But isn’t exercise good for my mental health?
The world of eating disorders has its own rules.
Anorexia is successful, binging ( or just eating) is a failure. Being skinny is the source of all happiness, being “fat” is a life of misery. The body cannot be trusted. Numbers bring comfort and safety, a life without numbers is an impossibility. Everyone wants to lose weight. Exercise is good, restriction is good, eating is necessary but I would not eat if I could get away with it. Hunger must be ignored, never allow yourself to feel full. All food must be earned. Do not make the mistake of allowing delight.
It is a skewed world of secret rules and deprivation that does not really overlap with the world outside of it. It is a world of rules and formulas borrowed from others and compiled in the desperation of stopping a growing body from changing. Often people hold on to clothes from teenage as a comfort and a boundary that the body is not allowed to grow beyond. Growing into one’s adulthood, taking up space physically or with opinions and voice is scary. One tries to stay small at all costs. In this world of restriction, exercise is a compensation for eating, that helps with staying small. Exercise is implemented with rigidity, precision and desperation. It is very important to the intricate gain / loss calculation of calories. More exercise is good, less is bad.
However, words and ideas are borrowed from the outside world and used wherever convenient. “Exercise is good for my health” or “I am trying to be healthy”. On the face of it, one cannot really argue with such a statement. Till one understands the desperation beneath the word “healthy”. Once exercise becomes part of the ED picture, it plays an important calorie-reduction role and cannot be taken away. Often there is a language of compulsive exercise in the family and it is difficult to parse the ED’s toxic relationship with it from the other members who might not have a diagnosable condition but share the urgency to a degree.
Another factor that makes exercise dangerous in the world of eating disorders is our culture’s normalizing of “pushing through” as a desirable quality. A person who is attuned to the wellness of their body ‘pushes’ it with discernment and knows when to stop. To this person, pushing beyond the point of wellness is not advisable. To the person who is driven by external motivators - “I need to look a certain way to be pleasing to others” or “I need to disregard my body’s pain to please my coach” - pushing through does not include the wellness of the body. In the world of sports and dance, children are unfortunately pushed beyond their limits by coaches. The goal becomes more important than the body. The body is pushed beyond its tolerance of pain and rest and the person mistakenly understands that the more they push, the “stronger” they are. The person pushes till the body or a joint collapses. This is the case with exercise in the eating disorder world. Underestimating this dynamic proves expensive to the person and their family.
What distinguishes ED exercise from others is the urgency behind it and the terror when it is interrupted. Clinicians need to be cognizant of this and not underestimate it. I have often compared the attachment to exercise, to a drug like cocaine. Both provide immediate short-term relief in exchange for long-term misery.
In short, when a person has a compulsive attachment to exercise as part of an ED, the same separation and withdrawal process applies. It is hard to work on the ED completely as long as the person can compensate calories and manage their anxiety through exercise. On the other hand , it is completely possible to remove exercise as a compulsive coping mechanism with clear and diligent boundaries. A few years later, the person looks back and realizes the grip it had and is surprised at how compulsive it was.
There is nothing wrong with exercise. Like anything else, the desperate anxiety that it becomes an outlet for, is the part that requires attention and treatment. When the body is well-nourished and allowed to exist with ease, exercise truly becomes part of a moderated lifestyle and can be beneficial to health.
