Inside and out: Alice Merryweather’s recovery journey

The World Cup skier, Alice Merryweather, opens up about how overcoming an eating disorder has provided powerful tools for injury recovery.

Alice Merryweather has discovered that healing bones and ligaments is simpler than healing the brain.

The 25-year-old World Cup skier has had her fair share of experience with all these challenges over the last couple of years but has gained strength and perspective even as she faces another winter on the sidelines.

The ED vice

Things came to a head in 2020 when the season shut down early due to COVID. It happened after Merryweather finally hit her stride on the World Cup, notching a series of top 20s in speed events and a career-best eighth place in alpine combined. However, her rhythm was off for the last event she raced that February – a downhill in La Thuile, Italy – and it launched her into a dark place that would become a downward spiral.

“When everything got canceled, there was no redeemer for that,” she recalls, also mentioning how her Dartmouth studies were moved online that summer, housing fell through as she was relocating to Utah and every lousy stroke of bad luck was compounded by a weakening sense of confidence.

“On top of that, there were body image issues that I had struggled with. When everything came to a stop and everything was out of control, that’s when the eating disorder slipped in. It took hold of me so quickly. I started counting calories religiously. I was analyzing everything I put into my body. It became my way to feel like I had control.”

Despite a demanding training schedule, Merryweather ate less than half of the recommended caloric intake for a nonactive person. 

“Dryland was so hard that summer,” she says. “My legs ached all the time. Instead of thinking, ‘I’m exhausted,’ I thought, ‘maybe this is what it feels like to have lean muscle.’ At the time, I believed that the way I was eating was healthy, that I wasn’t over-indulging. But really, my perception about my health was distorted.”

Emotional deterioration

Along with her physique, the Dartmouth student’s emotions and social ties began melting away.

“I lost control of my emotions and felt numb by the middle of the summer, especially going into fall when ski season returned. I didn’t want to be social anymore and constantly compared myself to others. Also, thinking I had overeaten, I was so worried about what my body looked like and how I felt. Emotionally, I was not able to connect with people.”

By the time November rolled around, Merryweather had lost 25 pounds and fallen deep into the rabbit hole.

“I didn’t have any insulation, I was cold all the time, and I thought I’d fallen out of love with the sport. I thought I hated skiing so I thought I’d retire.”

Blood tests revealed enzymes and proteins, indicating that Merryweather’s body was beginning to break down its organs. Her doctor didn’t clear her to travel to Europe or compete. Instead, she went to a hospital in Texas, where she was first diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa.

“The Ski Team was super supportive. They surrounded me with support. Where I was at with the eating disorder and the grip it had on me—I was in too deep. That’s when it hit me that I needed to take a step back and deal with this head-on.”

Merryweather entered a partial hospitalization program in Denver, where she and her parents moved into a nearby hotel for several weeks. After she was discharged, she returned to Utah, where she continued her recovery alongside her boyfriend, U.S. skier Sam DuPratt. He had broken both legs in a horrific downhill crash in Val Gardena.

“The most powerful thing I found in my recovery was a connection, learning to lean on people, my family and Sam. When I was struggling, I completely closed myself off. I felt so isolated and alone. Being able to open up and rely on other people when I needed it has been instrumental,” Merryweather says.

The crash

Although she bounced back to a much healthier mental and physical state, it wasn’t long before Merryweather would need to enlist that support all over again.

After rejoining U.S. Team camps in the spring of 2021, Merryweather was back on snow in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, last September, eagerly anticipating her return to the World Cup. Then she crashed hard in downhill training, suffering compound tibia fractures and tearing the ACL, MCL and meniscus in her left leg. She underwent surgery immediately in Switzerland. Doctors installed a rod to repair the tibia. However, upon returning stateside for additional knee surgeries in Vail, Colo., an already long recovery was prolonged. The rod length in her lower leg inhibited doctors from repairing the knee ligaments. The Massachusetts native would have to wait for the tibia to recover and then undergo three more surgeries, the last of which was mid-July.

“I can think back to sitting in the hospital in Saas-Fee, scared of the uncertainty about my leg. I was a lot more nervous about how I’d handle it mentally, given that for the eating disorder the previous year, I had to slow things down for treatment and learn that patience with myself. Suddenly, I was going to do it all over again with a whole new set of problems,” she says. 

A clear-cut path

Since nearly a year has passed since her crash, Merryweather can’t say it’s been easy. She and DuPratt have regular “four-point check-ins” with one another, during which they talk through the status of their mental, physical, spiritual and emotional states, reminding each other that they’re not alone. Merryweather is back on two legs, walking with a brace and enrolled in government studies at the University of Utah, which she views as a welcome distraction as she takes another winter off from skiing.

For now, she hopes she is entering her last sidelined season with useful coping tools and a healthier headspace.

“There’s a silver lining in having just been through treatment and learning so much about mental health, the patience I needed and asking for help. I can give myself space to take days off and take things slower. This would be a lot harder if I didn’t learn those skills. Weirdly, I’m grateful for that experience,” she says.

While depression would befall many athletes embarking on such a long physical recovery, Merryweather knows she can face the road ahead compared to the seemingly insurmountable internal obstacles she faced two years ago.

“Rewiring my brain in treatment in the eating disorder recovery, it felt like such an impossible feat,” she says, “whereas looking at the leg recovery, doctors have this plan. You do these exercises and your bones will heal. I was like, wait. This seems so straightforward. It gave me a lot of perspective on how I could look at this physical recovery. It’s not as hard as re-wiring my brain.”

Continuing the work

Of course, sometimes her brain has better days than others.

“There are days I wake up and look in the mirror and there’s still that eating disorder voice. I’ve gotten better at making it quieter or not paying attention, but there are days I feel defenseless to it, derailing anything else I was planning to do that day. I try to remind myself of what life was like when I listened to that voice. Also, I remember how awful everything was and how dark everything felt. I remind myself I don’t want to go back to that. Thankfully, those days have gotten further and further apart. It’s something they tell you in treatment. Eventually, those days get less and less. You might have a moment where you feel that weakness.

Over time, I’ve learned to recognize the patterns by building better patterns in my life and learning more about my mental health. The stronger I get, the more I can do on a good or bad day to reinforce mentally healthy patterns.”

Although she is not expected to return to snow until mid-March, one thing is strikingly clear. Both inside and out, Merryweather is getting stronger every day.