Eating Disorders and Exercise in NY – When Exercise Goes Too Far

Exercise. It is the most highly recommended strategy for improving not only physical health, but mental health as well. Exercise is healthier than dieting for burning calories. It increases heart health. It reduces stress and tension while boosting levels of “good mood” producing hormones. 

There are countless benefits of exercise, and experts across a wide range of fields universally recommend exercise across a wide range of fields. But like anything in life, it is possible for someone to exercise “too much.” There are many people, especially in New York – a state famous for its fashion, theatre, and social pressures – for whom exercise is a manifestation of their eating disorder. 

How Can Exercise Be an Eating Disorder?

The term “eating disorder,” typically refers to a mental health diagnosis for specific types of psychological issues that relate to eating and eating habits. For example, bulimia is a condition where a person binge eats (eats large quantities of food and then purges it, typically through vomiting). Anorexia is a condition where a person eats very little or nothing in an effort to lose extensive weight and become very thin.

Not all eating disorders are about weight loss or body shape. For example, people with night eating syndrome and binge eating disorder often each too much or too often in a way that causes unhealthy weight gain. But most eating disorders have some connection between weight and food.

Exercise is not food related. But it is still related to the idea of caloric intake versus caloric expenditure. Food puts calories in your body to turn into energy. Exercise then burns some of those calories. So a person that exercises generally needs to either eat more calories in order to maintain their body weight, or eat slightly less to lose weight but enough to still support both their life and their exercise habits.

But some people take the caloric expenditure too far. This can lead to two distinctive conditions that eating disorder therapists in NYC point out can be very harmful if left untreated:

• Exercise Bulimia – One such condition is known as exercise bulimia. With exercise bulimia, the exercise acts as the “purge” part of the disordered eating. The person may eat large meals, but then excessively exercise in order to burn away all the extra calories they ate. 
• Anorexia Athletica – Similarly, some people may struggle with a condition known as “anorexia athletica.” With anorexia athletica, a person may eat a normal size or undersize meal, and then excessively exercise to the point of burning away more calories than is healthy, essentially starving their bodies of energy and nutrients.

What can make these conditions especially challenging is that, in society, exercising to lose weight is considered a generally healthy behavior. Long Island therapists that specialize in eating disorders often find that patients with these types of conditions can go untreated for years at a time, because the idea of eating and then exercising can seem like normal behavior. 

But the conditions can cause many of the same challenges that patients face with traditional anorexia and bulimia. 

Patients with anorexia athletica are often experiencing many of the symptoms of starvation, as their bodies burn off all the excess calories they need to function. Patients with exercise bulimia may be able to get a few more nutrients than with traditional bulimia, but the binge-purge combination means a higher risk of injury, weight gain, arrythmia, weakened immune systems, and mood related challenges. Both conditions can be very dangerous, especially the longer they go untreated.

The Delicate Balance Between Healthy and Unhealthy Exercise

There are many people that engage in a lot of exercise in an effort to reach fitness goals. Athletes and bodybuilders, for example, can spend as much as 10 to 15 hours a week at the gym, and a bit longer if there are social connections and rest periods that add extra time to the workout. Some professional athletes in New York have four-hour training sessions as they prepare for games.

But these individuals are typically on very strict diet plans with expert-created fitness goals for a specific, measurable purpose. When that exercise is solely for excessive weight loss, or as part of a way to purge as a result of binge eating, the benefits of exercise go away, and you’re left with behaviors that are harmful and dangerous in the short and long term.

Although these may not be “eating disorders” in the traditional sense, they are forms of disordered eating that may benefit from psychotherapy and other mental health treatments. Exercise is the best way to stay healthy and even lose weight, but even exercise can be completed in ways that are harmful to your physical and mental health.