For many busy women, it can be a struggle just to fit in that recommended thirty-minute daily dose of physical activity. But for a growing number, an effort to get regular exercise has been replaced by an obsession with burning calories and fulfilling rigid workout quotas - to the point of skipped work, depression, and potentially fatal harms to physical health.
While a fit body needs activity, exercise bulimia – an obsessive illness with serious consequences for the body and the emotional psyche - is becoming increasingly common. Experts estimate that at least 4% of Americans struggle with excessive exercising, but the diagnosis of exercise bulimia is rare in a culture that celebrates trim physiques and a disciplined dedication to workouts. In fact, most sufferers from exercise bulimia aren’t diagnosed with any medical problem until symptoms of more common eating disorders, namely anorexia and bulimia, rear their heads. And unfortunately, they often do, as most of those who struggle with one of the three will battle the others at some point in their lives.
It can be easy for exercise bulimia to go on for years under the radar –
Read the rest of this entry at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com
In this column for our partner site, HerActiveLife.com, senior writer Katie Drummond writes about the tragic beginning to her running “career”, battling an eating disorder, turning her life around, and how running gave her the strength and determination to regain her health.
My life as a runner began for all the wrong reasons. Five years ago, at 16, I fell into the same trap as so many young girls, and my weight became equated with my self-worth. I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know why, but somehow I went to bed one night and woke up the next day with an absolute certainty that the number on the bathroom scale should naturally dictate how I felt about my body and my value as a partner, a student, a daughter, a woman.
It soon wasn’t enough that I was eating nothing but rice cakes spread with mustard for lunch or just skipping lunch (and breakfast, and dinner) entirely. When I couldn’t stand to keep starving myself and changed my tactics, the scale snidely informed me that, no, throwing up wouldn’t make me any better, prettier, or worthier either.
Fed up, I tried another means of self-improvement, and started forcing my exhausted teenaged body onto the family treadmill every night…
Read the rest of Katie’s entry at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com
We see her running at cross-country and track meets every season; we watch her as she propels her thin arms and legs, conspicuous ribs, hollow cheeks and eyes, bulging veins and concave stomach forward. The visible markers on her body shout that something is not right, as her drive for perfection pushes her towards a dangerous dance with death.
The prominence of professional sports in America places athletes on the highest pedestal of celebrity, praise and respect. This cultural phenomenon gets replicated in college athletics in the form of big time Division I athletic programs. Often times, these programs incite the same excitement and feverish fandom as professional sports do - sometimes even more so because of the appeal of an athlete’s amateur status to the American imagination, and the almost cultish following of the universities that these athletes represent. Without question, the enormous pressure to excel and win in NCAA Division I programs creates serious issues concerning the physical well being of its athletes.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tiredness and cramps in athletes can have many causes, but lack of potassium in their diets is not one of them. Many years ago, Dave Costill of Ball State University tried to create potassium deficiency in runners. He couldn’t do it because potassium is found in all foods except refined sugar, and his athletes would not stay on a diet that consisted only of hard candy.
The kidneys and sweat glands conserve potassium so well that you don’t lose much. If an athlete develops potassium deficiency, it is usually caused by drugs, such as diuretics or corticosteroids, or by diarrhea or repeated vomiting.
Read the rest of this entry »
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? Read the rest of this entry »
© 2006-2008 The Final Sprint, LLC | Privacy Policy | Design by The Blog Studio
The Final Sprint, LLC is owned and operated by Adam Jacobs
The Final Sprint