Ex professional hockey player Kurtis Gabriel is looking to help fans who struggle with body dysmorphia and binge eating by sharing his own experience.
“Former NHLer who struggled with body dysmorphia & binge eating here 👋🏻,” he wrote via X on Wednesday, September 9, above a video that outlined his journey. “What is your relationship like with your body & food? I struggled with mine for a LONG TIME. That pushed me to discover what worked🤷🏻♂️ 👇🏻.”
Gabriel, 33, kept many of the details about his struggle private, but shared in the video what he has learned and explained how he still has to battle his mind when it comes to food.
“Before, it was a compulsion,” he said. “Eating was something that had me in its grips, a desire, and it wasn’t the desire that was the problem. It was the attachment to it. And that attachment to it was so strong.”
Gabriel used his Labor Day weekend as an example, when he went to a restaurant for vegan sushi, only to see the restaurant was closing early.
“I could feel the mind, just the phantom self [freaking] out inside,” he explained. “‘Oh that’s bulls***, they shouldn’t have closed up early. I want my sushi, I need it to feel good.’ But I just watched it. Like I used to watch game film before hockey. [It] just becomes something separate from me that I could study and learn more about myself.”
Gabriel played for four teams during his NHL career, which lasted from 2014 to 2022. As a journeyman whose roster spot was rarely guaranteed, he said his own determination has carried into his retirement.
“I’m able to do this because I’ve really worked at mindfulness,” he said. “I took my crazy will and discipline that I forged, fighting my way to the NHL, into mindfulness because I was losing my damn mind. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
The video also served as promotion for his The Next Arena training program, which will launch in October and include a module focused on the body.
“We retrain our perspective on the body and the fuel we put into it, and the attachment to that fuel,” he explained.
Gabriel added, “We’re the bumpers at the bowling alley who keep you in the lane and don’t let you fall in the gutter. That’s what I would have needed when I retired. Somebody to just set me on my way and let me figure it out for myself.”
