Issue #21: I was (am?) addicted to exercise

From the outside, no one could tell how unhealthy it was.

Welcome to part two of our Body Image series.

Heads up: this essay talks about weight loss and disordered exercise.

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I started working out the summer before twelfth grade. 

It had been a hard several months. I’d discovered my (definitely bad news, going nowhere fast) boyfriend had been sleeping with one of my best friends. This blew up my social circle, so I now had no boyfriend and few friends. I was headed into what was supposed to be the finale of my high school life, and I was completely and utterly miserable.

Bizarrely, the quote that kept dancing in my head was from Legally Blonde: “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy.”

I’d always hated working out, but this felt like rock bottom. My mom, who got up at 4 AM each morning to arrive at LA Fitness as soon as it opened, eagerly signed me up for a gym membership. 

With my siblings on the first day of junior year.

As you might expect, going from zero to seven workouts per week had an immediate impact on my weight. No one noticed the first five or six pounds — but I did. The effect was intoxicating. For the first time since I discovered the incriminating texts on my ex boyfriend’s phone, I was thinking about something else. Not only that… I felt kind of powerful. 

The actual experience of working out was horrible, of course. I had newfound empathy for the contestants I’d watched suffering through exercise on the Biggest Loser, understanding why they’d clutched their chests and threatened to puke. My legs would quiver as I stepped off the elliptical machine, unused to pistoning through resistance for 30 minutes straight. My breath was loud and harsh over Britney Spears pulsing in my ears.

As the weeks went on, my body adjusted to the regimen. Yet it never got easy (or even easier), because I ramped up the difficulty in proportion. If I’d managed to run at 8 mph on a Tuesday, that would be my new baseline on Wednesday. If I spontaneously went ten minutes longer, from then on 45 minutes was my default. 

By the first day of school, I’d lost 30 pounds. 

On the first day of senior year.

I was still relatively friendless. But I didn’t feel as anxious or embarrassed about that fact as I had four months ago. I was cloaked in my thinness, moving around my high school campus at a remove from everyone else.

On Friday, Jordan walked up to me. We’d hung out in middle school before drifting into separate circles; I hadn’t had a real conversation with her in years.

“Aja, you look amazing,” she cooed. “People are saying you’re not eating, but I told them you did it the hard way. I’ve seen you at the gym!” 

“Thanks,” I replied, too stunned to say anything else. 

So it was praise-worthy I’d lost weight — but only if I took the sanctioned approach. Exercise = good; dieting = bad. Got it. 

A thousand other moments calcified this logic. 

My grandparents had been enthusiastic about my weight loss; now they plied me with extra helpings at dinner. The quasi-friends I joined at lunch looked away when I brought out a singular banana. When my ex and I met up to “check in” (I know, I know), he tried to shove a piece of a chocolate chip muffin in my mouth. 

“I don’t want it!” I squirmed away. 

Senior year limped on; graduation finally arrived. By the time I arrived at college, I could run a 6:45 mile. My sneakers and workout clothes had been the first things I’d packed. 

College was four hours from home. It promised friends, a fresh start. No one knew what I’d looked like before. 

It also meant endless threats to my weight. On the first day of orientation, the junior leading my group promised us we’d sample all the local delicacies by the end of the week: decadent donuts at a shop near campus that all the students loved because it was open 24 hours, tri-tip piled high on buttered bread, oversized sandwiches with “the works” from a deli down the street. 

The tri-tip sandwich.

As he talked, I picked up my phone and set an alarm for 6 AM the next day. I’d have two hours to run, shower, and change before meeting my group in the plaza at 8. 

That night, when some girls on my floor asked if I wanted to check out the welcome week parties, I hesitantly said yes. It was college! The best years of my life! The time to let loose, make lasting friends, ply my body with booze while it was young and elastic. 

But as soon as we stepped inside the first house party, I wanted to leave. It was still early, and the room was near-empty, the vibe uninspired. “Freshmen!” a guy cheered, raising his cup in salute. I rolled my eyes. 

It was eleven. I could get six hours of sleep if I went to bed in the next hour, making my run the next day a little more bearable. Without saying a word to the other girls, I left, retracing our route back to the empty dorms. 

This was basically how college went: I was never fully there. Occasionally, I’d find the motivation to join in: go out, sign up for a club, audition for an activity… but inevitably I’d retreat back into myself. I never deviated from or relaxed my exercise routine; it was sacred. As long as I exercised, my body wouldn’t slip back into its old state. I’d be safe.

Before a half-marathon in 2015.

But being so cocooned meant no one could reach me. As you might expect, I was unbearably lonely. 

People are often surprised to learn I left California after college. “Why?!” they always say. “But the weather!”

Because 250 miles wasn’t enough. I needed 3,000: a distance too far to run. 

Despite my cross-country flight, the first day of work was eerily familiar. It felt like orientation all over again — we gave the same intros, played the same icebreakers, and made the first cautious overtures of friendship. I sensed my window of time was finite; I needed to make connections and form new patterns quickly, or I’d succumb to my old ones. 

So I said yes and kept saying it. Yes, I want to go to another bar; yes, I’d grab dinner; yes, let’s buy tickets to that show. 

Exercise was still all around the edges of the life I was building. But now, unwilling to sacrifice my burgeoning social life, I traded sleep and sanity instead. 

I woke up in the middle of the night to pound out six miles on an ancient hotel treadmill before an early flight. I got home from the bar at 1 AM and laced up my sneakers to go for a (wobbly) run. More mundane: I skipped, rearranged, and left obligations early. I ignored injuries, Googled “gym near me” innumerable times, and grew near-hysterical when my ability to exercise was threatened.

During the pandemic, I relied heavily on outdoor gyms — even when it was sub-thirty degrees.

There’s no formal diagnosis for exercise addiction. It’s characterized by “the craving of physical activity” leading to “extreme exercise that significantly interferes with important activities, occurs at inappropriate times or in inappropriate settings, or occurs despite injury or other medical complications.” Check, check, check.

There were often moments — like when I was jogging tipsily down the sidewalk, wanting nothing more than to be watching Netflix in bed, or getting on the StairMaster for a punishing hour despite angry twinges in my knees — that some part of me was yelling, Please stop. But I got so much positive validation from the people around me, who praised my commitment, athleticism, and mile splits. From the outside, they couldn’t tell how unhealthy it was. 

A year ago, I stopped working out. It wasn’t a conscious decision. One day, rather than biking fifteen miles on the Peloton, I decided to go for a walk. Walking was easy, unhurried. The air was cool and I didn’t sweat. I listened to music, then switched to a podcast. Other walkers smiled at me. I was newly attuned to the small beauty of the world around me: the curved elegance of an old-fashioned street lamp, a tiny Mary-Jane flat abandoned at the playground, my neighbor’s wisteria twining around its trellis.

The next day, I went for another walk. And the day after that, and the day after that. I didn’t dread walking the way I dreaded biking or running — on the contrary, I looked forward to it. I didn’t organize my schedule around it to get it done as soon as possible. Walking was just there, a lovely part of my existence, a chance to move my body and clear my mind.

It would be dishonest to say I’m “recovered.” I walk six to seven miles per day; it’s easy, yes, but it’s still a lot of movement. If I go a day without a walk, I’m anxious. 

Do you remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones swaps the idol for a bag of sand? As long as the weight on the pedestal is constant, the booby trap won’t go off. 

I’ve exchanged intense cardio for long walks. I can’t remove exercise completely. 

But it’s progress. 

A recent walking selfie I sent to Aliza.

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Bonus content:

As part of this series, we’re sharing some of the body image content that’s positively influenced us:

• 👟 Grateful for 365 Days of Walking by

  Alex Elle
  . Elle writes, “I am a better version of myself because of walking every single day.”

• 🥰 To those with a healthy body image, how did you get where you are today? This /AskWomen Subreddit post has some helpful responses, like “I went to a therapist who told me to find one thing I like about my body every day for a month” and “I started unfollowing anyone who made me feel insecure and followed a lot more people in different bodies (fat activists, disabled people, more BIPOC, etc.)”

And finally: the most-clicked link from Monday's roundup was this sheet-pan recipe that Aliza, Sam, and Jude love.

As always, thanks so much for reading and supporting this endeavor! We’d love to hear from you: reactions, feedback, questions?

Love,

Aja