achieving and realizing all of my dreams as an Olympian and figure skater," she tells Yahoo Life. "But I also grew up in a sport where you jump in the air and you're four times the weight of your body weight landing on one leg on a quarter inch blade. So, you know, it's very similar, I would assume, to gymnastics and ballet where body image was certainly something that I became aware of at a young age."

Not letting that get to her is where she credits "luck," and good parenting.

"I was just, you know, very lucky to have parents that really tried to make sure that I had a healthy outlook towards that, especially as a competitive athlete," she says. "I was so, so young. At 15 years old, I had already moved on to the professional side of my sport, but at that point I really was fueling my body. So the way I thought about my body, in a way, I feel lucky, because I was thinking of it in the way that I hope I think about it today — as you know, this vessel keeps me alive, and I want to feed it well and I want to treat it well. And I want to love it."

Her age also came to her advantage as she recalls the pairing of her "high metabolism and training schedule."

"When I was in my amateur career, I literally ate anything and everything I wanted and never really thought about a calorie," she says. "I really think was a testament to my parents making sure that they could shield me from the realities of a sport like figure skating and the expectations sometimes to have your body look a certain way."

As she grew older, however, Lipinski couldn't help but realize the ways in which her body was changing and how it compared to those she was competing against.

"I hit my teens, I was touring, I was in the professional side of the sport now, I did become more aware of like, 'Oh, does my body look like this skater's body?'" she explains. "'I'm maturing, I'm growing. What is happening? How do I go through this transition?’ And there was definitely growing pains with that."

In hindsight, she had the same struggles feeling comfortable in her body as most other teens would, with the added stress of performing a sport in the spotlight. "I was always the tiniest kid in school, great for figure skating, but you know, you learn from a young age to love what you've got. And that's not an easy journey," she adds.

Although she avoided feeling overwhelmed by that pressure at the time, she's aware of how it could impact her relationship with her body to this day.

"I think because I grew up in a sport where there was a lot of attention on what your body should be or look like, I think that it's very important to me now to feel that I have complete freedom to not adhere to a diet or a certain look," the 40-year-old says. "I try to always make sure that I'm not on some crazy diet or fad."

But as she's gotten older, she's also had to regain trust in her body after recognizing that she'd been conditioned to tolerate certain levels of pain. Since being diagnosed with endometriosis — a painful disorder where tissue similar to the one lining the uterus can grow outside of it — she admits, "as in tune as I’d like to think I was with my body, I definitely missed some alarms here."

"When dealing with injuries, with every little ache or pain, it was like an alarm that went off in my mind where I'd be like, 'Oh, what does this mean? Hopefully everything's OK. We can’t take time off the ice. What is it? How do we get to rehab? How do we fix it?' So I feel that I've always been very in tune with my body. But even with that, I wasn't," she continues. "I think part of the reason was, you know, you go to the doctor and you say, I'm having this pain and it's sort of like, 'Oh, it's OK, it's probably just this...’ [Endometriosis] is not really diagnosed and taken seriously a lot of times. And I think even myself, you know, I probably was having symptoms a good five to 10 years before it actually was starting to make an impact in my life."

She adds, "I have to remind myself that just because I can push through doesn't mean I have to or I need to or it's actually good for me."

While Lipinski isn't actively working toward gold these days, she still cherishes her body and its abilities as much as she did at the peak of her career. In fact, she's recently partnered with Oatly, the world's original and largest oat drink company as they launched their new plant-based cream cheese, to discuss the relief she's found in eating plant-based products through her journey with endometriosis.

Keeping that under control has only positively impacted her relationship with her body as she ages.

"Things aren't as easy to do as they were when I was 15. But at the same time, I still skate to keep it up because I love it," she says. "I could be off the ice a year and it's still like riding a bike when I get out there. Yeah, I'm not trying any crazy triple loop-triple loops anymore. But you know, it still comes so naturally to me, it still feels like home."

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