18-year-old Yonie who is currently pursuing her Foundation in Medical Science is also an ex national athlete and a SEA Games 2019 gold medalist in group exercise. Brains and talent? Amazing!

Keeping her grades up and having good athletics couldn’t have been easy, and it wasn’t. Yonie struggled with an eating disorder and had the pressures of keeping her studies and sports balanced.


“In gymnastics you have to be skinny to wear tight, body fitting clothes. We go through strict diets from a young age, that’s how I gradually developed this eating disorder called binge eating,” she said.

The toughest thing in life is balancing out your commitments.

“I put a lot of effort into studying and at the same time training around 21 hours a week for the SEA Games. I remember crying my eyes dry because I felt so stressed and burned out. I wanted to just give up,” she said.

After halting her sports activities in June 2020, she slowly overcame her eating disorder and is developing a healthier relationship with food. She now wishes to focus on her studies at MSU. Despite her halted activities, she still trains young aspiring gymnasts as a part-time rhythmic gymnastics coach.


You would think that gymnasts have a good sense of music while doing rhythmic gymnastics, but that’s not the case here. “People think I can sing because I can dance. Maybe only ABC but I just don’t have a good sense of music,” she said.

Her unknown sense of music is a contrast to her love for bullet journaling where she shows her true rhythmic sense of art.