Exercise Bulimia: When it’s gone too far
Posted December 1st, 2006 at 11:00 AM by Sarah Kaufman
Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Health & Fitness, Exercise
When you’re at the gym, you love running on the treadmill. You pump out five or six miles every time you go; sporadically varying the speed of your mile times to achieve the best possible work-out that your body can handle. You look beside you and see a woman who is also running on the treadmill. She’s running at the same speed; on her way to the same five or six miles.
But whether or not you’re able to realize it, there is something different about the two of you.
You feel amazing after your run. You feel empowered, you feel healthy, you feel unstoppable. But not her. She feels like she didn’t do enough for the day. Maybe she feels like she shouldn’t leave; not until she burns a few hundred extra calories (at least!).
We all know that exercise is good for you. It’s healthy. It allows you to live a longer, happier life. But when does exercise turn into an eating disorder?
Studies have indicated that approximately 5 percent of all women suffer from the well-known eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia or binge eating disorder). But compulsive exercising, also called exercise bulimia, is another way to purge food from one’s body; the same way an anorexic or bulimic might do it with vomiting or the use of laxatives.
According to ExerciseBulimia.com, 4% of Americans and 10-12% of gym-goers suffer from the disease. Recovering exercise bulimic Karen Petry wrote on CNN.com that exercise was directly related to the excessive guilt she felt after eating food.
I’d eat a rice cake and I felt like that was too much, so I’d have to go down and exercise an extra hour just because I ate that rice cake.
Jessica Weiner, another recovering exercise bulimic, told WebMD that she became a victim of the disorder when she was only 14-yrs old. Weiner said, “Bike, treadmill, stair machine, weights — you name it, I did it.”
But doctors say it’s difficult to determine how much exercise is too much by merely calculating how often a person workouts. Instead, sports psychologist Jack Raglin, Ph.D of Indiana University in Bloomington, believes that it is more important to examine what the person is thinking or how she feels inside. Raglin explains:
There’s no single cut-off or dosage where we can say, ‘Aha, you’ve gone too far . . . Exercise addicts don’t exercise to improve their health or train for a specific event, they’re exercising for the sake of exercise.
Exercise bulimics use the activity as a way of feeling a sense of control in their lives, when in reality they have no control whatsoever. Their exercising habits become compulsive. Exercise bulimia can result in various injuries and health problems. This includes stress fractures, sprains, dangerously low body fat, fatigue, osteoporosis, arthritis, reproductive problems and heart problems. In addition, female exercise bulimics often cease to have periods; a condition called exercise amenorrhea.
Barbara Drinkwater, Md., of the Pacific Medical Center in Seattle, said that this is a strong sign that the exerciser has gone too far.
Many women rejoice when their periods stop, but this is a red flag — a sign that you’re headed for trouble.
Estrogen is essential for the development of strong bones and its levels are highest in women in their 20’s. However, if a woman loses her period, it’s an indicator that her estrogen levels could drop low enough to match that of a postmenopausal woman. She therefore begins to lose bone mass instead of rebuilding it. Drinkwater said that she has seen 25-year-old women suffering from eating disorders who have the bones of an 80-year-old because of the damage they’ve done to their bodies.
But recovery is entirely possible for men and women with eating disorders; including exercise bulimia. Ira Sacker, Md., director of the Eating Disorders Program at Bookdale Medical Center in New York, recommends that recovering exercise bulimics find a supporting team of therapists and physicians who can help with both emotional and physical damage. Sacker added that exercise bulimics must find a new, healthy way to deal with their emotions.
Weiner turned to theater to express her feelings.
Recovery is a continuum . . . It took years and years to build these attitudes; you can’t fix them overnight. But you can choose to stop relying on exercise as a coping mechanism.
Sources and for more information: [WebMD], [ExerciseBulimia.com], [NRED: Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders], [CNN], [About.com]
***Note: We encourage EVERYONE to see a doctor before altering their diet, taking a supplement and/or performing athletic, fitness or other strenuous physical activity. It is your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of any information, instruction, opinion or advice contained in the content. Please also see our complete disclaimer.***
Tags: anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder, bulimia, compulsive exercise, eating disorders, exercise addict, exercise amenorrhea, exercise bulimia, exercise bulimics, health, health and wellness, laxatives, vomiting
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The Final Sprint
[…] Exercise Bulimia: When it’s gone too far […]
January 15th, 2007 at 8:11 pm