Hong Kong’s Sophia Khan overcomes anorexia, eating disorder and depression to become a top-10 powerlifter
- The 24-year-old says she overcame her own demons, cultural norms, issues with food and depression to become strong, healthy and happy
- Khans says if there is a young girl out there who wants to do what she does, the first thing to do is ‘simply start’ and always ‘try to be better than yesterday’
Hong Kong powerlifter Sophia Khan understands her greatest strength is also one of her liabilities.
“I’ve always been on the extreme end of things,” said the 24-year-old, who is the ninth-ranked female powerlifter in Hong Kong. “Which is good, but it can also be bad. I don’t have an in-between. I’m still trying to find that.”
Growing up in Hong Kong in a Pakistani household was not easy. Khan’s father died when she was young, leaving her mother to care for herself and her infant brother. Anxiety was the norm at home and with a number of pressures – from relationships to the stress of getting into university. She developed an eating disorder and was diagnosed with anorexia and mild depression.
At one point in her teens in 2014, at 158cm, she weighed 30kgs. Khan’s mother, whom she said was the origin of her strength, tried desperately to help her daughter eat by putting food out all the time. But Khan spent most of her time sleeping, barely able to move around and causing her mother to cry. She saw how much pain and stress she was causing her but was still unable to break from the shackles of a crippling eating disorder.
“I looked like a skeleton and it was really bad,” Khan said. “The thing that got me though was the doctor said if I messed around with my hormones too much I wouldn’t be able to have babies. I always wanted to have kids so I knew I needed to do something to fix myself,” she said.
