Queen of Staten Island and WWE Superstar Carmella recently got candid about the body-image pressures she felt in the WWE. The former NFL cheerleader shared how she was always a petite young girl, even though she was a big eater. Her struggles with body image went back to her childhood, and even after a successful WWE career, they did not stop chasing her.

Before becoming a WWE Superstar, Carmella felt pressured to maintain a certain physique that fit into the ‘NFL cheerleading’ standards. That pressure only seemed to intensify once she got into WWE in 2013. Thereafter, she made her television debut with NXT, which pushed her further into the spotlight, increasing the pressure to look a certain way.

“When I started out, I had so much pressure like 'I have to be fit, I want to have a six-pack, I need to keep this up.' I mean, as a wrestler, you need to have a specific physique and look a certain way,” she said during an interview with Yahoo Life.

She admitted to often pushing her body beyond its limits. She would feel completely burnt out- both mentally and physically.

“For a long time, I was always lifting heavy weights and tearing my body apart on the road with wrestling. Then, when I'm home, I'm lifting weights, and I was just feeling so weak; my body was hurting so much,” she admitted.

Before long, she also realized her venture of seeking external validation through the medium of her physique was an unhealthy practice.

When Carmella traded the six-pack pressure for a healthier mindset

After years of feeling the pressure to look a certain way, Carmella finally decided to make a change. She shrugged off the repressed need for validation hidden under the cloak of fitness. She decided to shift her focus from attaining a six-pack to fit in to feeling body-positive, strong, and healthy.

"I've finally gotten to a point where I don't want to restrict my diet. I don't want to tell myself I can't have something. And I feel like now this is the best I've ever looked and the best I've ever felt because I just am doing what's right for me and eating intuitively," she admitted during the same Yahoo Life interview.

She also revealed how she stopped weighing herself, focusing more on eating healthy and following a proper fitness routine. The most important shift, however, happened when she began listening to her own body instead of the other way around.

Carmella’s journey resonates with a lot of people, especially women. Mostly, they often feel the unfair need to fit into unrealistic beauty standards. What do you think of Carmella’s new approach to health and fitness?

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Written by

Avantika Das

Edited by

Ashvinkumar Patil