I think my eating disorder probably started with exercising. If only I knew that these first "extra" 20 minutes exercises before going to bed (for some reason I thought that it is weird laying for so long in bed without moving) will gradually become a nightmare and hours and hours and...years. Anyway now I probably exercise somewhere on the upper border of what is considered "normal". BUT: as Carrie wrote: "...it isn't duration of exercise that provides researchers with a definition of exercise dependence. After all, plenty of athletes exercise long and hard without any signs of eating disorders. Instead, it is your attitude towards exercise and how you behave when you can't exercise that is the most telling." Amen. Example: In my first treatment, I was quite compliant and eating more than the most patients. But I was exercising secretly. Not to lose weight - I was eating 4000 kcal and I thought couple of knee-bends wasn't an issue weight-wise. Now I see how this little addiction was quite central. Actually I don't exactly know why I was exercising there and why it was so important to me. For weeks was doing 100 knee-bends every 2 hours and If I have to skip one hundred, I was uncomfortable, if I have to skip two or more, I was really distressed and subsequently did 2, 3 or more hundreds. It took me just maybe 2 minutes or less and I didn't do it at night, so that it was maybe 15 minutes in a day. But it was exercise addiction. If you know what I mean :(
I think Carrie's points are excellent and comprehensive and what I will write next probably is just a sub-points or variations of her points, but because this is quite an important subject for me, I am going to mention "my" extra thoughts/rambles on exercise addiction I see as important:
- Comparison. Example from days when my exercise addiction was monstrous: my classmate mentioned he is doing crazy number of repetitions of one particular exercise every morning. Maybe he did it for a week, maybe longer, who knows, but my brain immediately told me: Oh crap Míša. See how trained he is. You have to try it as soon as you come home. And I've "tried" for year or so. Example from now: I still feel a prickle of jealousy/panic/distress, when I "just" walk or "even" drive and see someone (especially someone my age) running fast around me and have a feeling I am inferior, lazy, I should jump out of a car and run as well etc etc. (And my parent's house is in the area where a lot of people are doing sports...). Sometimes even hearing someone talking about exercise makes me uncomfortable (just a little bit).
- Irrational believes about relationship between body and exercise. Tough one for me. I'v enever had significant body dysmorphia, but I have kind of anticipation-muscle-dysmorphia. I KNOW that my muscle cells won't miraculously transform into fat cells if I won't exercise for 24 hours or even 48. I know rest is essential for regeneration of muscle cells, but I am still scared that after some resting or long drive I will wake up transformed into pillow of fat. Moreover, I can't get rid of the feeling, that I need to do more exercise than "normal" people do to prevent this transformation. Akward. Wow. Probably now I should give my diploma back and start first year biochemistry and physiology again.
- The burden of uselessness. Sooner or later I've realized how much time-consuming my exercise habits are and what things I could and should do instead. I like being productive. I don't want to think about how many academic, social, volunteering, traveling...possibilities I missed because of that, but obviously the shame and unpleasant thoughts about uselessness and unproductivity didn't stop me what I was/partly am doing. The fear of not-exercising was more dominant.
- Basing self-worth and self-respect on how much I've been exercising. I know. It is pathetic. Exercising won't make me better person, better daugter, sister or friend, it won't make me better student or doctor (maybe if I plan to spend my life as mountain doctor...but I don't! I am scared of heights!) or better anything. This point is probably about the mood and endorphines in Carrie's point #3. (Btw. I wonder if there is any self-respect center in the brain...and what exactly "creates" this feeling. Or is self-respect a feeling? Excursive me.).
- Ignoring injuries or illnesses. I am lucky, because except of osteoporosis anorexia left my body pretty functioning. But I am a catalogue of sports injuries. Stress fractures, broken pelvis, tendinitis, frost bites from long runs in the winter and on the other side 2 episodes of bad hyperthermia. Needles to say ihese injuries didn't stop me from exercising - I've always found an alternative to running. And I think all in all I am lucky again- not until medical school I realized how deadly could be exercising during virosis which I - surprisingly- did as well. And if Carrie says that people with exercise addiction should seek help, because "It can be the difference (literally) between recovery and a life spent tethered to the treadmill." I say it can be the difference between recovery and life spent on the waiting list for heart transplant or death spent somewhere, but probably not on the treadmill.
- Doubting about "the right exercise". The number of "new" kind of sports (when I was a kid, there were just "aerobics", now there are 97890 subcultures of aerobics + plenty of boxes and kick boxes and boot camps and screaming frantic instructors on DVDs and weird machines) is enormous. Help! Am I doing the good one, the effective one, the healthy one? I think this feeling is similar to grocery shopping for someone with eating disorder. Probably professional trainer would give me advice, but I have never been member of a gym and I am not going to change it. Gyms scare me more than heights (see "Comparison").
Last note: I think the addictive potential of exercise is generally underestimated. Honestly even with my history I don't ask the patients profoundly about exercise. I just ask-do you exercise regulary? And that's it. I've seen only one patient with officialy diagnosed exercise addiction (btw in orthopedic, not psychiatric or psychosomatic clinic) who was a succesful lawyer with history of kokain addiction. He started to train for a marathon as a part of getting rid of drugs. He told me that his exercise addiction has bigger impact on his work and marriage than kokain had.
I pretty much felt like this post could have been written about me, you did a great job of explaining what it's like to be stuck in this cycle. I think that the exercise component is often overlooked as an ED issue, when all the focus is on stereotypical anorexics that just starve and bulimics that just binge and purge, but it's so much more complicated.
ReplyDeleteHang in there. <3
Hey Míša,
ReplyDeletethanks for an interesting post :-) I hope I'm not upsetting you when I talk about my training at my blog (I don't like calling my training "exercise" because under "exercise" I imagine a physical activity without a training or enjoyment purpose, which I usually don't do anyway...).
I don't consider myself an exercise addict, but I often do get slightly anxious if I have a race coming up soon and I cannot train because of traveling or injury (I don't really get sick and if I do, I usually try to rest as much as possible). But these days I don't have as much expectations of me as I used to, so I get much less anxious about racing, which is nice (probably more experience (in triathlons and cycling) makes racing less stressful too).
I think I'm pretty triathlon-obsessed, but so are most of my MIT teammates :D I think it's just the passion for the sport (for them and mostly for me too). For me, also the fact that I used to be very good at the cycling and running portion and had the opportunity to go to Age Group (Amateur) World Championship twice makes the sport still attractive, even if training is sometimes frustrating (especially swimming).
OK, I don't want to sound like writing a defense of not being an exercise addict :-) When I was a child and actively anorexic (or still having a lot of food and exercise rituals), I'd exercise pretty compulsively - mostly for the purpose of making my body look certain way. Or I would walk and stand a lot just to burn more calories (yes, even when I was in a hospital for re-feeding purposes).
I think only in college after I injured myself from cycling too much or overtrained and got burnt out, I learned the real importance of rest and recovery. I try to avoid "junk training" (training without a purpose) these days, unless it's more of a social activity with friends. I think I may even be a bit obsessed with resting and eating properly when I train a lot. And it really frustrates me when I cannot resist the ED voice telling me that I should just eat junk if I want to (which is almost 24/7) because it will give me a temporary high (and I can "get rid of it" anyway...) as opposed to eating normal food, which does not give me any "real" benefits (well, except for nutrition and health, but ED does not care about that ;-)
Anyway... Sorry for this being so looong...
I must say though, I can in many ways relate to your points 1,2,4 and 6 above. But it's usually more that I get frustrated or depressed if I cannot train and perform like someone else, especially if they are much more busy than me outside of training and I often have doubts about my training, but I guess it's more of a nature of not believing in myself that I either complete the training or that I ever improve in swimming, running or cycling.
OK, I guess that's it. Hope you are having a nice weekend!
Good post. Overexercise is often overlooked or better yet hailed as the next best thing. With EDs, not so much.
ReplyDeleteIt is a hard balance to find. Though I have less exercise addiction than I used to, I still find times where I am overly anxious and still hold some weird beliefs. Like, though I like to run in the morning, when it is evening, I feel bored but know I really don't need to do more exercise. I think this is mostly due to having a lot of time on my hands.
Right now, with all this heat here, it is has been hard to feel motivated to do my runs for my marathon training, and I have a tendency to get anxious that I'm going to lose a lot of fitness. Ugh, such a battle sometimes.
Glad that you are better with it than you used to be. Keep using the rational side of your mind.