The child safety advocate shared photos from a competition last month.

Why Elizabeth Smart felt she had to hide her bodybuilding journey

The child safety advocate shared photos from a competition last month.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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May 5, 2026 8:19 a.m. ET

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Elizabeth Smart in 2024. Credit:

- Elizabeth Smart said in a new interview that she had previously been afraid to share her bodybuilding career with the world.

- However, the survivor of kidnapping and sexual assault decided that her body deserved to be celebrated.

- "If my kidnapping should have taught me anything, it should teach me to live the life that I always dreamed of," she said in an interview with *Inside Edition*.

Elizabeth Smart hadn't planned on sharing the fact that she's now a bodybuilder.

The survivor of kidnapping and sexual assault-turned-advocate did it, though, at least partly because of all that she's been through.

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"The more I thought about it, I was like, 'My body has carried me through every experience in my life. It deserves to be celebrated. I worked really hard. And you know what? I have one shot at life, and if my kidnapping should have taught me anything, it should teach me to live the life that I always dreamed of,'" Smart told *Inside Edition* in an interview published Monday.

Smart, 38, was taken from her home in Salt Lake City at 14 and held for nine months. Since she was rescued, she's become an advocate for other victims through her Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

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"At this most recent competition," Smart continued, "one of the women who works for my foundation, who's one of the directors of one of my programs — she's amazing herself — she asked if she could post. She is also an advocate, and she's competed on the world stage in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and she is a survivor herself. And so, looking at her, she's asking me this question, if she can post. I'm like, I guess I can be two things. I can be an advocate, and I can be a bodybuilder, and they don't take away from each other."

Smart, 38, also said she began to see the parallel between why she wasn't posting about bodybuilding and why some victims don't come forward.

Elizabeth Smart in 'Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart'.

Courtesy of Netflix

"And so then when I made that connection, I was like, 'Ugh, Dang it. Now I really have to do it.'"

An image she shared of herself last month posing on a stage, wearing a navy bikini that exposed her muscular body, attracted a lot of attention.

"I am so proud of myself for doing this," she captioned it.

Smart placed first in her category in her fourth competition and celebrated by sharing a photo of herself competing on social media.

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