About this episode

Danny O'Connor shares his journey as a professional boxer battling a life-threatening eating disorder and his path to recovery.

Danny O'Connor was an Olympic-team boxer and professional fighter from Boston who spent ten years chasing a world championship. From the outside, he was elite, disciplined, relentless. What almost no one knew was that the same all-or-nothing drive that made him a champion was also fueling a secret, life-threatening eating disorder. It started when he was a teenage wrestler, learning to manipulate his body to make weight, with no education about nutrition and no idea what he was doing to himself. That same pattern followed him into a pro boxing career fought entirely in one weight class — and over the years it grew into a full-blown, medically diagnosed eating disorder, one of the deadliest mental illnesses there is. Danny is unflinching about what it cost him: his health, trips to the ICU, and ultimately his shot at a world title in 2018, when his body finally gave out on the biggest night of his life. He also opens up about the chaotic period after he lost wrestling as a teenager — leaving home, a string of arrests, and a judge's warning that stopped him cold — and how he found his way back through boxing, and eventually into recovery. Today Danny is a keynote speaker, an…

People in this episode

Host: Kevin Lanning

Guest: Danny O'Connor

Topics covered

• eating disorders
• boxing
• mental health
• athlete experiences
• recovery
• male health issues

Sponsors

Caron Treatment Centers

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Boston

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