OVER EXERCISING: WHEN DOES IT BECOME A PROBLEM?

When Not Plant Based first launched, it took me a while to admit and even recognise that I had developed a problem with over exercising. In my mind, I’d cracked “recovery”, and was excited to have developed a platform where I could inform others about my new, “healthier” lifestyle, which involved three meals a day, a few snacks here and there, and going to the gym six times a week. Surely, I thought, there’s nothing wrong with moving more? Surely losing a little weight in the process (and dropping four bra sizes) couldn’t possibly be a negative thing?

I was wrong. Along with my newfound and forced love for lifting weights welcomed back my obsessive nature to the point where I would worry that my food choices weren’t providing me with the “fuel” I needed to exercise. That if I were to eat a greasy burger, that hour I’d just spent at the gym would’ve been pointless. I’d feel guilty should I not have the time to make it for a workout each day – what with working a full time job, running a blog and trying to find time to sleep. During this time, my anxiety was at an all time high, and I would be sent home from work multiple times a week after I’d had a panic attack on the stairs leading up to the newsroom. It took a two-week dismissal from work to shake me into realising that I was pushing myself too hard, in all aspects of my life, and that maybe the gym had become my new method of purging, rather than a valuable tool for improving my wellbeing.

So I quit the gym…and my body, mental state and purse have thanked me endlessly since.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I discovered that purging through exercise could actually be classed as bulimia, as I had ignorantly assumed it was a term solely reserved for those of us who vomited and abused laxatives. Excessive exercise can be used as an “inappropriate compensatory behaviour” and would therefore fit with that term used in diagnosing bulimia. The diagnostic criteria for bulimia being when binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviours both occur, on average, at least once a week for three months, and the sufferer’s self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape and weight.

Eating disorder expert and dietitian Ursula Philpot explains that if you feel the need to “exercise off” food that you feel you have overeaten, this may be a sign that you have a problem. It’s normal to want to move a bit after a big meal, however, if the big meal was unplanned, and you feel a really strong urge to compensate for that unplanned eating by exercising, then she would view that as disordered. The body can easily deal with a one-off episode of overeating without it resulting in weight gain and there is not a need to compensate. The body is not a maths equation, and can deal with under and overeating in the short term without changing weight, by adjusting metabolism up and down. Think about it: most people have a bit of a blow out on the weekend, and don’t look any different the week after, do they?

It’s important to note that energy intake and activity should be driven by appetite, for example, if you have eaten more than usual you will generally be a bit less hungry the next day. As you probably already know, exercise also drives up appetite, which is why it’s a really rubbish way to lose weight. By exercising excessively, you simply perpetuate the cycle of restriction, exercising and overeating.

Here are some signs that could help you identify if you have a problem with over exercising:

• Exercise even when sick or injured
• Prioritising exercise over social dates, family functions, work, or school
• Intense fear at states of rest
• Intense anxiety at situations where preferred method of exercise is unavailable
• Intense guilt when forced to stray from exercise routine
• Refusal to eat if unable to exercise
• Closely tracking how many calories you burn while working out
• Becoming anxious and angry or feeling guilty if you miss a scheduled workout
• Measuring yourself to see how thin you are and feeling the need to work out more to get to your desired weight
• Seeing your body differently than others do
• Becoming angry or defensive if someone suggests that you’re exercising too much
• Women may also experience amenorrhea (an absence of menstruation) due to over exercise. If chronic, this can lead to reproductive issues in women of childbearing age

It’s also worth mentioning “activity based anorexia” when discussing over exercising, as well as bulimia…

Neuroscientists have performed testing on rodent models, with similar genetics to humans who have anorexia, to see how free access to running wheels and a restricted diet can affect them. They found that the rodents became hyperactive – running more than animals with free access to food. After the fourth day of food restriction, free access to food was returned and the running wheels were removed from the cage, however, the mice would run even during the limited time during which they have access to food – sometimes even to death! This shows that neurochemical changes combined with resilience and a vulnerability to food-restriction meant the animals were almost unable to stop themselves from exercising.

Exercise should be enjoyable, sociable and skills based. If you find yourself adding up lengths, laps and push ups, etc, then it may be that this is part of a pattern of weight control measures that are being caused by an eating disorder. This type of activity is not done for enjoyment; it is done as a form of punishment for eating. Sometimes even athletes, runners and sports people use the guise of fitness to hide an eating disorder.

Laura (not me, a different Laura) shares that she “suffered with anorexia, but in the time of crisis intervention, exercise was never an issue. I never thought about it, only restricting my food. It wasn’t until I started eating again that exercise became an issue, and it absolutely took over my life. If I ate, I had to exercise. This started off small, with telling myself it was a hobby, and grew into spending hours and hours a day walking, going to the gym and avoiding all types of social interaction.

“When I ate a meal that wasn’t ‘in my plan’ I would have to do more exercise to compensate. I was guilty, irritable and just so distressed if I couldn’t exercise or didn’t do ‘enough’ that day. I based what meals and calories I was allowed on how much movement and exercise I was doing that day.”

During my dabbling into a gym obsession, of course I was spending hours scrolling through Instagram beforehand for “inspirational” before and after photos in order to motivate me into working out when I didn’t want to, in the hope that if I pushed myself a little more I could look like the model’s figures I lusted after. Obviously, it’s very difficult to achieve a body that’s been pinched inward and plumped up with silicon. Ursula agrees that “fitspo” and Instagram culture does drive unattainable goals and aspirations around exercise and body image, setting standards few can actually attain or sustain. This can be dangerous for those with an eating disorder.

Molly says that the “fitness culture on social media affected me significantly. I had to unfollow every ‘fitspo’ account, including some yoga accounts. Constantly seeing the details of another person’s workout regimen, diet and physique really drove my eating disorder. I collected so much information on exercising, exercise physiology and nutrition from these accounts that I ended up abusing that information to fuel my eating disorder.

“These accounts normalised extreme behaviour to me. I’m sure that not all of these individuals were disordered, but my mirroring of their behaviour was extremely disordered. I feel like these accounts led me further away from listening to my own body and my own intuition – what is healthy for one person isn’t necessary healthy for every person.”

After reading this, you might now be somewhat certain that you struggle with over exercising too much, like myself, Laura and Molly did. Ursula advises that the first steps to take, if this is the case, would be to find some support from a health care professional. This could start with a visit to your GP. The next steps, following appropriate advice, might be to cut down exercise to begin with, and replacing it with skills-based activities that are not connected to weight management or body shape in a direct way, for example, team games, yoga or hill walking in a club. Sometimes the sufferer will have to go “cold turkey” for a bit to enable them to fully face a life without using exercise as a way to manage their eating disorder, and for me, this last method was what worked. Going “cold turkey” from exercise has virtually persisted to my writing of this, with my only exercise nowadays being a spot of golf and walking – mostly to my kitchen.