Body image be damned. A recovering anorexic hopes to make purpose-driven exercise part of healthy eating-disorder recovery.
By Jennifer Olson
Tara Tully wasn’t always a healthy ultra-marathon runner and competitive Muay Thai boxer. For fifteen years, she struggled with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that affects as many as three percent of teens, 90 percent of them female. Tully’s competitive spirit may have originally contributed to her affliction, but it also ultimately helped her overcome it. Staying fit so that her performance as an athlete didn’t suffer was a major motivating factor in her recovery, and it’s still a major factor in her healthy lifestyle. This year, as an exclamation point to her personal success, she is launching REALme Life Training, a treatment program that offers eating-disorder therapy and treatment programs for girls who walk the line between athlete and anorexic. Girls who, like Tully, want to come out winning.
“My own journey with eating disorder recovery led me to get involved developing a recovery process that’s more holistic,” says Tully. In her case, a sporty lifestyle actually aided her recovery, but standard eating-disorder treatments discourage physical activity because compulsive exercise is often (continued from previous page) part of the disease. “Exercise is used as a purge and it is part of the disorder itself,” explains Therese Ida, a registered dietitian from a Colorado-based treatment facility. “The harder it is to give it up, the more likely it is that it’s part of the eating disorder.”
Another concern that keeps most therapists from incorporating sports during eating-disorder recovery: hyper-metabolism. When an underweight person starts eating, her body burns up everything. “For most people in treatment for eating disorders, it’s difficult to get ahead of caloric requirements necessary to gain weight.”
Always athletic, Tully balked at treatments that restricted her training. In her case, and in the case of others she’s hoping to help through REALme, Tully’s identity as an athlete was one of the healthiest aspects of her life, a stress-reliever that made her feel strong, powerful, and healthy. That wasn’t something she wanted to give up on her road to recovery.
Tully realized that in order to perform and reach her goals-like her first marathon in 2006-she’d have to give her body the fuel that it needed. “That was a pivotal realization for me,” she says. She worked with therapists who researched sports as healthy alternatives to eating-disordered behavior and who eventually allowed activity. Exercise advanced her objective from weight loss to wellness and the positive body image that reversed her eating-disordered perspective.
As Tully’s strength grew her disorder behaviors faded, her eating habits improved, and she’s stronger than ever: she has finished 10 marathons and 11 ultra-marathons, and her goal for this year is to complete seven ultra runs. “I’ve learned to take things as they come and be unafraid to move forward with ideas,” she said, a leap she’s taken to a new level with REALme Life Training-which is well on its way to taking off.
The program’s objective is to combine movement with traditional psychotherapy and help women with eating disorders redefine beautiful and normal, and let go of identifying personal worth in terms of “fat” or “thin.” Tully believes treatment providers can better empower people suffering from anorexia and bulimia to change by evaluating their contexts, approaching treatment holistically, and eliminating body size as a measure of social value.
At the base of her program is an eating disorder treatment model that includes a medical support team (a dietitian, a therapist, and a doctor) along with a structured community for developing coping skills necessary to overcome the challenges of recovery. Tully’s model also focuses on education and integrating skills like learning about healthy interactions and relationships, but without the price tag of an inpatient facility which might run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
According to Ida, the benefits of inpatient treatment are valid and resting in an inpatient facility allows anorexics to regain muscle mass. “Someone who weighs 70-80 percent of her ideal body weight will metabolize her own muscle mass if she exercises,” she says. Ida qualifies that standard by adding that, if a patient weighs 90 percent of their ideal body weight and has motivations to exercise that don’t involve weight control, moderate exercise can be part of a healthy lifestyle. “If you can get ahead of the eating-disordered way of thinking,” says Ida, “then exercise can be healthy.”
Tully’s hope is to illuminate the distinguishing differences between purposeful and compulsive physical activity. “If exercise helps increase the patient’s awareness, build healthy muscle, and advance her recovery, then it can be healthy,” Tully says, and Ida agrees.
Tully’s own recovery will always be a work in progress, but shes been able to separate her running from her eating disorder. “In my case, being able to continue my sport was more important than continuing with my eating-disordered behavior,” she said. Ultimately, Tully hopes REALme Life Training will provide women like her with effective, affordable, and maintained support saying: “You fall down a lot in recovery, but if you fall 999 times and get up 1000 times, you’re still winning.”
Photo credit: Brian Beckstead Fighting depression is one way to stave-off the onset of an eating disorder: according to the American Journal of Psychiatry, almost 50% of people with eating disorders meet the criteria for that disease. Fight back with these depression-fighting habits: Eat right, get enough sleep, exercise regularly, build a support network, and seek professional help. Eating Disorders Anonymous groups meet to support people with eating disorders and their friends and family. Look for a group in your area at eatingdisordersanonymous.org
How you can help in…
…1 Hour
Educate yourself to recognize signs and symptoms of eating disorders among your friends and family. Gürze Books specializes in resources and information for awareness and recovery of a wide range of eating and other body-image disorders. bulimia.com
…1 Day
April 12, 2011 is the first-ever Lobbying Day for the Eating Disorders Coalition. Show your support leading up to the event with a letter-writing and phone call campaign targeted at your Congressional representatives. Encourage them to consider the Federal Response to Eliminating Eating Disorders Act. eatingdisorderscoalition.org
…1 Week
Participate in a National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) walk. A week’s worth of fund raising will put you among the top contributors and on the day-of, you’ll mingle with others from the community of survivors and supporters. Upcoming walks are scheduled in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, and California. nationaleatingdisorders.org
…1 Year
Host a Dressing Room Project workshop for girls in your city. In a partnership with the Emerging Women Projects, you can help redefine teenage girls’ definitions of beautiful. At the workshop, participants create stickers with positive body-image messages to post in public restrooms and changing rooms. thedressingroomproject.org
