Eileen Gu in Two-Piece Workout Gear Says "Thank You"

Eileen Gu is taking a hike on her birthday – in her two-piece workout gear. In a new social media post the skier shows off her amazing body in exercise attire as she celebrates a fitness victory. “21 km for my 21st :) thank you for all the birthday wishes!! they mean the world to me❤️,” she captioned the series of Instagram snaps and video. How does she approach diet, fitness, and self-care? Here is everything you need to know about her lifestyle habits.

1. Struggles with Diet

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Eileen confessed to the New York Times that she went through a period of disordered eating. “Diet is something I definitely think about as an athlete and a model. In both of my jobs, my body does the work. I haven’t talked about this very much, but last year I was struggling with eating. Being skinny isn’t really that great if it’s compromising your strength. I’m naturally very lean. I just wasn’t eating enough, or I wasn’t eating the right way. I was counting calories and thinking about food all the time,” she says, revealing that she “got stuck on those TikTok videos that document ;what I ate today,’ which was all disorders! It wasn’t even so much that I wanted to look like those girls, but I realized later that I was truly being influenced by them. I was looking at what the girls were eating, and then I looked at what I ate in a day, and it looked like so much! One girl was eating, like, one piece of white bread a day,” she said.

2. A Nutritionist Prescribed 2,000 Calorie Per Day Diet

Eileen worked with a professional to get her eating habits adjusted. “It was a big moment for me, growing up with social media and TikTok, to realize that something was wrong. I’m sponsored by Red Bull, and they assigned me a nutritionist. I now FaceTime her about once a month. I just ran a blood test when I was in Austria, and everything looks great. I definitely eat more now — I’m 5-foot-8 and 120 pounds — and I’m eating about 2,000 calories a day. It’s really a maintenance level for me, and then sometimes I need to eat more,” she says.

3. Protein-Based Diet

“I eat everything in balance. I am huge about the environment, but it’s such a conflict for me. Yes, I want to support the cause, but how much tofu can I eat? I probably eat red meat three days a week, and then I eat fish or plant protein. The interesting thing to come out of all this is that I discovered I love food. I’m going to Stanford, and I’m going to study journalism because I want to do food reviews. They say do what you love! I love skiing and I love food,” she says.

4. Intense Training

Eileen’s training days “are pretty intense,” she reveals. “I ski from about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. I take lunch in the middle, but it’ll be a sandwich I take to eat on the hill. I also run because it’s part of my daily routine. I actually was a competitive cross-country runner for seven years. At one point I had to pick between running or skiing. I’m definitely glad I picked skiing. Maybe I was good at running in San Francisco, but the world isn’t San Francisco. Now I run because it feels good.”

5. Sleep Tracking

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Eileen prioritizes sleep. “Recently I got this Oura ring. It tracks my sleep and exercise. I’ve worn an Apple Watch before and thought it was too much. I like that the Oura is super-low key — subtle,” she says.

6. Hiking

Eileen spends a lot of time hiking. “Today I spent four hours on the halfpipe. It was closed for training, so I couldn’t take the lift and had to hike up each time. That’s pretty tiring. But I felt great,” she said.