Dr: “Are you eating?”
Me: “Yes”
Dr: “Hmm … Well. you are still very underweight, so maybe try eating a bit more?”
Me: “Sure, I’ll try that.”
What my Dr never asked me about was the extent that I was exercising. I was eating, but that was on the condition that I exercised for over six hours a day. In a sense, my Anorexia was hiding in plain sight. I was eating. I could not be accused of not eating. As excessive exercise was not listed as a symptom of Anorexia, however, I evaded diagnosis despite presenting at a ludicrously low weight.
This blog is about the importance of recognizing exercise as a symptom of a restrictive eating disorder. Sadly, even through the importance of recognizing exercise as a problem in Anorexia has been documented for over 20 years, it is still slipping under the radar.
I talk about the exercise component to my eating disorder with a passion because it was the hardest part for me to overcome, and I still think it is the least understood by the majority of treatment professionals and even those of us who suffer from restrictive eating disorders ourselves. I think that if people really “got” the OCD element of Anorexia, then they would understand that the compulsive exercise should be treated in the same way any other OCD behaviour should be treated. And how do you stop an OCD behaviour? You STOP or redirect the behavior. For me this meant going cold turkey on the exercise, which was utterly terrifying.
That in itself sounds ridiculous to admit. I found the prospect of not exercising terrifying. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the hardest thing I have done in my entire life. I’ve jumped huge, fixed, wooden fences with ditches underneath at a gallop on a horse many times. I’ve skied off a cornice in a whiteout. Neither of these experiences come even close to the thought of not exercising when I was sick.
Currently the exercise recommendation is a murky grey area in terms of the advice that eating disorder professionals and therapists give people. Most people in recovery from Anorexia are not told anything about whether or not they should exercise. Some are told “moderate.” Some are told to abstain. Some therapists don’t even ask (don’t expect us to volunteer information on how much exercise we do!) This should not be a murky grey area. This should be crystal clear. Nobody in recovery from a restrictive eating disorder should be exercising. It is a symptom of the illness. It is compulsive. It is OCD (study here that explores that idea nicely). It is as bad for us as purging is. It is purging in disguise.
Can you imagine a person in treatment for Bulimia being told “purge moderately,” or, “purge a couple of times a week.” Sounds whack, right? Well, this is the advice we are often given to people with Anorexia about exercise.
Purging is not such a grey area because it is an overtly undesirable behaviour. Whereas exercise is considered a desirable behaviour for the general population. For a person with an eating disorder, however, it can be compulsive — as can all types of movement. I don’t just mean going to the gym and running either. For a person with an eating disorder, walking the dog or vacuuming the house can be compulsive.
Most people don’t understand that even when I had given up (or been thrown out of) the gym and had stopped formal exercise, the compulsion to move continued to exist in practically every move I made. Taking the longer route. Walking rather than taking the car. Getting up and down to fetch things when eating a meal. Never sitting. Always having to stand. Fidgeting. I was not allowed to sit down during the day. If I had to (say a car ride or a situation where I could not stand) I would have to “make it right” by eating less that day. I believe that this is due to the energy-deficit generated OCD that accompanies the illness very strongly for many of us.
This is hideous to live through. I wanted nothing more than to be able to stop moving. I couldn’t stop moving. I couldn’t even admit to wanting to stop moving in my own head as that felt like some sort of sin in itself. There were too many things dependent on me keeping moving. Mostly my ability to eat at all. It was all conditional. I got to eat only if I had moved enough that day.
The very thought of not doing my walks, routines, exercise during the day could reduce me to tears. I was scared shitless of not exercising. I think in a messed up way, my brain understood that my ability to eat was tethered to my movement conditions, and so it was terrified of not doing these things as it knew if I didn’t I would not eat. And my body was too underweight to not eat. So I was scared of not meeting the conditions as I was scared that would mean I would not be able to eat and a part of me knew that was very bad news because I was already dangerously underweight. That was one source of fear — and a slightly more rational one. The other source of fear was tied into the “weight gain” fear which is utterly irrational as I never, ever liked being underweight. Anorexia gave me a very inappropriate fear response at the thought of weight gain.
Exercise often starts out well intended
Exercise started out innocently well intended for me. I started exercising to make me feel better and it did at first. Initially, exercising also allowed me to eat slightly more. I thought this was a good thing. However, it was only a couple of weeks before exercise had switched to voluntary and helpful to involuntary and detrimental. It no longer made me feel good. That effect had vanished.
Many of us with Anorexia start off straight restricting. We don’t eat. I was in this camp for the first year or so of my illness. Most of the adults whom I work with also at onset of the illness were straight restriction. If we are lucky, we are given treatment at that time that is effective and that is as far as it gets.
As the years in the illness go on, many of us begin exercising. It is estimated up to 80 percent of people with AN have a compulsive exercise problem. It reduces anxiety at first. It never stays that way. It turns into something almost greater than restricting food for many of us. Another reason we pick exercising up is because purely restricting is not sustainable. We need to find something that allows us some food but doesn’t cause weight gain. Messed up I know, but that is what my brain was telling me when I started a gym membership. Or for some, exercise is introduced because restricting alone is not enough to appease the eating disorder’s demands for weight loss.
This can work the other way around. I know people also for whom AN started with exercise rather than food restriction initially. This doesn’t even have to be weight-reduction focused exercise. I know peeps who have innocently thought it would be a good idea to join a gym in order to tone up a bit who have developed AN due to unintentional energy deficit and weight loss.
Compulsive movement in children too young to understand the idea that exercise causes energy deficit is very telling too. Really shows how the disorder generates the compulsion even when the brain doesn’t have a logical explanation for it.
The paths to compulsive movement may be different, but the devastating and exhausting result is the same: we become utterly dependent on exercise/movement.
Depression
Very interesting ideas from a study that looked into the differences between levels of depression high level and low level exercisers in people with Anorexia.
Several studies have shown that exercise has a positive impact on a variety of psychological disorders. Nevertheless, the increased amount of daily activity in the high-level AN exercisers was not sufficient to suppress their levels of depression to values of low-level AN exercisers or controls. In addition to the aspect and function of comorbid depression in association with pattern of high-level exercise as well as an association with binge/purge behaviour additional aspects e.g. level of impulsivity, might help to characterize AN patients to identify more homogenous endophenotypes of AN patients. From an evolutionary point of view, this hyperactivity could be a result of food search behavior]. If in the long-term this is not rewarded by the intake of a substantial amount of food, this phenomenon could explain the increased observed depression in this subgroup.
This addresses the notion that we exercise in order to increase positive mood — an excuse I myself clung on to for years. If I were asked why I ran so much, I would answer that it made me feel better. In truth, I don’t know that this is the case and I suspect that this answer came from something I had heard somewhere about exercise being an anti-depressant. Let’s be clear: I exercised because I had to. I could kid myself that it was because I wanted to, but that doesn’t make it true.
As the study quoted above found levels of depression were higher among AN patients with high-level activity than among AN patients with low level activity. Ha … but that is a chicken or egg discussion! Do those of us who exercise a lot have higher pre levels of depression, or does the exercise induce higher levels of depression due to increased physical depletion?
My personal experience would have been the latter. I have never suffered depression other than the sort that hit about a year into my excessive exercise regime.
One problem with studying these sorts of effects is self-reporting requires us to i) have a level of self awareness that anosognosia often doesn’t allow for, and ii) be truthful about our motivations.
For example, even if I did know that deep down I was exercising because I didn’t have the option or control not to, rather than because it lifted my mood, it would still have been truthful for me to give the answer that I exercised because it made me feel better. That was arguably true either way, but “making me feel better because it lifts my mood,” is different from “making me feel better because even the thought of not exercising makes me feel anxious to the point of suicidal.”
There are theories that we exercise to self medicate. Reduce depression. This may be the original motivation, but in my experience with myself and with those whom I work with, as time goes by exercising doesn’t continue to have this effect. It still makes us feel better, but not in the same way. More in the way that you put clothes on in the morning to avoid feeling all the negativity that might ensue if you were to waltz into work starkers. You don’t put clothes on because it makes you feel “better” you do it because it is required in order to keep everything on the level it currently is.
Try this: Imagine something that you do every day, just like the idea above of putting clothes on, that makes you feel panicked, nauseous, and extremely anxious were I to tell you “You cannot do that thing tomorrow.”
Now to give you some context, I will tell you that I would have chosen hands down forgoing clothing in favor of forgoing exercising. That is how big a deal this was for me.
So the idea that we do it to reduce depression makes sense, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark with me. The understanding is in the details.
The difference here, is that the exercise is being done to maintain a less anxious state rather than to reduce anxiety. Or said differently, to not exercise would create almost unbearable anxiety and fear. It was less the case that exercising lifted my mood and more the case that exercising was something I had to do in order to keep my head above water.
In a sense, after a couple of years, exercising increased my levels of depression because it made me feel more trapped. However, the thought of not exercising was enough to make me feel panicked and, admittedly, suicidal. Exercise was no longer a case of negative state relief. It was more a case of survival.
Sometimes mentally accepting cold turkey is the hardest part
It took me a couple of years to get to cold turkey. Two years from deciding I wanted to stop exercising to actually stopping exercising. It was incredibly hard to do, as I had built my identity around exercising. I was working as a personal trainer — spending all day every day in a gym. Even worse, I was making a fair bit of money doing it. Anorexia told me I was never going to be good enough at anything else, and that if I gave up my gym career I would end up destitute. Anorexia will say anything to keep one trapped.
I tried initially to stop exercising myself while still working in a gym. That was a disaster and I failed miserably. That is the Anorexia version of an alcoholic working in a brewery. Conversely when I tried to stop exercising without changing my lifestyle things got worse because every day Anorexia told me today was my “last fling” and I would stop exercising tomorrow, and so ironically I ended up doing more, not less. Tomorrow never comes.
As I describe in detail in my book I finally stopped suddenly one day. That day was both the worst and best day of my life. Worst because of the place I had to go mentally in order to make the decision to stop exercising. Best because stopping was the first day of my recovery.
What this means in recovery
Here’s the deal: You can weight restore while still exercising. Of course you can. If you eat enough food, your body will gain weight regardless of how much exercise you do because that is the underweight body’s priority. For this reason, many people argue that they don’t need to stop exercise in order to “recover.”
No. Because recovery is not just weight restoration and getting weight restored doesn’t equal full recovery. Full recovery is the ability to eat without conditions and without fear. Exercise = conditions. In order to be able to eat without conditions, you have to be able to stop exercising and not reduce your intake. It is compulsive and you are not in control. If you were in control, stopping would not make you want to cry and scream.
If you have managed to weight restore but are still exercising: Firstly, good on you for weight restoring — that’s a big deal! Now for the rest of the work. Rest.
It’s not fair. But you have to stop. The biggest irony for me, was that while stopping was so hard, and felt so unfair when I was underweight, after a year or so of not exercising I didn’t want to start it up again. Now, weight restored for years and fully recovered, I can exercise if I want to, but I rarely bother. There is so much more to life.
You have to rest.
Thank you for this! Your work on exercise has been so helpful! I wanted to share something that helped me stop running cold turkey:
Running did *seem* to lower my anxiety very clearly. It seemed that my anxiety started high and escalated terribly on days I would run and that running came at *just the right time* to lower that anxiety! That kept me stuck for a while and unwilling to give up running.
But once I made the connection to torture it was very clear why running seemed to lower anxiety.
If I knew I were going to be tortured every day at 4:30pm, as 4:30 approached how would I feel? Worse and worse as the time approached. Anxiety would ramp up.
But once the torture session ended, how would I feel? Relieved! Accomplished! It’s over! Anxiety lessened! “Wow running really helps my anxiety!”
Repeat cycle. I thought exercise stopped the physical anxiety but when I realized the expectation of exercise/torture was a *cause* of physical anxiety and getting it over with was the point in time farthest from the next torture session…I couldn’t put my body through that any more. I stopped torturing myself.
Best comparison I’ve ever read!
Thank you for putting your experience on this forum. I think it may be helpful for my adult daughter.
i went cold turkey on cycling , i was racing bicycles and training to burn calories regardless of the weather and my health i actually made myself very poorly in so doing, at the time there was no support,i knew i just had to do it, sold everything all bikes,all clothes i wore when cycling,BEST THING I EVER DID….I find now if i even “just” do a little bit even a little bit is not enough and i feel compelled to go overboard, so agree on the cold turkey aspect 100%….plus i found the cycling world very gered to numbers, what we weighed,what time we did, our power outputs ,heart rate,LIFE IS NOT ABOUT NUMBERS.
You are basically describing me right now. I feel so trapped that I cry myself to sleep.
Can I ask how your body reacted when going from a lot of activity to staying sedentary and eat a lot? Do you think it matters regarding for instance weight distribution? I read somewhere resting actually helps the body redistribute and repair metabolism etc.
Thank you.
Hedda don’t be all alone in this! I hope that you have support!
Bingo with the rest and weight redistribution. I’m not going to go into it in length here, but your body as to build up a quota of fat mass before it can really heal etc so rest helps a lot with that.
When I first started resting I experienced sudden extreme fatigue, leg swelling, and massive headaches (I don’t usually get those) for a week or so. I.e. lots of body stuff going on. Not very fun but it was my body processing damage and other things it had not been able to when I didn’t rest.
Hi,
My brother has been an AN Compulsive excerciser for 40 years and has done 2 days of cold turkey.
Today he told me how the first night he slept 9 hours, the next night 0, followed by lethargy today and again total insomnia tonight (I live 5 hours ahead of his time zone) so when he called to lament I was awake…and currently searching for ways to help him.
What other symptoms would you expect? How many days would you think it might take to get to a more stable position? And how does he explain this to his Dr or an ER (A&E) Dr?
Thanks,
Susan
I worry about this too and wonder if my fears about rapid weight gain as a result of reducing exercise or better still going cold turkey will be founded.
For the third time in a row your post really strikes a chord in me.
In the most acute phase of my ED I would run 10 miles every day. Then I ended up badly hurting my knee and had to stop because I physically couldn’t run anymore, so I started restricting food more to “make up” with the lack of weight loss due to exercise.
Today I am weight restored and never run (because I actually HATE to, even if I tried to convince myself that I really loved running and that I was actually becoming one of those super-fit joggers you see on health magazines), but sometimes the need to exercise still comes to surface.
I happen to have a house in the mountains, where I am right now. It’s quite a remote place and there’s not much to do, which basically means that if you don’t like hiking or doing other kinds of outdoor activities you pretty much end up eating all day on the couch, which is what I used to do in the past years when I was here. But at the moment I am so scared of staying at home because I KNOW I will eat quite a lot of food and I am so much afraid I will gain weight (I am already weight restored, so it’s even harder to accept), so today I felt the urge to hike for several miles at high speed on a steep hill for 3 hours only to “make sure” I was behaving “right”. Because staying at home and being a couch potato is, like, the absolute worst thing that could happen.
Now my knee hurts again – it likely had not properly healed itself yet. So now I have a valid reason not to exercise in the near future and I’m panicking because that means I will EAT AND JUST EAT. I will probably even EAT OUT OF BOREDOM – how horrible!!
I am so utterly sick of this. When I was here in this house in the past years I use to eat out of boredom, or just for the sake of it, all the time and didn’t feel an inch of guilt – I was actually content, also because I didn’t really love hiking. I just want to go back to that time but I’m so scared to actually do that because I am afraid I will become fat. I very much realize this is my ED still messing up with my head but I don’t know how to get out of the vicious circle.
When should they be allowed to start again? My daughter has been out of exercise for a year and is now allowed to do sports for social reasons. She seems to be maintaining her weight but anxiety seems higher. Coincidence?
I don’t think that is a coincidence. I stopped for a good two years totally. Basically I knew it was okay to do something again when I felt totally nonchalant about it. I can take it or leave it now. I tend to think that longer the break the better the end result.
Thank you for the post, Tabs! I do have a question, I have stopped restricting food and going completely cold turkey on exercising for a month, because of that I have gained weight and in a normal/healthy weight range, why do I still crave lots of food? I’m starting to panic because I am not exercising and might be consuming too much. I would really appreciate your reply. Thank you
You may have started eating more, but you will likely find that you are still restricting in some way (i.e. not allowing yourself the quantity and type of food that you really want?)
I disagree that exercise needs to be cut out completely. It’s like telling a compulsive over eater to quit eating completely. Exercise, when done right, is one of the healthiest things you can do. It’s behavior modification. When it comes to food and our bodies it cannot be all or nothing. We have to learn to eat right in treatment so I think we can also learn how to exercise right. I don’t think you have to be “recovered” to start exercising again.
It is nothing like telling a compulsive overeater to quit eating. Food is required to live, exercise is not!
So true!!! Compulsive exercise is so damaging. I know it was/is for me.
Tabitha, my adult daughter has been home from ERC Cincinnati, since January. She has lost 8 lbs, and is hovering in a low weight range. We are doing FBT. Her therapist said her food intake seems good, its her daily walk keeping her low.
There would be no harm in upping her intake, and of course the walking has to stop! Have you spoken to her about the walking?
Everything you have wrote here is me!!!
After years of exercising I have become so trapped and feel I have to exercise to justify food and this is the only way I can eat. I also have to stand all day and if I have to go on a car journey I have to eat less that day.
I am so depressed and have attempted suicide before because of how much I hate this cycle I am stuck in but I’ve been stuck in it for 10 years.
Because of my need to exercise for up to 8 hours a day I can’t work, only lasted 1 month at university and I have missed out on so many family events. Exercise and anorexia have stolen my life yet still I can’t see a way out. Thank you for writing something that I can relate to it makes me feel understood.
i needed this so much. thank you. I think you just saved me from quasi recovery.
I am working on a health essay about anorexia, and too much exercise, so thank you
I am working on a health essay and too much exercise, and this blog really helps, so thank you
Hi I’d be interested to hear what ur research found.
Hi Tabitha, I can relate to this post so much as I took me any movement as a way to justify my eating. It took me more than 1 year to quit compulsive movement – yes, you are quite right – I even unconsciously keep myself busy, using taking care of my baby and taking her out to play as a way to be more “healthy and active”, even when I could be so tired after work. I even thought that not moving after work is unhealthy because from all the “positive and healthy” information I was exposed to I thought that one should take some exercise after a long tiring day of work simply because sometimes you might sit for a long time. I thought I would be unhealthy if I sit too much. It took me really a long time to stop it. I also hold the strict rule that one should be moving or working out after dinner because dinner should be as small as possible and one should burn it off in order to be “healthy and fit.” I thought that was healthy. But I was just too tired and hungry and in winter it was really freezing outside and I finally gave up that habit, which I had been sticking to for more than 10 yrs. Now it seems I am better, but the only problem is it seems that I am unable to bring any exercise back, even it is just purely out of fun, like playing with my kid and husband, or just because I had extra workload and delayed meal for 1 or 2 hours. It seems that my body and brain will immediately jump back into ED mode, or starvation mode, and I will be hit so hard by so much fatigue, mental chaos, and extreme hunger, since I have a kid to take care of, I sometimes really can’t aviod being very tired and activie, I really don’t know what to do to recover fully. My body and brain don’t know the difference between movement for daily life and movement for ED. I kinda stuck. If you can give me some thoughts, it will save my life. Thank you!
I am currently at a BMI of 18.5 and have trouble not doing exercise. Although it is moderate, like making sure I get 10,000 steps or more a day (it use to be 45,000 steps, so I have improved), and I do not allow myself to sit unless its like 10;30 pm or 11 pm at night. n I will sit in my college classes and in the car, but if I do not have to (If I’m alone), I stand. While I know that my metabolism is probably slowed down and I am not burning much but exercising, a part of me believes that I can only follow my meal plan if I do it. I am scared I am going to blow up and get really big if I sit and do not stand and not exercise. I don’t want to sit all day, especially on days that I have nowhere to go or no errands to run. I just want to stop it because I know it is bad, but I have loved exercise my whole life and don’t know what to do if I can’t. Any ideas?
Omg I’m the same as you I hate that I force myself to hit that fucking steps everyday I’m tired
Tabitha,
Thank you for posting this. In 8th grade I started running to get into shape. I was soon diagnosed with AN and in the hospital. Throughout high school and college I ran competitively. When coach told me to take a break, I never listened. I would train for “hours” a day. Running became my life. I eventually went into treatment twice during college, and the second time I was hospitalized for a heart rate of 29! I could not speak clearly because of the dangerous combination of exercise and lack of food. 2.5 years ago I discharged from ERC in Denver. Since then I have tried adding activity back in, but every-time I end up with a low heart rate, low estrogen, and high CK levels. Now, I try to cope by taking leisure walks, but my doctor has encouraged me to cut back on walking.
It feels impossible! My dietitian wants me eating more calories! I want to go cold turkey, but I am terrified!!!!!! Afraid to eat the amount of food my dietitian wants me to and spend most of my day sitting/resting. How did you get through those initial weeks of no exercise and eating a good amount of food?! I appreciate your encouragement.
Hello,
I am contacting for some advice/help. At the age of 16 I was diagnosed with Anorexia. I suffered for about 2 years and have been weight restored for about year and a half now. I am now 20. However, I don’t say I am recovered as mentally I still find it terribly difficult. I have noticed I have been getting very obsessed with exercise again and I am pushing my body to excessive exercise in order to feel guilt free and happy. I am also finding myself having the anorexic thoughts ‘if I ate that last night I need to go gym’ or ‘I can’t miss that gym class so I need to cancel plans’ it is like I am developing my illness all over again. I have taken a back seat on exercise for a couple days now but the anxiety I am feeling is getting me down and I am finding it hard to relax. I feel as though I have no right to feel like this as I am weight restored and at a healthy weight. But I know my thoughts are not healthy. I have also started to eat one carb less meal a day and researching Keto (carb free) recipes to batch cook for the week. That is at lunch time I eat my carb less meal. It does not help that my job is quite energetic as I am always on my feet. I feel so drained during the day I actually drag my feet but I find myself saying again ‘I am weight restored therefore recovered’ because it has been year and half now since I was discharged I just feel as though I am not allowed to feel these emotions. I do need advice as when I was discharged I felt as though I had no help for my mental and emotional state. So to sum up my feelings, I feel as though I’m half recovered. Thank you for your time.
Please contact me with any coaching enquiries through the “contact me” page. Thanks!
Not being able to exercise (and go outside) was the reason I dropped out of inpatient. Exercise has actually been a major help to me in recovery. I find that as long as I am at a healthy weight, and have the right motivation (i.e. not doing it to burn calories), then it really is a huge mood booster. This being said, I am not a gym person, and MUCH prefer exercising outside. I also find that I prefer walking/hiking now to running, which was my main thing when I was in my ED. Also, not exercising alone is a big help to me. Perhaps I’m hanging onto a piece of my ED, but I figure that if I’m healthy, and genuinely not using it to purge (I used to be all about that), then there are worse vices to have. It also helps me to eat more, and I find that I am able to maintain a higher weight when I exercise moderately. I think it’s important to have things you love in recovery, and movement and exercise bring me a lot of joy 🙂 I’m enjoying reading all the blogs!
Just to add onto this, I was never severely underweight. I can also see how tricky it can be to be honest about what the motivation to exercise is.
Just to add onto this, I was never severely underweight. I can also see how tricky it can be to be honest about what the motivation to exercise is.
I agree we have to keep an eye on exercise and I welcome the warnings… but I also agree with Audry above about the potential positives for some people.
In my daughter’s case, her anorexia is very atypcial anyway and started after depression, anxiety and physical health issues as a child which kept her out of sports. Recovery from all of these issues (and we aren’t there yet – still ED cognitions although she is WR) for her has meant getting back into life and creating a life worth living and eating for. So, she has started a team sport and trains once a week and plays twice a week. The team aspect for her is new, exciting and important after so many years not being able to because of her physical illness. Working together as part of something bigger is new for her and reinforcing other positive connections. I agree team sport is likely safer than exercising alone. Both the training and 1 of the games are not always that intense and she often only plays 1/2 a game. She puts everything into the game but doesn’t mind unduly if they win or lose as she just likes the team spirit. If she plays less of a game than expected, it doesn’t bother her. If she can’t go for any reason, it’s a shame but not the end of the world. She’s widening her world in other non-exercising ways which I think is also healthy so life doesn’t become about sport or nothing. However, I do thank you, Tabitha, and others for the warnings. We are not complacent and just because sport doesn’t appear to be an issue now, it doesn’t mean it will never be; we know how ED can sneak in where it sees a crack.
I went cold turkey on Pilates because I was getting to where I could barely walk.
It’s been 2.5 months, and I’m miserable, feeling everything everyone is talking about that comes with recovery, but the only thing my family is concerned with is exercising. They’re big on fad diets, which I think are just glorified orthorexia diets now that I’ve been awaken to the reality of my eating disorder. I understand it’s because they lack control in this aspect of their life, but it’s very frustrating. My grandmother (with whom I live) gets upset because she wants to know about my ED, but every single time I try to tell her about it, she patronizes me and talks over me. Like, WTF? There are also things the family just doesn’t talk about, because this family is one of those “we don’t talk about it” families. She’s legit blaming herself, saying it’s her fault I’ve gotten like this and that I would feel better if I just “went out and walked around the house or up and down the street”.
If she’d just listen to me, she’d hear that I’m actually starting to feel better since I stopped exercising, even though every single hour is a battle to not exercise and every meal is a nightmare.
I was really scared to quit cold turkey, even though it got so bad that the decision was made for me, but I’m honestly glad that I did. I hate the physical appearance my body has caught now, but your post about the tummy may one day get to me (it’s still not helpful, so maybe acceptance is a process), and the way I feel is way better than how I felt when I could barely walk. I wish I could put the feeling into words better for people who want to understand it, but I just can’t. There are none, especially since my family things I make everything up…even though I went to the ER because of anorexia.
What does no exercise exactly mean? Does it mean being sedentary? Is walking ok? I feel super guilty if I sit around all day; the idea of “can’t eat unless I do some sort of movement” is still ingrained, or at least to cut out “unhealthy” foods if I don’t do anything.
Hi Tabitha, your podcast and blog is really helping me but I am still struggling with the excessive walking and trying to gain weight I love to excessive and hate not moving my body and hate being stuck in the house but I KNOW that I need to stop but I am finding it very difficult to find other things to do rather than go out for a walk. I need to repair my metabolism and I am nearly 18 so don’t have long now and need to get this right. if you could give me any advice on things to do to curb my walking it would be SO helpful. Wish I could have a proper conversation with you as I really resonate a lot with things you say!
Eloise