Can I Still Exercise If I Have an Eating Disorder?

We all hear the benefits of exercise over and over again, but if you suffer from an eating disorder, you may have heard otherwise. Mixing in exercise during recovery can be a challenge, but at Nutrition Fit For You, LLC we believe that exercise can be incorporated into a healthy recovery when it is safe to do so. Whether exercise was not a part of your eating disorder, you abused exercise, or you are an athlete, we teach you how to reintroduce exercise in the healthiest way in reaching your goals, customized to you.

There are a few reasons in which your team (doctor, dietitian, therapist, etc.) might determine it is not safe to participate in exercise at a certain time in your recovery. These may include reduced weight, low heart rate, little energy intake, an unhealthy mindset around exercise, and more. All of these are red flags for clinicians that indicate an increased risk for serious complications as well as delaying your overall recovery.

Once you get to the point your team feels it is safe to reincorporate exercise, you will work with your dietitian to come up with a plan for how to slowly start back up. This may be going back gradually to a sport or just casually exercising in your own free time. It’s important to work on changing your mindset as it relates to exercise with the help of your therapist and dietitian during this stage of recovery. This work is important as it helps take your mindset from burning calories for the sake of exercising for eating disorder reasons to the love of it or the love of your sport. Once clients get to this stage, they find what types of exercise they truly enjoy rather than what their eating disorder relishes. This shift in mindset has been extremely helpful in learning to love their sport or fitness again without the guilt that is associated with lack of exercise or the way your eating disorder says you should.

So, if you are reading this and you are afraid of exercise being decreased, or all out restricted, this is your encouragement that this won’t be forever and, when you start exercising again, it will be well worth the wait. You got this!