How running helped four people recover from their eating disorders
What happens when the symbiotic relationship between running, diet and maintaining a healthy weight becomes disordered? Here, four runners share their stories of debilitating illness and slow recovery
Obenefits of running is
ne of the many that it helps to control body weight. Anything from a couch-to-5K programme to a marathon will burn extra calories, which means many of us use running to stay – or get – in shape. For others, fuelling our runs helps us to both value a nutritious diet and enjoy loading up the tank, guilt-free.
For some, however, it isn’t that simple; the balance between what they eat and how much they exercise can become badly skewed. Instead of running for enjoyment and fitness, the overwhelming reason to clock miles becomes to shed more pounds. Or, rather than using their diet to properly fuel their runs, they limit what they eat to shave weight in pursuit of performance. Taken to extremes, this may become a full-blown eating disorder.
You’ll know something about anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, even if you’re not completely familiar with their symptoms and manifestations. All three – along with other, not-so-easily-classified eating disorders – are linked with an abnormal preoccupation concerning food. And, sadly, they are disorders that many people are struggling with. The eating-disorder charity Beat estimates that about 1.25 million people in the UK have an eating disorder.
Unfortunately, it’s also common for people with these conditions to look for another way of controlling their body shape – excessive exercise, often involving running. In a study published at the start of this year, researchers from Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge, concluded that people with an eating disorder are almost four times more likely to become addicted to exercise. The study found that a high percentage of those who exercised obsessively – meaning it was extreme enough to have a negative effect on their health and social life – did so because they were focused on avoiding weight gain.
For some runners who suffer from disordered eating, the focus is not merely on body shape, but also on how losing weight will improve their running performance. And when this gets out of control, it can lock runners into a cycle of declining weight, performance and health.
However, while running can become part of the problem, it is also, often, part of the solution and for many who find their lives in a downward spiral because of disordered eating, running can play a key role in recovery. Here, with the help of four runners who have been courageous enough to share their stories, we examine some of the sensitive issues around eating disorders and running; to help you spot warning signs in yourself or someone close to you; to offer guidance on finding a way through; and to let you know that if you are suffering, you are not alone.
Extreme measures keen, dedicated and fast,
rebecca
Quinlan discovered her running talent early. After she joined her
“
I WAS CONVINCED
THAT IF
I LOST WEIGHT,
I WOULD
RUN FASTER
local club, when she was 13, her ability as a sprinter won her numerous regional honours and she reached the national championships while still in her teens. ‘I trained almost daily from an early age,’ says Rebecca. ‘I was ranked in the UK top 30 and I dreamt of becoming a professional athlete.’
Fast forward six years and Rebecca was in a much darker place. Weighing close to 5st and with a body mass index (BMI) of 11 – below 18.5 is considered underweight – her ambitions were in tatters as she struggled to walk, never mind run. ‘My eating disorder started when I was around 14,’ she recalls. ‘I was convinced that if I lost weight, I would run faster.’
When Rebecca went to university, things rapidly spun out of control. ‘I hugely cut back on what I ate,’ she says. ‘Soon, I was eating only one small meal a day, of vegetables. I was training with elite runners, so my training was incredibly intense, meaning even more weight dropped off. But rather than making me faster, the more weight I lost, the worse my running became. I could feel my athletics dream was slipping away. It got so bad that I couldn’t run at all, so, instead, I totally focused on losing weight. But after eight months at university, my body began to shut down. I was seriously ill.’
Rebecca’s flatmates were so worried they secretly contacted her parents, who were ‘horrified’ when they saw their emaciated daughter. Rebecca immediately went into intensive care, as her kidneys, liver and heart were failing. She spent most of the next three years in hospital eating-disorder units, where•