Jennifer Hamer - | Sharing Stories Changing Lives
She looked strong. She was winning. And she was slowly disappearing. In this intimate conversation, Dr Jennifer Hamer reflects on growing up as ‘the talented one,’ the illness no one questioned, and the long road back to herself. A story of survival, second chances, and learning that our bodies are the least interesting thing about us.
Dive Deeper: The Full Conversation with Jennifer Hamer
The Core Story
In this episode, Jennifer, a former elite athlete, shares her decades-long battle with anorexia nervosa. Jennifer describes her eating disorder not as a quest for thinness, but as a "toxic friend" named Anna—a voice that provided a terrifying sense of control in an uncertain world. Fueled by a mindset of perfectionism and a failing medical system that normalized disordered eating in elite athletes, Jennifer’s illness progressed unchecked. She reveals the devastating truth: she was praised and glamorized for her discipline and success in sport even as her body was collapsing, pushing her all the way to the European Championships running on empty.
Time-Stamped Breakthrough Moments
[00:06:00] – The "Friend" Named Anna: Jennifer describes her eating disorder as an inner voice that provided a false sense of safety and control.
[00:08:45] – The System Failure: Why coaches and doctors dismissed her parents' pleas, mistaking her disordered eating for "athlete behavior" and "dedication."
[00:12:00] – The Hospital Reality: Recounting the harrowing days of her inpatient treatment, including being admitted at a critical 28 kilos and the fear of organ failure.
[00:15:20] – The Hardest Part: Being released from the inpatient unit in a healthy body but struggling mentally, leading to a period of orthorexia (only eating "healthy" foods).
[00:19:30] – The Crushing Blow: The diagnosis of severe osteoporosis at age 23, forcing the end of her Olympic running dream.
[00:20:00] – Finding Identity: Who were you when the athlete was no longer your name? The struggle to find worth beyond medals and miles.
[00:23:30] – Reclaiming Worth: How therapy and her experience fueled her new mission—completing a Master's and a PhD in eating disorder prevention.
[00:26:00] – Changing the Landscape: Jennifer’s current work challenging toxic language and culture with Swimming Australia and Triathlon Australia, and her advocacy role with the Butterfly Foundation.
[00:28:00] – Lived Experience vs. Expertise: How having a lived experience allows her to explain to coaches why "harmless" comments like "You are looking super fit" can be detrimental.
[00:30:15] – The Final Message: Why recovery isn't just about fighting, but about forgiveness, gentleness, and believing in miracles.
Full Episode Transcript
rying to control something that I felt I couldn't fix inside. The way I often describe my eating disorder was. It was the only way that I felt like I could control my way through a world that felt so uncertain. It was a way that I could suppress every emotion that made me feel inadequate in this world.
[00:05:56] Jennifer: It was definitely fuelled by the fact that I was a [00:06:00] perfectionist. I was a high achiever, and we know that individuals with those traits are already very vulnerable to eating disorders. My eating disorder. I've also described it previously as a friend, and that can seem somewhat controversial to many and somewhat confusing.
[00:06:18] Jennifer: I guess if you haven't experienced an eating disorder. The way I described it was that my eating disorder was like another voice that lived in my head. I imagined it as this little person that lived in my mind. I gave my eating disorder a name, which was Anna, the shortened version of anorexia. I genuinely would describe it as a person that lived there, and it told me what to do.
[00:06:41] Jennifer: It told me what to eat, would tell me how to behave, and there were all these rules and sort of this rigidity that formed in my life. And the reason that it felt almost like a friend was because it gave me a sense of control when, as I said earlier, everything else felt very uncertain. [00:07:00] It made me feel safe, even comforted sometimes.
[00:07:04] Jennifer: In a strange and always painful way, but it was a voice that helped me cope and helped me keep things together when I felt like I was falling apart. So in the beginning, it felt like it was really almost a protector, a protector from failure, from rejection, from being seen and realize that I'm not enough.
[00:07:26] Jennifer: But over time, as the illness progressed, you start to realize it's actually more of a almost like a toxic relationship where at the start it feels very supportive and familiar, but slowly you start to lose your freedom, your joy, the authentic you, and I guess letting go of that friendship was almost grieving something that once felt very safe, even when it was hurting me.
[00:07:58] Karen: then those little [00:08:00] voices that we all have, can sometimes be so toxic to who we are.
Jennifer: Yeah, 100%. And often we listen to those voices, and we'll go along with the narrative and let those voices take us on a story. But as I'll touch on later, there was a point where I learned so many valuable tools to interrupt those voices and almost have a little conversation with them.
[00:08:27] Karen: It's such a striking word, friends. Because in one sense, the disorder gave you control, focus, and even comfort. But in truth, it was consuming Jen. Picture the teenage runner coaches clapping on the sideline, doctors nodding approvingly at her discipline. Even as her body weakened, the praise grew louder.
[00:08:52] Karen: Her family begged someone to listen, but the professionals, the people who should have known called it [00:09:00] athlete behaviour in sport, thinness still too often masquerades as dedication.
[00:09:08] Karen: Jen, when you think back to those years, what do you think someone should have noticed?
[00:09:17] Jennifer: It's a great question, and after that I get asked about why didn't my parents do anything, and I always like to emphasize my parents did.
[00:09:26] Jennifer: Everything they possibly could. They reached out to doctors; they reached out to support for me. But one of the real challenges we had was because I was an athlete, when we used to go to the doctor, there was this normalization of athletes losing their menstrual cycle, normalizing this disordered eating among athletes because there was this rhetoric that that's what they have to do to be an athlete.
[00:09:50] Jennifer: I remember my parents being absolutely distraught because they're trying to help their daughter, but they're getting pushed away from the medical system because this was deemed normal for an elite [00:10:00] athlete. So, I guess there's two parts. The medical system failings of being able to identify and recognize concerns early enough in athletes.
[00:10:09] Jennifer: If I was picked up and got the treatment that I needed at that age, I wouldn't have endured an eating disorder for the years that I did. But then also it comes down to a sports responsibility as well. And I was praised; I was glamorized for the successes I was having in sport. I was winning races and that's all that mattered to the sport.
[00:10:33] Jennifer: And I look back at photos of myself now on the start lines compared to the other athletes. And I know we shouldn't compare, but you can look at me and straight away realize that I was not healthy. No one ever said anything when you could see that I was isolating myself when I was doing more sessions than I was meant to.
[00:10:54] Jennifer: It was celebrated. And so, I guess for me, I wished that [00:11:00] my coaches, the people working with me in sport, the doctors, that they'd been equipped with the skills, the knowledge, and the capabilities to be able to intervene earlier so that. Maybe I wouldn't have ended up in a more dire situation that I ended up in.
[00:11:17] Karen I wonder how many other athletes today are applauded for their gift while their pain is unseen. I'm sure there's so many of them,
[00:11:29] Karen But still Jen was pushed all the way to the European Championships running on empty. Imagine standing at the start line knowing your body is already collapsing it didn't just steal her energy, it stole years of her life.
[00:11:45] Karen: And by 22, Jen was in hospital survival. Uncertain. So, Jen, your parents were told you mightn't make it. They're pretty harsh words.
[00:11:56] Karen : What do you remember of those days? [00:12:00]
[00:12:00] Jennifer: Yeah, it's another great question, Karen. And. Honestly, those days feel like yesterday, I remember the day that my parents managed to get me in front of a doctor and it was real harsh love from my father who had to hold me down in the car as I was kicking and screaming like a five-year-old who just did not want to receive any help.
[00:12:22] Jennifer: But fortunately, they did get me in front of the doctor, and I often wonder at that point, as I was showing so much hate to my parents. The strength that they had to believe that one day, I would thank them for what they were doing is just so commendable. And that was the moment when I was told that I was going to be admitted to an inpatient unit.
[00:12:45] Jennifer: So that was a specific eating disorder hospital, and I was admitted in a really critical state. So, I was 28 kilos when I was admitted to inpatient treatment. I have no idea how sick I was. It's [00:13:00] like I just couldn't see how unwell I was. My immune system was incredibly weak, so my parents weren't allowed to see me at the start.
[00:13:07] Jennifer: There was a real risk that I was going into organ failure. At that point, there was a sort of a warning of, we don't know whether she'll come out the other side of this. I didn't really have the capacity to even understand what was being said. I was so unwell. I don't even think I understood what they meant when they were saying all these threatening things.
[00:13:32] Jennifer: I remember the inpatient treatment very, very clearly, and to me, I described it a bit like a prison, which I've never been in prison, but that's all I can imagine. It being like you are watched for every hour of the day, you're never on your own because there's this fear that you're going to exercise or try and.
[00:13:54] Jennifer: Burn off energy that you've been fed. You are quite literally force fed, and [00:14:00] if you refused, then you are tube fed. There was nothing pleasant about it. I guess the only pleasant thing I can find about it was there were some nurses in there who you did sort of developed a bond with and occasionally you would have a moment of joy with them.
[00:14:17] Jennifer: The biggest joy for me while I was in hospital was the fact that every week I gained a kilo. I got a reward and those rewards tended to be time with my family in the hospital garden. And as I continued to progress, it moved to things like having half an hour at the local cafe with my parents providing I had the snack I had to eat.
[00:14:40] Jennifer: So that was my real driver and I honestly believed. Having an athletic background served me so well in that inpatient unit because it was very goal-driven and we know how athletes thrive when they have goals in front of them. I always used to have this match that I used to say to myself when I did start moving [00:15:00] forwards in recovery, that was that it was one meal closer to home, and every meal that I ate was one meal closer to home because my dream was to get back to sport when I was going to leave the inpatient treatment.
[00:15:13] Karen: A year of whitewashed walls, locks, doors, monitored meals. It saved Jen's life, but she has called it a prison because the real work, the real recovery began afterwards outside those walls.
[00:15:31] Karen but how did you begin piecing yourself back together once you left all that behind?
[00:15:39] Jennifer: Yes. That was. Probably with the hardest part of recovery because in the hospital, whilst the environment was really, really horrendous, there's no other way to describe it.
[00:15:51] Jennifer: It was very step by step. You knew how this worked. If you gained a kilo, you got another reward, and there was a discharge weight. I think [00:16:00] what we're completely forgetting, which is incredible that an eating disorder unit with supposedly the professionals in these illnesses, they completely disregard the fact that these are mental illnesses with physical symptoms, but they treat it the other way round.
[00:16:13] Jennifer: So, they treat it as a physical illness, and they forget the mental part. So, I was released back into the world in a body that appeared somewhat healthy Now. Mentally, I was still struggling so much. I still needed to search for this element of control because none of the deeper meanings as to the reasons as to why I developed my eating disorder were ever dealt with.
[00:16:41] Jennifer: So, I guess I went down a path of another sort of form of my eating disorder where I. Engaged in behaviours where I would only eat foods, which I deemed healthy. I was terrified of sugar. I was [00:17:00] terrified of carbohydrates. I was terrified of gaining any more weight. So I found this new way of controlling my way through life again, and that was kind of my new form of my eating disorder.
[00:17:12] Jennifer: Fortunately, after about a year of that, I realized how much I was struggling. And I found an incredible therapist in the UK who was the first person that ever helped me understand where this could have come from, and the idea that I didn't believe I was enough and this fear of if I was in a bit bigger body, I felt that I wouldn't be accepted or I wouldn't be loved.
[00:17:39] Jennifer: And so, we started unpacking a lot of the deeper meaning behind my eating disorder, where I started to then make some progress. I was surrounded by so much love from my family who were by my side the whole way throughout hospital. They were there and then as I was discharged, they were there the whole [00:18:00] way.
[00:18:00] Jennifer: And I remember being in Portugal for my dad's 60th birthday and we stood on the decking next to a beach and we'd holiday there every year since I was two years old. So, it was a very special place for us. He said to me, what do you want to do when we go home? And I said, I really want to get my undergraduate degree in sports science.
[00:18:21] Jennifer: And dad for the first time hesitated and said, are you sure you don't want some more time to just enjoy your life a little bit reintegrate, settle back into the world kind of thing. And I, I guess my athlete mindset again kicked in and I was like, Nope, I'm going home and I'm getting my degree. My eating disorder had stopped me twice before from getting my degree. I'd had to pull out twice before, so I guess there was this real drive and tenacity to obtain it. This time. That night in Portugal, I applied for the degree, and I was offered the next day. As soon as we got home, we went down and. The [00:19:00] campus, I was told that I had to remain living at home. It was so important that I had that support and that love from my family during that time.
[00:19:09] Jennifer: So I went to a university that was close enough for me to drive in, and I guess that was a period of my life where I had to start learning who I was. I wasn't able to get back to sport in the capacity that I did before. At that stage, the dream was definitely still alive. That was still in my mind. I wanted to be in the Olympics, I wanted to get back to running, but I knew I just had to take my time.
[00:19:37] Jennifer: So, then there's another blow, severe osteoporosis, the end of her Olympic dream. The goal once defined by movement was now faced with stillness.
[00:19:49] Karen: Jen, many of us know that moment when the thing we thought made us who we are or who we were, disappears, the career ends, [00:20:00] a relationship collapses, a dream is taken. Who were you when the athlete was no longer your name?
[00:20:11] Jennifer: Don't know who I was. It's, it was one of the hardest periods to find acceptance in, I think, and getting a diagnosis of severe osteoporosis at the age of 23. Again, it was another moment in my life where I don't think I appreciated what that actually meant at the time.
[00:20:35] Jennifer: I always liken this to experiences when you are a child and you do something wrong or you make a mistake and there's always that, don't worry, you can try again, kind of thing. The realization that this time there was the opportunity to say, don't worry, you can try again, was a really hard pill to swallow.
[00:20:57] Jennifer: I ended up with multiple stress fractures. [00:21:00] I had several in my sacrum. I somehow managed to get one in my rear. My body was breaking every time I was trying to get back to any form of competitive sport, and I think that was the moment where I just had this realization that it's over the dream that you once had had been taken away.
[00:21:19] Jennifer: I definitely took me a very, very long time to see any parts of myself beyond being an athlete. Coming from that tiny country village, that was all I was known for. I remember walking down the village street one morning and somebody over the other side of the road shouted, why are you not running?
[00:21:41] Jennifer: Because that's all they knew me for, and I just burst into tears because I didn't know who I was. I think that's taken a lot of years of therapy and unpacking who I am beyond. The athlete, and I don't think this is just tied to eating disorders as well. I think athletes ching onto that identity [00:22:00] very, very tightly, and it's something that's experienced through their retirement as well.
[00:22:05] Jennifer: That's something that I'm really passionate instilling in our younger athletes as they move through the system, is you are a whole human, well-rounded individual who is. So much more than being an athlete. I often like to say You're a human who does sport rather than you are an athlete, because it automatically assigns this identity to them.
[00:22:29] Jennifer: But I guess what I started to do was try and envision, well, I can't be an athlete anymore, but maybe there's something more integral. Maybe there's something more that I am meant to bring in this life. And that was when I started exploring different avenues of maybe there's a bigger meaning to my experience on this earth.
[00:22:53] Karen: I hear you
[00:22:53Karen: and I feel for people with any sort of addiction in a way, whether [00:23:00] alcohol, drugs, whatever, it's similar. It's a mental disorder, isn't it? And treating that is never easy.
[00:23:07] Karen: So, lost at first Jen began to rebuild piece by piece through therapy, through love, through the slow recognition that worth isn't earned by medals or miles.
[00:23:21] Karen: So, finding that voice again, was that really difficult for you?
[00:23:26] Jennifer: Yeah, it was. I went and got my sports science degree, and I did really well in my degree, and then I subsequently went on to do a master's in clinical nutrition and eating disorders. I think what I'd found was I almost had a gift now to give back, and I think that for me was now my new driving force was that I had a powerful story and I was now studying in the field and I moved to Australia.
[00:23:53] Jennifer: I completed a PhD in eating disorder prevention and so I guess my new mission was to [00:24:00] realize that a gold medal is a moment in time, but to be able to impact the lives of others. Nothing could be more rewarding than that. But I would be lying to say that that then didn't become part of who I was. And something I then struggled with was this idea of I then didn't know who I was without this story of this success story of the girl who overcame an eating disorder and how incredible, how amazing, and to be celebrated for this.
[00:24:29] Jennifer: And suddenly I found myself in this position that I didn't know who I was without the story. So a lot of the therapy, probably more in recent years, was me and letting go of that completely because I honestly got to a point where I didn't know whether I was in the field for the wrong reasons and whether I was staying in this space because I needed it still to validate who I was.
[00:24:52] Jennifer: And so, I wanted to understand if I remove myself. Do I feel fulfilled in my life? Do I [00:25:00] recognize who I am and my worth, and the fact that I'm worthy of belonging and love and acceptance? And so, I strategically pulled myself away for a little while and started working different industries to recognize, do I feel enough?
[00:25:14] Jennifer: And I did. And the therapy that I'd had at Workday, I knew who I was and I was very grounded and accepting of who I am, but I missed. Field of trying to help others. And so, for me, that was a real confirmation actually. I really do want to be in this space to help others. And I guess I look back now and I think there was a reason why I didn't become an athlete, because I was never meant to be the athlete.
[00:25:39] Jennifer: I was meant to do this. And I'm a firm believer that these things happened to shape us to who we are and what we're meant to bring to this world. And I definitely believe that. A big part of my mission is to share my story, to inspire others and to help prevent these horrendous illnesses happening to other people.[00:26:00]
[00:26:00] Karen: You really have been doing some amazing work. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you are doing?
[00:26:06] Jennifer Once I completed my master's degree, that was in clinical nutrition and eating disorders at University College London. So, I came over to do my PhD and that was at Griffith University on the Gold Coast.
[00:26:20] Jennifer and I was really fortunate enough to get to work with Swimming Australia. And a big project we did there was working with the coaches to support them in creating environments that was supportive of their athletes' wellbeing. So, we were challenging language, we were challenging behaviours. We were challenging the culture that was predisposing their swimmers to eating disorders and associated risks.
[00:26:44]Jennifer: And from there I managed to get a consultancy position at the Australian Sports Commission where I've done a very similar project with Triathlon Australia. This time looking more around language that's being used around physique. So body image, language, and again, [00:27:00] working with coaches and support staff to see if we can start shaping more.
[00:27:04] Jennifer: Holistic environments, which still focus on performance outcomes that we want to achieve, but recognizing that to get there, we have to nurture athlete health first. I do a little bit of work and an advocacy for the Butterfly Foundation, so they are Australia's National Eating Disorder, and I've done several articles and media pieces for the Butterfly Foundation, and I've recently just taken on a role with them.
[00:27:30] Jennifer: As one of their presenters. So going to schools and parents and giving talks and presentations to really try and equip more in that prevention space and trying to instil them with the skills to know what to do if you are concerned about yourself or a loved one or a friend. So definitely immersed in the space.
[00:27:50] Jennifer: I think I'm in a bit of a figuring out what's the next step for me, which I think we're all long, most of our lives, but I try to be excited by that. [00:28:00]
[00:28:00] Karen : Having a lived experience, what you've been through, how does that equip you to work with other people like the swimmers?
[00:28:12] Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely, and I think this is so critically important in the world of sport.
[00:28:18] Jennifer: For many years, sport, especially career wise, has been very male dominated. I'm not discriminating against men working in sport, but we do know that a lot of our athletes who experience eating disorders are females. We do have male athletes too, and again, not to discriminate. I think there's been a very kind of masculine energy that exists in sport.
[00:28:43] Jennifer: It's very military, overly performance driven environments, and we've really neglected any of those kinds of soft skills, any of that feminine energy, any of the compassion, kindness that we want to instill for our athletes. Having had a lived [00:29:00] experience combined with the professional expertise; I can help let those working in sport inside the mind of someone who could be struggling.
[00:29:08] Jennifer: So when I'm trying to convey to them about a comment that they may make to their athlete and why it's a problem, I've got the deeper understanding of what that would've meant to me when I have kneeing disorder, which I think is incredibly hard to do if you haven't had a lived experience yourself. Some of the most well-intentioned comments, it seems so trivial, but even comments when I was unwell of you are looking super fit.
[00:29:36] Jennifer: Now that seems like a harmless comment in itself, but when you are in the thick of an eating disorder, a comment like that, I internalize that as I'm now at a body shape that looks the way it should. I have to stay this way. And so, then I do anything I can to control myself to stay at this particular shape.
[00:29:57] Jennifer: And so, everything is amplified and [00:30:00] everything is an extreme response when you have an eating disorder. And so a lived experience part. Really does open up people's minds to something that they probably wouldn't be able to access unless they've had an experience themselves or a loved one.
[00:30:14] Karen: This is such a complex condition that you are describing a complex illness and that there is no simple, easy solution. Jen, you said something that stayed with me, that anorexia was never about being thin, but about belonging and about love. For anyone who's listening and who's struggling, or a parent or an athlete, what do you want them to take away from your story?
[00:30:43] Jennifer: So, I guess I want people to know that m eating disorder, as you mentioned, it wasn't about food, it wasn't about wanting to be thin. And underneath. Often it comes back to this idea of wanting to be loved. The idea of belonging, [00:31:00] acceptance in a world that often tells us that our entire worth is either tied to our appearances, our achievements, our bank balance, everything external to ourselves is what the world tries to convince us our worth belongs in.
[00:31:15] Jennifer: I guess what I've learned over the years is that our bodies are the least interesting thing about us. They capture everything that makes us unique. They hold the magic that is us, yet we still focus on the exterior, the shell that houses all that wonder, and I guess, delight culture. This perfectionism that we're chasing just feeds into this system that keeps us disconnected from our authentic selves.
[00:31:43] Jennifer: I guess recovery for me, and I would love. This to be a message that's shared with people who might be struggling is that it's about reclaiming the space that you deserve. And that's not just in your body, but it's in your voice and it's in your life. It's not just being about resilience. It's not just being [00:32:00] about being strong and fighting for your life, it's also being about forgiveness. It's been about learning to be gentle and slow and compassionate to yourself as well. And then almost learning that no matter how bad it gets, there's always a way back. And I think for me, was my whole family, were told to expect the worst and, and I defied the odds. And so, I guess it's almost like miracles do happen.
[00:32:26] Jennifer: Um its a bit cliche, but you just have to believe in them.
[00:32:29] Karen (2): Truly. I'm so grateful our paths crossed. Thank you so much for your honesty, your courage, and for the work that you are doing in this space.
[00:32:39] Karen (2): You are helping athletes win not just in their chosen sport, but in life by staying healthy in mind and body.
[00:32:48] Jennifer: Thank you so much Karen. It's so important for me to be able to share something that's far bigger than myself.
[00:32:54] Jennifer: It was something that impacted me, but it's now no longer about me, it's about others. And [00:33:00] to be able to have the opportunity to stand here and speak to you to share that is is just so important to me. So, thank you.
[00:33:07] Karen And now this is the moment where we quietly slip behind the curtain. Jen and I are heading into the backstage Pass that private little corner of Story Room Global where the conversation deepens, the guard drops. The really powerful insights tend to surface. If you ever wanted to understand the hidden machinery behind sport, wellbeing, and recovery, this is one of those backstage segments you don't want to miss because in their gen's going to open up and share a bit more about it.
[00:33:42] Karen She will answer questions like, if you could rewrite the entire coaching and sporting system tomorrow, what's the very first thing she'd change? What myth in eating disorder prevention still drives her up the wall? What practices [00:34:00] she uses day-to-day to keep that old inner voice quiet when it tries to sneak back in.
[00:34:07] Karen: What legacy she hopes her journey will leave behind. As an athlete, a survivor, and now a researcher changing the landscape and my favorite, what she'd whisper to that determined 11-year-old girl standing on the cricket field. If you'd like to hear Jen's answers, the raw, honest, thoughtful ones she saved, especially for our members, come join us inside the Backstage Pass at Story Room Global.
[00:34:40] Karen): And we'll see you behind the curtain. Cheerio.
[00:34:44] Voice over CW: Thank you for listening to sharing stories, changing lives. If a story today moved you, made you think, [00:35:00] or opened a new lens on life. Share it with a friend because when stories travel, their impact grows. To explore more, visit the story room global.com and step inside the backstage pass where you'll find exclusive conversations, workshops, and moments from our live events.
Access Exclusive Extended Videos
Join the Backstage Pass for the extended video interviews where our podcast guests share even more raw, personal, and uncut background details you won't hear on the podcast.