Sectioned at 16, exercise addict whose weight fell to below 6 stone
A TEENAGER was sectioned and almost died because of an addiction to exercise.
Lisa Fouweather, 19, ran half marathons before breakfast and hid in the toilet to jog on the spot.
Her weight plummeted to just 5st 13lb – but the runner told her family she would kill herself if they stopped her from exercising.
Miss Fouweather said: ‘I can remember one night doing a warm-up and just crying as I was running.
‘Looking back, I think that was my body pleading with me to let it rest, but I never did.’
Miss Fouweather’s orthorexia – an eating disorder where the sufferer is unhealthily obsessed with eating and exercise – was triggered when she took up competitive running aged 14 at Doncaster Athletics Club in 2016 where she ‘never felt good enough’.
She decided to change her diet when she kept coming last in races despite attending every session and practising. She ate mainly fruit and vegetables and avoided fatty or sugary ‘fear foods’, copied training regimes posted on Instagram by professional athletes twice her age and even made herself late for school by sneaking out to run each morning.
‘I was scared of consuming “liquid calories” and I would throw my orange juice out of the window when my parents left the room,’ she said.
The runner racked up 40 miles a week on top of daily two hour ab workouts and 70,000 steps. She added: ‘My running finally felt as though it was starting to come together when, in fact, my whole life was falling apart.’
Instead of relaxing while on a holiday in Turkey in 2017 with her father Roy, 57, mother Joanna, 45, and sister, Shannon, 24, Miss Fouweather would go to the toilet every ten minutes to jog on the spot. ‘I found relaxing unbearable. I couldn’t lie down all day, I had to be exercising,’ she added.
At 16, Miss Fouweather, from Doncaster, was referred to the Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services where she was diagnosed with orthorexia and banned from exercise. But she threatened suicide if she had to stop running. She said: ‘I didn’t think my life was worth or even capable of living if I couldn’t run.’
She was sectioned and taken to Doncaster Royal Infirmary where she spent three weeks on strict bedrest and at one stage faced being tube-fed.
At one point, her heart rate dropped to 28 beats per minute – a normal rate being between 60-100bpm. She said: ‘I was told that I could’ve died at these times, because my heart was struggling to cope.’
The student, now in her second year at Sheffield Hallam University studying marketing communications and advertising, spent seven months in a specialist eating disorders clinic in Sheffield. When she finally left, she weighed 8st.
She has been in recovery for nearly three years but still has never had a menstrual cycle and has to be careful not to exert herself due to her low bone density that was caused by her excessive exercise.
‘Never felt good enough’