Anorexia Athletica

I love the sound of it. So incongruous. Like exercise addiction doesn't sound serious enough. And sometimes it is fun - like mania can be fun, like pure excess can be fun. Then it gets out of control.

So anorexia athletica  what does it mean? I'm eating, so I must be ok. And I'm exercising  - I'm healthy, really healthy. I could run forever. Or at least until I fall over.

I used to walk to the gym. It took 45 minutes. Then I got on the elliptical machines. For two hours. Then I lifted weights for 45 minutes. Then I stretched for an hour. Then I walked home! Every day! Except I made sure to do different weight lifting each day. Because I didn't want any injuries. I mean, what would happen if I missed a day at the gym??

I read in the newspaper that Brittney Spears would exercise four hours a day with a personal trainer. I did some addition: 45 minutes + 2 hours + 1 hour + 45 minutes = 4.5 hours. I started to wonder if I was exercising too much. But I was healthy! And I was eating. And I wasn't injured all the time like when I ran track.

I remember the precise moment when my fascination with exercise started. It was in junior high. I had just been to visit my cousins in New Zealand and I came back with a bunch of trendy magazines. One of them had an article about speed walking.

So I was hanging out in the living room with my mom and my brother. They were having one of their arguments. I somehow always ended up in the middle of, or at least involved in these arguments. I decided I did not need to be involved in this particular argument, and I went outside and went for a walk. I walked up and down the block for an hour. It felt great. I felt powerful.

And I kept walking. And then running. I stopped eating junk food. I joined the track team. I joined the cross country team. I took aerobics for P.E. class. I walked a mile and a half to school and back almost every day in high school.

I was in great shape through most of junior high and high school. I ate whatever I wanted. I became vegetarian and then vegan.

I hated how thin I was sometimes. I could feel my hip bones poking through my skin. But I couldn't stop exercising, or thinking about exercising. I had to have toe surgery twice because of running related injuries. And I still ran and walked six miles in the San Francisco Bay to Breakers, with my toe bleeding. I needed the exercise high. And I was afraid to gain weight. I never had time to enjoy being in good shape.

In the first years of college, I found myself too busy with other things to keep exercising the way I had been. I still walked everywhere, but I wasn't running or doing aerobics.

Then, in my last year of college, I decided to get back in shape. By spending all my time at the track. I would just keep running for hours. At first, I would run a mile or two. Then I started running six or seven miles. Then I started running ten miles. I would leave the house and go to the track for several hours to run ten miles. Every other day.

I started to get injured. My knees and my arms and my feet started to hurt. I decided to join a gym. The weight I had been carrying around started to decrease, first a little, then a lot.

I lost fifty pounds. And I kept it off for several years as I exercised my way to nowhere.

After a series of unfortunate events a few years after college, I stopped the exercise routine. But the obsession remained. It's not the kind of thing you lose. You just learn to live with it.

I still have trouble when people say things like:

- oh, exercise is so healthy

- why don't you exercise more

- I can eat this chocolate bar because I'm going to the gym later


I really have to be mindful when I exercise. I have to set time limits. I have to be very careful to notice if anything hurts or if I feel tired. Most of all, I have to remember to pay attention and enjoy exercise while I'm doing it.

And for me, exercise is not a way to balance what I eat. (Refer to the term anorexia athletica - anorexia by way of exercise). I have to do it for its own sake.