Doctors Said Exercise Would Always Be Disordered. I Disagree.
What even is ‘disordered’? The lack of nuance and oversimplification in ED recovery and HAES leaves little room for individuality
I was just 17 when my mother and I boarded a plane to Florida, heading to the eating disorder treatment center where she would leave me behind. I can still picture my mom walking through the double sliding secured doors and into the taxi that would take her to the airport and eventually home to New York. My eyes were swollen red as I cried after her. I caught my mom waving again, wiping her tears as the taxi took her out of sight. My throat had never felt so tight. The nurse gently turned me around, back into the unfamiliar center. I felt disoriented and frightened.
It was 2008, and I’d just been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. I probably weighed around 102 pounds at my lowest (I’m 5’6”). I got this way the same way many anorexics do: by limiting my calories in and exercising my calories out. Until a few weeks before I acquiesced to getting help, I’d been a devoted regular at my local gym, often lying to my parents about where I was. I told them I was at a friend’s house for dinner or attending a field hockey pasta party (which also got me excused from eating dinner with them).
I did the same thing at the gym every day: 45 minutes on the elliptical, no stopping. I’d slip into an adrenal trance, rotating through the same menu of thoughts while savoring the sensation of my arms and legs moving to and fro without any part of my body touching itself. I was like a noodle moving through space. My rotating thoughts included daydreams of boys, imagining that every girl in the gym wanted to be me, and replaying the compliments I’d received that day, even if they edged on concern (many of them did). I looked so good, I thought. I listened to The Dream’s Love/Hate album to get me through every exercise session.
When I arrived at the treatment center, the staff told me that exercise was strictly prohibited; many patients came to rehab with compulsive exercise problems and needed to get to a healthy weight before putting excess stress on the body. Bones were brittle, joints were damaged. Fat, calories, and collagen were needed.
One girl in my group had exercised so compulsively that a nurse had to accompany her from session to session, ensuring she didn’t unconsciously fidget her legs to burn extra calories. Before treatment, she’d lock herself in her room and do crunches from 2 AM-5 AM, averaging close to 1,000 per day. She was rail thin.
If I gained weight, the doctors said, I’d be able to start going on gentle walks around the parking lot circle. We were not allowed to leave the grounds unless it was a group outing.
I ate my meals dutifully and gained enough weight to be considered healthy. When I got exercise privileges back, I took my 30 minutes to lap around the block with excitement and a newfound sense of freedom, playing the same Love/Hate album.
11 years later, almost to the day, I walked myself into a treatment center (this time in LA) at the height of my wellness-influencing career.
I was 29 years old, and though I might not have been tracking every calorie, stepping on the scale, or even as thin as the first time I went to treatment, I found my thought patterns to be the same. Constantly thinking about food, anxious about gaining weight, scared to miss a workout, OCD, and crippling anxiety.