How to Navigate Exercise During Eating Disorder Recovery
Photo by Danilo Ćalić on Unsplash; edited by author.
For many, exercise has evolved from being a form of pleasure and self-care to a cold-blooded act of self-torture. This is certainly the case for many of my clients in eating disorder recovery (and was also once the case for me).
Movement of the body is now merely a mode of manipulating it to reach a desired weight, shape, or size.
Sometimes this means abiding by a rigid exercise routine, irrespective of a busy schedule or a body that’s yearning for rest.
Sometimes this means doing extra to punish oneself and make up for eating a banned food.
Almost always, this means the joy of movement, and engaging in it for purposes of health and well-being, is gone.
The reassuring news? It’s not gone forever — or at least it doesn’t have to be. By taking a few key steps (that don’t involve a step counter), you can find peace, balance, and even joy in moving your body again.
#1. First and Foremost, Consult Your Treatment Team (if You Have One)
If you’re already in treatment for an eating disorder (hats off to you, if yes), it’s important to discuss your relationship with exercise with your primary care provider, dietitian, therapist, and/or recovery coach. Based on various factors, these individuals can help you determine:
If you should be exercising at all right now
Oof, this can be so, so tough, but you may need to temporarily stop exercising altogether. I fell into this camp, and, to be completely honest, I was pretty pissed off when I entered it.
But until my labs all came back normal and my body was replenished with the nutrients it had long been lacking, adding more stress to my body through exercise was actually quite dangerous.
One thing that’s easy to forget is that exercise is a privilege. Only those in physically able bodies can and should engage in it. So make your new mission to heal your body, not further hinder it.
What kind of exercise is appropriate for you
If you’re given the green light to exercise, it still may come with some caveats.
For example, even once my blood showed no signs of concern, I still had below-average bone density and wasn’t completely abstinent from purging. To ensure I didn’t suffer any bone fractures or cardiovascular events, my treatment team limited my exercise to resistance training and low-intensity cardio, so things like yoga, walks, hiking, and leisurely bike rides.
Again, I didn’t love these limitations, but I knew complying with them was what I needed to recover and eventually gain more freedom with exercise.
How much exercise you should be doing
Once you know what types of exercise are appropriate for you, it’s equally important to know how much of them you should be doing.
I remember when I got the clear to do those low-intensity activities, I did them a lot. When my recovery team found out how much time I was spending on them, I got called out big time.
Remember, too much of any kind of movement (even the more gentle kinds) is hard on your body. Don’t let the eating disorder lead you down these sneaky pathways, and always stay honest with your treatment team.
Note: Having a treatment team comes with a great deal of privilege. If you are facing barriers to treatment (financial or otherwise), explore the services available through Project HEAL.
#2. Get Curious About Why You (Want to) Exercise the Way You Do
You arrived at your current relationship with exercise some way, somehow. Dig into that for clarity’s sake.
What’s influenced your relationship with exercise?
Where, along the way, did you learn to move your body the way you do? Did diet culture play a hand? A fitness influencer? Your eating disorder or disordered eating bullying you around?
Understanding what’s influenced your relationship with exercise makes it easier to hold compassion for yourself as you work to improve it.
What motivates you to move?
Are the reasons you exercise aligned with your values or the person you want to be, or are they purely a byproduct of your eating disorder?
If the latter, there’s no shame in that. Take this awareness, and harness it for healing.
How do you feel about exercise?
What words describe the way you feel about exercise, especially leading up to and during it?
Do words like dread, angst, punishment, obligation, and rigidity outweigh words like pleasure, self-care, restoring, and flexibility? If yes, that is (again) okay. Before making any change in life, it’s necessary to understand why you want to make that change.
The point here is to explore how you feel, about how you feel, about exercise.
#3. Conceptualize Your Ideal Relationship with Exercise
Once you identify the unhealthy aspects of your relationship with exercise, you’re better equipped to conceptualize how you’d ideally like it to be.
What types of activities would you do (or not do)?
Think about types of movement that interest you but that you do little to none of now. Tennis? Rock climbing? Salsa dancing?
If you’re unsure about what activities you think you’d enjoy or like to try, what would you not do? For me, I knew I needed to wave bye-bye to the elliptical and engage in more outdoor activities.
Is it structured or flexible?
Does your ideal relationship with exercise follow a routine or is it more fluid? This is a personal preference, so no right or wrong answer here.
But as you start to imagine a different way of moving your body, it’s important to consider things like frequency and flexibility when it comes to that movement.
What makes it ideal?
Just like how you identified what makes your current relationship with exercise unhealthy or problematic, write down what makes your ideal relationship with exercise…well, ideal.
Is it more joyful? More intuitive? More about health than appearance?
Get clear about why you want what you want.
#4. Explore New Ways of Moving
The only way to truly change your relationship with exercise is to try out new ways of moving.
Be practical
Go back to the list of activities you envision doing in your ideal relationship with exercise, and pick out one or two you can easily incorporate into your life right now.
For me, I knew I wanted to try out cycling but didn’t have the means to buy a new bike. I found a friend who was willing to let me borrow her bike for a few weeks. Lo and behold, I fell in love and started saving up to buy my own.
Give it a fair shot
Doing a new activity once or twice isn’t doing it (or you) justice. But doing it consistently and with an open mind will help you accurately gauge if it’s an activity you want to engage in frequently, seldomly, or never again.
To keep yourself accountable in giving your new activity a fair shot, discuss it with your treatment team, partner, or friend who can follow up with you on how it’s going.
Incorporate mindfulness
Exercise because you love your body, not because you hate it.
Whether you take on a new form of movement or not, one game-changer is taking note of how your body actually feels. You can grow so conditioned to doing a specific workout that you completely detach yourself from your body.
Questions to explore while exercising:
Does this feel more painful than it does invigorating? If yes, what can I do differently? Slow down? Focus on my breathing?
Do I need to hydrate or fuel before I continue any further?
Is my fitness device getting in the way of me listening to my body? If yes, how can I minimize that? Turn off notifications? Not wear it for a few workouts?
#5. Embrace Any Resistance
If your new ways of moving are a little less rigid and intense than what you’re used to, your inner critic may try to cajole you into re-upping the ante.
This is a great opportunity to cordially respond with,
“I’m not opposed to pushing my body from time to time, but I also owe it to myself to experience movement as so much more than a calorie-burning, muscle-building endeavor.”
In my own experience, I ended up exercising about the same amount as I had been while on my super-strict exercise regime because I actually looked forward to moving my body.
Whatever your experience is as you explore new types of movement, expect your inner critic to come out every once in a while. When it does, gently remind it (and yourself) that you’re working on improving your relationship with exercise and would appreciate the time and space to do just that.
Make One Final Move
After you’ve allowed yourself at least 30 (but ideally 60–90) days of moving your body in ways more aligned with your ideal relationship with exercise, do a little assessment.
Some questions to ask yourself:
How has my attitude toward exercise changed?
How has the experience of exercise itself changed?
How am I feeling in my body and my mind?
What do I want my relationship with exercise to look like moving forward?
Whatever your responses, I hope you experience some semblance of how magnificent movement can be when you transform it from being a punitive requirement to a nurturing privilege.
This connection between body, mind, and soul is not only critical to recovering from an eating disorder; it’s critical to living a wholesome life well beyond recovery.
