Purpose Effect | Athena Perez on Fasting 40 Days to Face Emotional Eating
5 Big Ideas, 3 Reflection Questions, 1 Practice
đ§ In This Episode
We sit down with Athena Perez, affiliate owner, coach, and author of a two-part memoir about identity, worth, and what fitness spaces get dangerously wrong.
We explore how compounding habits shape who we become long before we notice, why a 40-day fast became Athenaâs clearest window into emotional eating and genuine purpose, and why placing people on pedestals â in the gym or anywhere else â always costs you something.
Youâll walk away with a new framework for understanding the habits you canât seem to shake, a different way to think about where transformation actually starts, and Athenaâs hard-won insight that the ground was always level - even when it didnât look that way.
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đ 5 BIG IDEAS
1. Compounding Habits Work in Both Directions
The same mechanism that drives transformation can drive destruction. Athenaâs path to 500 pounds happened through thousands of small decisions - each reinforcing the next, without a single moment of conscious choice.
She started using food as a coping mechanism at age seven, too young for executive reasoning. The habit compounded quietly for decades.
This is the under-discussed side of behavior change: we celebrate how good habits compound upward, but harmful ones compound just as reliably. The subconscious always finds the path of least resistance - and will use it, whether or not youâve pointed it somewhere good.
2. Fear Is a Valid Starting Point
Athena didnât walk into CrossFit because she was inspired. She walked in because her doctor said sheâd lose the ability to walk if she didnât act immediately. Fear got her through the door.
Whatâs striking is the permission she gives to that origin point: transformation doesnât have to begin with a vision of who you want to become. Sometimes it begins with a visceral refusal of who you canât afford to remain.
Her first year produced 187 pounds of weight loss, built on structured alarms and a completely controlled environment â zero reliance on motivation. Fear was the ignition. Design did the rest.
3. Growth by Subtraction
We are far more comfortable growing by addition than by subtraction. Adding a hard workout, a new habit, more intensity - these are socially acceptable and chemically rewarding. Removing something requires sitting with whatâs underneath.
Athenaâs 40-day fast was an experiment in facing emotional eating triggers directly. Around day 17-20, the food noise shut off entirely. What remained was just her and the mechanisms sheâd built to avoid feeling.
Subtraction isnât a cleanse. Itâs a diagnostic. It reveals what youâve been adding to avoid.
4. The Pedestal Problem
In fitness communities, we tend to elevate certain people to a kind of moral authority â as if elite physical performance confers immunity to human struggle. Athena witnessed this firsthand: she was in a room where someone she admired was visibly falling apart, and nobody moved.
Protecting the myth had become more important than helping the person.
What she walked away with wasnât cynicism, but clarity: worth canât live in another person. The moment you outsource your development to a hero, you become dependent on their continued heroism. Theyâre always just human. Which means the work was always yours.
5. Both Can Be True
Two contradictory things can simultaneously be true. You can be deeply hurt by something and also recognize the person who hurt you wasnât being malicious. You can love a community and acknowledge its real failure points.
Athena spent years trying to separate harmful experiences in CrossFit from CrossFit itself â eventually landing on a truth that applies far beyond fitness: people are going to people. That doesnât make the thing they represent wrong.
It just means grace has to be wider than we usually want it to be.
đ¤ 3 REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Where have you allowed a coping mechanism to become a tiger?
Think about the habits or patterns you developed in response to stress or pain - particularly ones that formed before you were old enough to make deliberate choices. Are any still running on autopilot? What would it look like to see one clearly, perhaps for the first time?
2. Who have you placed on a pedestal â and what has that cost you?
Think about a mentor, leader, or figure in your community who youâve elevated to a kind of moral authority. Has your confidence in your own direction ever been tied to their performance or approval? What would it feel like to relate to them eye-to-eye rather than looking up?
3. What would growth by subtraction look like in your life right now?
We often think about what we need to add to grow - more discipline, more habits, more effort. But what is one thing youâve been carrying that is quietly working against you? A story, a habit, a coping mechanism. What would you learn about yourself if you removed it for just one week?
đŻ 1 PRACTICE
Remove one thing this week.
Instead of asking what new habit to add, ask what youâre using to avoid something harder. Pick one thing - food, scrolling, busyness, intensity - and remove it for seven days. Not as punishment. As a diagnostic.
You donât have to fast for 40 days. But Athenaâs experience points to something real: we are far more practiced at addition than subtraction. We add hard things because they feel like progress. But sometimes the thing standing between you and the next version of yourself isnât something you need to do - itâs something you need to stop doing.
Seven days of subtraction will tell you more about your current patterns than most years of addition. Thatâs the rep. Fewer inputs, more signal.