I’ve shared bits and pieces throughout various blog posts of my story experiencing an eating disorder and exercise addiction, and wanted to share a post today with more details regarding aspects of my story from the exercise angle. I know many of you reading the blog and many of the clients who I work with in my private practice also have experience with a disordered relationship with exercise. This can look so different for everyone, but my hope is that this blog post can provide some inspiration that healing your relationship with exercise IS possible, and that you can experience exercise and moving your body from a place of JOY and FREEDOM.

This post is a bit lengthy compared to usual… so bookmark for whenever is a good time and grab a favorite beverage to sip on!

When I think about my anorexia experience, it was in a lot of ways more of an EXERCISE problem. Obsessive exercise, exercise addiction, compulsive exercise – all of the above and whatever you want to call it. Addictions can happen with various “behaviors/processes” (such as exercise) — not only with substances.

My eating disorder was not primarily food or body image driven, like many of the anorexia stereotypes might lead you to believe. Exercise / athletic performance was the gateway to my spiral into anorexia. My “main issue” was and has been obsessive compulsive personality disorder (different from OCD), which led to an exercise obsession, and from there to an unintentional “free fall off a cliff” into anorexia.

But, let’s back up, and start with what is initially a positive story!

For most of my growing up experience, I had a fun, carefree relationship with exercise, activity, and play. So much fun was had, in fact!I have countless memories running around outside with my brothers, friends, and neighbors. I loved playing outside and never thought of it as “exercise” — as is normal and healthy for kids. I was always the girl excited to play football and basketball with my brothers and their friends. I didn’t care that I was the only girl —  to me, it was all about the fun and energy I felt, and I didn’t understand why more girls didn’t want to “be in the game,” rather than on the sidelines, when it came to ALL the sports and activities!

I tried and played a variety of sports throughout elementary school – soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball, tennis, lacrosse, synchronized swimming, gymnastics — you name it! Eventually, towards the end of elementary school and throughout middle school, I ended up focusing on soccer and basketball. I can’t really remember why I chose these sports specifically, but I do recall having more fun and being naturally more talented with these two compared to some of the other sports.

I started travel soccer in 4th or 5th grade, which was mostly year round since we would also play indoor soccer in the winter. I started playing AAU basketball in 4th grade and would have tournaments all winter on the weekends. My dad was one of my basketball coaches for several years, and I have many positive memories traveling to tournament after tournament. Outside of that the constant games/practices, I participated in various basketball and soccer camps and clinics throughout the year. This was again, all mostly fun and positive at this point!

I think sports can be such a great experience for kids to grow personally, make friends, be healthy, and learn valuable life lessons. This was also true for me in so many ways.

I say “mostly fun and positive” up until this point because looking back there were a few anecdotal experiences that, in hindsight, I can see foreshadowed some of the anxiety and stress I would feel with sports and athletic performance later on in high school.

One main anecdote was with a specific basketball camp that I was signed up for a week during one summer. I can’t remember how old I was, but probably late elementary school. I remember this camp being very “competition heavy.” Lots of each day spent on various competitions, such as free throw shooting, 1 on 1 contests, lay up competition drills, agility skills, and more. I was VERY STRESSED by this and felt a lot of anxiety when performing in front of others. I don’t remember how much of the camp I went to, but I remember I ended up staying at home for a good chunk of it because I “felt sick.” I remember feeling sort of bad about this, because I knew I wasn’t “nauseous/fever/cold type sick,” but I knew I really didn’t feel well and felt like I couldn’t go to the camp. This was one of my first experiences with anxiety (especially performance-related anxiety) and I didn’t know what it was at the time. I only knew that I didn’t feel well and needed to stay home.

That memory really stands out in my mind as I think about some of my “foreshadowing experiences” growing up related to stress/anxiety and sports. Others are a bit more general, such as not liking volleyball because I didn’t like the internal pressure I felt when I had to serve and all the “focus” was on me not to “mess up.”

Things took a turn for the worse once I got to high school. High school was a very rough time for me, emotionally.

I played my last season of travel soccer the fall of my freshman year. I felt like I “should” focus only on basketball, even though, looking back, I actually think I had more fun playing soccer and wish I had also continued with that! But, alas, it was only basketball after that final fall of soccer.

In 9th grade, I would say my exercise started “ramping up.”

By 10th grade, it was an all-out obsession/addiction.

But, backing up to 9th grade, when exercise, training, and activity in general started to increase for me more. As mentioned, I was playing travel soccer the fall of my first year of high school. Additionally, I was doing basketball conditioning workouts after school multiple times a week, mandatory gym class — which I think was 3 times a week (where we essentially just ran laps around the track or swam in the pool…), and sometimes, basketball shooting practice before school at 6am.

I wasn’t thinking about how much I needed to increase my eating to account for all this increase in activity, and started gradually losing some weight without trying to do so. That being said, I also didn’t shift gears and drastically increase my nutrition either. At first, I was getting in better shape, felt stronger than ever, and this felt good!

However, as 9th grade progressed, I started to get increasingly stressed about basketball. I felt like I HAD to be good. There was “no option” in my mind to NOT be good. That spring I was on an AAU team with the few other players who were also on JV as freshmen, and basketball was feeling increasingly more stressful and less fun. I was increasingly worried about “not being good enough.” I knew I would likely make the varsity basketball team my sophomore year, but that was not enough. I also had to be good enough to get adequate playing time! Therefore, my solution to this stress was that I needed to keep practicing more and training harder.

Another factor that really triggered my obsessive personality and “need to not fail” was a particular shooting machine we used at our high school basketball practices and in the morning shooting workouts before school. This was a high-tech training shooting system that would analyze your shots after each session, giving you an actual letter grade and percentage score on various things like arc, depth, shots made, and consistency for each of your personal shooting sessions. It was very nuanced and I reacted in a very stressful way towards it… again, my “solution” to this stress was to practice more and more so that I WOULD NOT DO POORLY. I didn’t know how to emotionally cope with the possibility of “doing okay” at things.

I could not fail. I could not be bad. *I HAD to be good enough.*

I started practicing 100 free throws every day, so that I became “NBA level” with my scores on the shooting system. (This was in practice — I struggled to perform as well in the actual games when I felt even more stress). I started practicing as much as I could because I didn’t know how to tolerate the feelings of not feeling good enough or potentially “failing” when it came to sports.

This obsession with being “good enough” at basketball and wanting to “avoid failure” bled into other aspects of my training. I started working out more in the gym, running more to stay in shape… all things that felt like “things I could control” to be better beyond just improving my shooting/other skills.

As I lost more and more weight with all of the exercise and training, things quickly spiraled into a full-blown exercise obsession and addiction, as can be triggered even more so from a neurological standpoint when one is so malnourished. (See my post on zinc deficiency for one interesting angle to this phenomenon). This was when I entered “total anorexia territory,” and more details on THAT awful dynamic is largely a subject for another time!

Thinking back, my anorexia experience was sort of like an out-of-body experience and I don’t have a TON of cohesive memories from it. Which makes sense given how malnourished my brain was and how that affects one’s memory. BUT I do remember during varsity basketball tryouts (fall of my sophomore year) suddenly feeling like I couldn’t keep playing basketball and had to quit. I didn’t even really process this, I just knew I couldn’t do it for some reason. I think it was probably a combination of the exhaustion of the physical exercise when I was so malnourished, the joy being totally sucked out of sports for me at that point, and my literal obsession with my lifting weights/running routines that basketball would then interfere with. (I realize that some of that may seem paradoxical and like it doesn’t make sense. But, from an eating disorder & malnourished brain standpoint, exercise routines often increase and become MORE rigid and obsessive even as the body and brain deteriorate further).

So… my exercise obsession became even more entrenched and was a daily ritual I HAD to do. If anyone tried to interfere with this… watch out!

My relationship with exercise was the farthest thing from healthy at this point, and very compulsive and addictive. I did not feel okay if I did not exercise in my specific ways. I remember exercising at odd hours in my bedroom if I didn’t have time to complete my usual activities, feeling my bones “crunch” on my back as I did actual crunches, and emotionally/mentally melting down if my exercise was interrupted for some reason. My eating disorder / exercise addiction was never really connected to body image and I didn’t have any weight loss goals or intentions, it was more this severe obsession and very compulsive behavior that HAD to be done for me to feel okay / not unbearably anxious. 

LONG STORY SHORT I eventually had a lightbulb moment (to put it mildly) and started getting help with the nutrition/anorexia aspect. Again, largely another post for another time.

While I wasn’t playing any high school sports or going to the gym anymore during my recovery, one thing that was really helpful from an exercise/activity standpoint was that I started doing yoga multiple times a week. This was started out of a desire to have something to do after school that wasn’t traditional/formal exercise, and to get out of the house for a break after school. I never anticipated how much yoga would help my recovery and change my life!

Yoga was amazing because it felt like everything that was the opposite of high school sports/going to the gym… it was about tuning into my body and learning to show it kindness and compassion. As someone who is so often “in my head,” it was so helpful to learn to be in my body more… There was no “doing it right” or performing. I finally felt free to simply BE. And to let that be ENOUGH.

I went through my “initial” and main eating disorder recovery period that sophomore year of high school. I got back to what I *thought* was a healthy weight for me. It was a considerably healthier place to be than before, and I didn’t know at the time that I would need to gain some more weight later on in order to fully recover physically.

Most of my disordered eating habits and thoughts had diminished greatly, and I wanted to get back into high school sports in some way. I was sad about all that the eating disorder had taken from me — especially what would have been my high school basketball career. I wanted to get involved in sports again, but I felt like going back to basketball would be too sad for me at this point — I didn’t want to reengage with basketball after all that had happened emotionally regarding that.

I decided that I wanted to join the cross country team the fall of my junior year. Cross country was such a fun, positive sport at my high school — there were no cuts (the team had over 100 people on it), and everyone I knew who was on the team loved being a part of it. I liked the idea of running, because I enjoyed being active — I just didn’t love the pressure I felt with more “skill-based team sports” like basketball.

I had no goals when I joined the cross country team… I just wanted to have something fun to be a part of when it came to sports. Being out and active with others was plenty enough for me after all I had been through in recovery and ending basketball. 

The summer before my junior year / the start of the cross country season, I started running most days in the mornings with my dog. I LOVED this newfound joy — it was so enjoyable to me to be out in the morning, enjoying the sunrise and a nice run by the lake. It felt so good to be feeling strong, to be out of the red zone with my previous eating disorder-unhealthy-in-a-crisis sort-of-way-body.

I was shocked when at the start of the XC season I was chosen to be running in the varsity race for the first meet! While there were no cuts on the XC team (as mentioned), only the top 7 runners on the team would run the varsity races. I never anticipated this, given that I wasn’t really taking my training seriously over the summer, was new to competitive running, and was just doing it for fun! But, I was super pumped!

The first meet and the start of the XC season were really energizing to me. I loved it. I loved being on the team and making a lot of new friends. It was feeling so redemptive and I was full of gratitude after all my body had been through. 

I was devastated when, at the second meet, I suffered a stress reaction in my femur and would be out for the entire rest of the season. I was so upset and angered by this. It felt so unfair at the time that my high school sports desires were being thwarted AGAIN. I was all too aware that high school only happens once, and I was really saddened that I couldn’t participate in sports in the ways that I wanted to.

One key detail that I haven’t mentioned in this post until now is that I stopped having my period during 9th grade and it still hadn’t returned at this point. Despite the training I had done over the summer, in hindsight it isn’t surprising to me that I got injured given the fragile place my body was still in, and the impact that not having your period has on one’s bone health. My leg healed and I ended up running track that spring, but I didn’t love the track events compared to XC (heck no to running 2 miles in a pseudo-sprint around a track…), and it wasn’t as fun to me when I wasn’t able to train all winter and therefore felt like I wasn’t able to run my best.

Heading into my senior year, I was growing increasingly worried about my hormonal health and the fact that my period STILL hadn’t returned. I knew running XC that fall would only make matters worse (from a hormonal standpoint), and, given my competitive nature, I didn’t really want to run XC if I couldn’t train very much. I was also starting to feel bad about continuing to run, knowing that it wasn’t helping my hormonal / overall health.

SO, I didn’t do any sports my senior year. That was ALSO devastating to me even though I knew it was what I needed to do for my hormonal health and continued healing. It was also particularly hard for me given that our school’s XC team ended up winning the state championship that fall, AND our girls’ basketball team made it to the state finals (which was unheard of for girls’ basketball in our school’s history). I was happy for all the girls I grew up playing with, but really devastated that I couldn’t be a part of it.

A couple of years into college, I was finally so fed up with not having had my period for over 6 years at that point. I was worried about my health and knew I needed to get my period back on track if I wanted to have kids one day and be a healthy person in general. I decided to totally stop exercising formally, aside from going on walks, for however long it would take for my period to come back. This was incredibly difficult for me, because I was still *somewhat obsessive* about exercise (although not nearly as bad as during the eating disorder). I hated feeling so out of shape as the months went on and it was really hard not knowing how long I was going to have to not exercise. (It ended being up about a year of no running). However, I am really grateful that I had to go through that experience, because it finally helped me to really heal the unhealthy relationship I had with exercise. I learned to be okay NOT exercising and just letting my body be. 

Once my period was normalized, I gradually started exercising more, but this time it was from a MUCH healthier place. My body AND mind were much healthier now. Exercise was done out of JOY, not fear or anxiety. It didn’t feel like something I “had” to do to feel okay. And, I knew I needed to be mindful of my eating and nutrition from now on to support whatever activity I wanted to do going forward.

I was now ready and able to engage with athletic goals in a healthy way, and ran several half marathons and one full marathon in the few years at the end of and after college. The day I ran a full marathon was one of the best days of my life, because it was something I had wanted to do for a long time but wasn’t sure for so long if I would be able to do so in a healthy way. It was a really meaningful and redemptive experience for me.

What does exercise look like now?

I consider myself pretty much “retired” from running races — they can be so time-consuming to train for, and I’m not really interested in carving out THAT much time for running when I don’t really have a reason that feels compelling enough for me to do so now. Half marathons aren’t that enticing to me / comparable to the fun of a full marathon, but training for a full marathon tends to aggravate my knees (on top of the time aspect).

My weeks are full of walks/runs outside, heading to the yoga studio each week, and occasionally lifting weights in our mini home gym. I am most happy from an activity standpoint when I am able to engage my adventurous spirit through hiking, backpacking, and skiing.

Anything to be outside in the awe, beauty, and solitude of nature.

I don’t think I would have the positive relationship with exercise that I do now if it weren’t for the terrible place I fell into and had to heal to come out of. So much of the messaging in our culture is geared toward promoting an unhealthy relationship with exercise, and it can take a lot of intentionality in order to foster a truly healthy relationship with exercise.

Moving my body is now full of…

JOY, especially when out in nature;
APPRECIATION, for all that my body is able to do.
and CONNECTION, with myself, God, and others. 

What a gift to be alive!