Eating disorder awareness: Signs you have a bad relationship with exercise
Exercise is always a healthy thing, true or false?
If you or your loved one are recovering from an eating disorder, the answer to this question can get eally complicated. Because as long as you have a healthy relationship with exercise, yes, it is a healthy thing.
But, if you don’t - if you find yourself obsessed with working out, or that your schedule revolves around working out, or if you can only do one type or amount of working out for it to “count” - you might not have a great relationship with exercise.
In this blog, I want to spread awareness signs that you have a bad relationship with exercise, using my own experience with an eating disorder. Now, the purpose of this blog isn’t to tell you that you HAVE to stop (although if a doctor says you need to - please listen to them). Instead, the purpose is to encourage you to identify that there are areas of growth in your relationship with exercise and to work on rebuilding this relationship.
Some of my eating disorder exercise behaviors when I was struggling:
I’ve always been an athlete. I’ve always enjoyed movement, sports, and the gym; however, when I developed my eating disorder after stopping my sport in college, this hobby quickly turned into an obsession. Here are some warning signs of a bad relationship with exercise that were present when I was active in my eating disorder:
My eating disorder told me that I had to run daily.
My eating disorder told me that I had to workout every day for over an hour.
My eating disorder told me I needed to burn a certain number of calories for the workout to count.
If my eating disorder thought I had eaten “too much” one day, it told me I needed to “make up for it” by doubling my running distance the following day.
My eating disorder had me skip rest days frequently.
My eating disorder told me I always had to eat less on a rest day.
My eating disorder told me that weightlifting doesn’t count as an exercise because it doesn’t burn enough calories.
Essentially, my eating disorder convinced me that calories in had to equal calories out. Which meant, I had to burn off everything that I ate.
Safe to say, my relationship with exercise was terrible. I didn’t even look forward to it anymore. It was something I had to do if I wanted to eat without guilt.
But, my eating disorder behaviors didn’t end with the gym or working out...
Some of my eating disorder behaviors around movement during the day:
My eating disorder told me I needed to work at a stand-up desk.
My eating disorder told me I needed to do more household chores to keep myself on my feet.
My eating disorder told me that I should park the farthest away from any store I was entering.
My eating disorder told me that I should go on walks every day, not for fresh air but to get in more steps.
My eating disorder told me if I hung out with friends, it needed to be something active.
My eating disorder had caused my relationship with exercise to be completely toxic. Not only was I exhausted all of the time, with no period, and constant body aches and injuries, but I was also completely miserable. The issue was that I didn’t know how to stop.
If you’re at this place in your eating disorder right now, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. A lot of people with eating disorders experience something similar to the above. And the obsessive thoughts that say you need to move more are wrong. And those thoughts can go away!
Go to my blog on how to improve your relationship with exercise in eating disorder recovery.
Sending you so much love!
xx @growithtori