| Excessive
Exercise Can Be Sign of Danger
By Alex Villarreal
Every day, Cat Fowler fights
a battle within herself.
She became anorexic and obsessed with exercise during her junior year of high
school.
Now recovered and a junior in college,
Fowler still struggles with her past.
“It’s not something you get over,” says Fowler. “I still
think about food a lot. I still work out a lot.”
Fowler says she worked out more and stopped
eating during stressful times.
“My body was the one thing I could
control,” explains Fowler. “I
could control how much went in. I could control how much I worked out.
It was like a way to get a hold of my life
when something else wasn't going right.”
It’s a dangerous coping mechanism.
At her lowest point, Fowler exercised
seven days a week, four hours a day.
She weighed 105 pounds, 25 pounds below
the minimum healthy weight for her
5’8 ½” frame.
Doctors told her if she did not stop
punishing her body with exercise,
she would have osteoporosis by age 20.
“Your body's hurting, and it will tell you eventually, because my body
told me," says Fowler.
Fowler is one of a growing number of
people who exercise compulsively, a
behavior associated with anorexia.
Anorexia affects one-half to one percent
of Americans.
Dr. Cynthia Bulik, Jordan Distinguished
Professor of Eating Disorders and Director
of the UNC Eating Disorders Program,
says people
who suffer from
the excessive
exercise trait of anorexia are psychologically similar.
"People who are excessive exercisers,
they seem to have a cluster of personality
characteristics and what we see mostly
is perfectionism and obsession," notes
Bulik.
Fowler says her obsession with exercise
began to interfere with her life. It
remains a large part of her routine even
now. She encourages others like her to
be honest with themselves and
everyone else.
“Don’t be ashamed of it,” assures Fowler. “I'm certainly
not. You honestly never think it will happen to you, but
if it does, it's okay. And the important thing is to respect yourself.”
Anorexia has the highest mortality rate
of any psychological illness.
People with the disorder are twelve times
more like to die than others their
age.
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