This week I wanted to do a quick piece complimenting our last blog about eating disorders.
I want to talk about how eating disorders are related to exercise and movement. While eating disorders are obviously intimately related to eating habits, exercise and movement are typically involved as well. This can be because oftentimes the overall goal of someone with an eating disorder is to be smaller and exercising burns calories.
too much exercise
While exercise is important for our health, too much of it can be harmful. Our bodies like balance. Our bodies like homeostasis. They like balance. While they can handle them, our bodies weren’t intended for extremes and certainly don’t prefer them. We’re actually in a persistent negative feedback loop, internally, just trying to maintain homeostasis.
Therefore, over-exercising can be problematic. Individuals undergoing treatment for eating disorders may be encouraged to do different varieties and amounts of exercise and movement. Getting into some type of sport or weight lifting can be super helpful for some people with eating disorders! Every person has to go through and find out what will be the best for them and their recovery.
It is also well known that walking after meals can be helpful for digestion so that might be something that gets recommended to people with eating disorders to bring in some movement that can help.
It’s important for everyone to try to find balance in their health. When it comes to exercise, specifically, it's important to prioritize rest and recovery in addition to exercise and learn to discern when you might be better off just skipping a workout and getting to bed on time versus not.