by Kacey Clark
When disclosing that I struggled with exercise addiction for four years, I have either been met with confusion, or awe.
“What? How can you be addicted to exercise if it’s healthy?”
“Well that’s an addiction I’d like to have.”
“What’s so bad about exercising a lot?”
“Wow, you must have so much willpower. I wish I could be like you.”
Some variation of these statements would greet me. The flattery that was intended to compliment and encourage me hurt just as much as the dismissiveness that invalidated and belittled my experience. What these people didn’t bare witness to was what this struggle was like for me for four years, a time when I was completely consumed by my flawed perception of fitness while dedicating every waking moment to time in the gym.
They weren’t there the many times I got up at 3:30 in the morning before class after staying up until midnight to study, just to power through a run and a strength workout.
They didn’t see the times I isolated myself from family and friends (many of which I lost for this reason) so that I could quietly be consumed by my compulsion to exercise.
They didn’t see me during my first year of college, when I exercised for 2-3 hours every day before class and put in extra time on the weekends, often exercising through sickness, injury, and exhaustion.
They didn’t see me crying while I ran (sometimes up to 60 miles a week), not menstruating regularly, struggling with uncontrollable shame and guilt when I was unable to exercise as much as I was “supposed to”, losing my will to live when I was injured or sick, or missing out on all of the great things that young people get to experience during their teenage years.
I didn’t get to experience an ordinary adolescence because my drive to exercise was so demanding that nothing else mattered but the number of miles I ran and the number of reps I did. This was my measure of self-worth, adequacy, and acceptability, and it was completely informed by internalized systems of oppression that had convinced me my body was a measure of my morality.
The good news? With the help of a support team, I was able to recover by challenging these internalized belief systems that had for so long dictated my every move.
Misogyny: “Women = weak!”
Misogyny, capitalism, and fatphobia were three major forces that worked silently against me as I struggled with this debilitating disorder.
Note: While I identify as gender non-conforming/genderqueer, I also identify as a woman and use she/her, they/them pronouns.
This was the belief I developed during my adolescent years as I started to become aware of the discrepancy between men’s and women’s roles in the world. I grew up surrounded by sports and athletics; my entire family were runners and I followed in their footsteps as this slowly grew to become an all-consuming part of my identity as a teenager.
While it is true that sports can be empowering for women by allowing them to embrace and exude their inner-strength, the way I approached sports was less out of empowerment and more out of repentance. A big part of my commitment to running was to prove I was not feminine and fragile, which in my fifteen-year-old mind, were one and the same. As a female who believed she was inherently weak, I felt I had to masculinize myself by whatever means possible, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I began hiding my emotions, aggressively strength training, and rejecting anything I considered “too feminine”.
When I chose to address my exercise addiction, I also had to come to terms with my femininity, my masculinity, and overall, my humanness. I had to acknowledge that my experience of gender was not flawed. Rather, the way women are treated in relation to men is flawed. I had to realize that my association between femininity and fragility is not inherent — I learned I that I could unlearn it.
I let myself explore the creative arts, practiced self care, and gave myself the space to feel and express emotion. I started to make female friends and surrounded myself with positive, feminist spaces such as Adios Barbie. Slowly but surely I realized that strength is not gendered and that femininity is not a flaw. I learned that there is no right or wrong way to be a woman, a man, or a genderqueer human in this world, and that realization set me free.
Capitalism: “Rest = Lazy!”
My fear of appearing weak was further exacerbated by my internalization of the idea that I had to be productive 24/7 to be considered a worthy human being. I was so mortified of being seen as lazy or unsuccessful that I took on more and more exercise as time went on. Never feeling like I was doing “enough”. Capitalism engenders these sentiments in us as we grow up in a profit-oriented and materialistic society where monetary value dictates worthiness.
Time, money, and effort are perceived as stamps of moral virtue— without them—we are not valuable. Have you ever heard students or coworkers brag about how few hours of sleep they got, how much they studied, or how hard they worked? This mindset is also seen in athletics and fitness, where success is solely dependent on time and effort (and money as well).
Those who perform best are labeled as “winners” and those who fall behind as “losers”. I was terrified of being the loser, the slowest in the race, the last to cross the finish line. I would sometimes power though the day in just two hours of sleep, because I did not see the value of sacrificing exercise for sleep. After all, if I don’t get my run in, what else matters?
In my recovery, I had to explore how I had been socialized to believe that my productivity was tied to my self-worth. I had to grieve my younger self who overworked herself with school, work, extracurriculars, and excessive exercise and still felt like a failure. I considered other ways of living, more radical ways that didn’t involve adhering to a system of beliefs that demonized the basic human need of rest and relaxation.
Competition, self-degradation, and self-neglect do not make for a more fulfilling life — they make for a life void of authenticity and adventure, love and laughter, and kindness and compassion. I had to choose the kind of life I want to live, and I chose the latter.
Fat Phobia: “Fat = Wrong!”
As I began puberty, I started to gain weight (big surprise). My exercise addiction was a way of coping with my recent weight gain. I wanted to make sure that it would turn into muscle and not fat, which in the height of my disorder, was my biggest fear. This makes sense, given that fat phobia is connected to both misogyny and capitalism: the common misconception that fat = lazy and fat = bad.
I believed that if I had body fat, I wasn’t disciplined or acceptable enough. I took the tone of my muscles and the minimality of my body fat as a measure of my value. My fear of fatness overwhelmed me in ways that nothing else had. It even contributed to a development of orthorexia, an obsession with healthy eating. Instead of seeing body fat as a normal, healthy, and a vital part of the human body, I saw it as some kind of illness and had frequent panic attacks when I was “feeling fat”.
This was the most challenging belief I had to unlearn, because it overlaps and is deeply-rooted in other systems of oppression such as sexism, racism, classism, and ableism. Addressing my fatphobic tendencies required me to address all the ways in which systems of oppression showed up in my life, and the ways in which these translated into behaviors that I used to gain and maintain privilege.
By doing the uncomfortable work of exercising less, and eventually altogether, and allowing my body to gain the fat that it needed, I reaffirmed my right to take up space and exist in the world. I also embraced my natural, unaltered form, something I had never before dared to do.
Fatphobic beliefs and behaviors are dis-empowering and downright flawed. They completely invalidate the humanity of fat people and intentionally overlook the discrimination they face as they struggle to exist and survive in a culture that conforms to Eurocentric standards of beauty.
Controlling our body size through exercise sends a message that we are not satisfied with ourselves or even feel shame about ourselves. But remember, there is no such thing as the “perfect” or “ideal” body. While I in no way believe that exercise is unhealthy or discourage it, I do believe that we must pay attention to our motivation for doing so.
After lots of reflection, recovery, therapy, short-lived relapses and even longer-lived periods of rest, I am happy to say that today I have a healthier relationship with exercise than I have had since the beginning of my exercise addiction. It continues to improve every day. The flawed systems we involuntarily subscribe to inform both our mindsets and the way we perceive and treat our bodies and selves.
It can very well determine how we move through and see the world. But it doesn’t have to control us forever. By challenging systems of oppression, we can reclaim ownership of our bodies, hearts, minds, and lives. Nothing feels as good as the freedom to exist just as we are, soft and strong, tough and tender, human and whole—that’s what recovery has taught me.