The former NFL cheerleader has spoken candidly about her career and all the physical and mental struggles that have come with it in a new exclusive interview.
Hannah LeBeau danced for the New England Patriots for four seasons from 2013 to 2017.
Five years after retiring and now 29, she is happier and healthier and uses her experiences to help others.
Hannah uses her website and TikTok platform to share the good and bad times in the NFL.
She was very open about the health problems she faced due to the demanding and chaotic nature of her career.
“I never saw my anxiety as dominant until I started cheering for the NFL,” she told The U.S. exclusively. sun.
“The expectations were high and I am my biggest critic, so I did my best not to lose my place in this team,” she added.
At the age of 20, Hannah re-audited for the band every year, securing a spot each time. However, she said the mental and physical pressures increased as she began her second season.
“I wasn’t told to lose weight, but the direct quote was, ‘I need to shred.’ Whatever that meant,” she revealed.
Surprisingly, this did not offend Hannah, as she understood the expectations of cheerleaders and dancers to look and be in good shape. However, the comment made a negative lasting impression.
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“But I’m an extremist, so I went from one extreme to the other,” she explained. See the article : Eagles Radiothon is LIVE! Bid to win Jeffrey Lurie’s midnight green Tesla.
“When I started seeing results and when they started to acknowledge that I was doing a good job, I thought okay, let’s do more, let’s do more, let’s do more,” she said.
Hannah admitted that in addition to lifting weights, she began counting calories for even the smallest things, such as chewing gum.
“That’s when I became obsessed with it and that’s how the eating disorder started,” she admitted.
“I even went so far as to take scales with me to restaurants and weigh food at the table,” she added of the habits that led her to be underweight.
But the former cheerleader is adamant that she doesn’t blame the NFL for her four-year-old disorder or body dysmorphia.
“I truly believe and stand by that, no matter what professional performing industry I was in, if I was faced with this kind of adversity, I would have developed an eating disorder,” she said.
“I don’t want to say it was the NFL’s fault, it just happened to be the industry I was in,” she added.
Immediately after retiring, while still battling her disorder, Hannah began working as a housing counselor at an eating disorder treatment center.
“I’ve had 18-year-old girls come to me and ask me for advice on how to love themselves,” she said, adding: “So it was like you’re learning something from me and I’m learning something for you.
“We go through this together,” she explained, adding that she was learning how to love herself and recover from her own eating disorder while helping others.
Hannah then worked as a career counselor with high-risk patients from all walks of life who were going through a variety of struggles.
“If I can look at someone and say, ‘Hey, I know exactly what you’ve been through,’ that makes things a lot easier,” she explained.
Hannah has recently changed her career path, but as she says: “It has helped me gain a lot. Knowing that someone respected my opinion on the matter and that I could empathize with them helped me to become more human.”
She also revealed that this “humanizing” experience was crucial to her self-development and self-awareness as it helped her realize that she was still important when not wearing the cheerleading uniform.
She further explained that she had an identity crisis and felt “famous Hannah Montana” when she was on the football field.
“I don’t miss how I valued my worth outside of this uniform and off this team,” she admitted.
“It’s nice to finally be able to say that I understand myself and am aware of who I am,” Hannah said, adding, “I feel more myself now than I ever did when I was an NFL cheerleader.”
