Exercise Bulimia: The Hidden Danger of Wellness Culture
Exercise bulimia is just another harmful side effect of wellness culture that’s become normalized. Like all things in diet and wellness culture, the messages that support harmful habits often sound like motivation or inspiration when really, they can (and do) lead to compulsive health behaviors tendencies.
Exercise bulimia is one of those behaviors that can be incredibly harmful if gone unchecked. I experienced exercise bulimia in my early- to mid-20’s. I was steeped in diet culture, forced myself to get up early 5 days a week to workout, and was even a personal trainer. If I missed a workout, I was anxious and stressed, constantly checking my reflection to see if I’d gained weight from missing the workout.
The thing is, no one would have said I had exercise bulimia or any issue at all. I was always the “healthy” one in my friend group. I was a personal trainer—of course I worked out a lot and “watched what I ate.” Sadly, it wasn’t “healthy” and my journey with disordered eating would continue to escalate for another 5+ years.
When I finally committed to eating disorder recovery with 1:1 support, I took time off from working out. After a few months, I felt my body craving movement, but it needed to be different—mindful and gentle. Soon, I found a new connection with movement that I’d never known before. You can learn more about my transformation in this blog post, The Surprising Pilates Transformation of a Former Personal Trainer.
I share my story to give you hope—you can get off that exhausting hamster wheel (which is how it felt to me!).
If you’re ready to find a healthier relationship with your body and movement, here’s what you need to know about what exercise bulimia is, the link between it and wellness culture, and signs that it’s time to ask for help.
What is Exercise Bulimia?
Exercise bulimia is a behavioral compulsion that’s characterized by a relentless adherence to a fitness routine. This is often paired with a perceived inability to stop exercising, even at the risk of harm or injury. Around 32 to 80 percent of adults who suffer from an eating disorder also meet the criteria for exercise bulimia, according to The Journal of Eating Disorders.
Those with exercise bulimia use fitness as a means to purge calories from their bodies, control their weight, or compensate for food intake. While this might seem like an extreme response, it’s actually quite common. According to another recent study in The Journal of Eating Disorders, 75 percent of fitness center employees have encountered a client who works out compulsively.
The Link Between Exercise Bulimia and Wellness Culture
Wellness culture is alive and well—and getting more and more dangerous as it continues to normalize harmful behaviors. What’s worse, eating “right” and exercising have been associated with moral virtue and all of this is constantly pushed on us in the form of media, modern culture and social media.
According to the BMC Public Health Journal, more than 100 million posts on Instagram contain the hashtag #fitspiration, and nearly two-thirds of the top 100 fitness influencers share content that normalizes unrealistic bodies or unhealthy exercise behaviors.
Even worse, those who consume fitspiration social media posts are more likely to internalize the belief that only toned or thin bodies can be healthy, according to the BMC Public Health Journal continues. What’s more, social media’s view of wellness can be linked to anxiety, shame, distress, or self-consciousness around how you look.
When your self-worth predicates on external appearance, it starts to feel normal to use compensatory behaviors to purge calories and control your weight, shape, or size. This easily leads to disordered eating or a diagnosable eating disorder. The results of that include malnutrition, serious injuries, chronic fatigue, impaired muscle function, and severe mental health issues.
Signs and Symptoms of Exercise Bulimia
Since compulsive exercise is not a typical purge-like habit (i.e. vomiting or laxative abuse), it’s often overlooked, according to the Eating and Weight Disorders Journal. In fact, many healthcare professionals omit it from the official list of “unhealthy weight-control behaviors.”
This can make exercise bulimia hard to spot—much less, diagnose—but if any of the red flags below sound familiar to you, it may be time to ask for help:
Refusal to miss a workout or deviate from a specific fitness routine
Urge to exercise immediately after a meal to eliminate the food
Withdrawal from career, personal, or social activities in order to exercise
Using exercise to numb out from painful or uncomfortable emotions
Inability to focus on other tasks until your workout is finished
Forcing yourself to exercise through soreness, injuries, sickness, or exhaustion
Noticeable weight change, chronic pain, and other overtraining consequences
Viewing fitness only as a means to burn calories or maintain a certain physique
Fixation with steps, miles, intensity, duration, repetitions, and other metrics
Doing a workout routine without the right nutrients, sleep, or hydration
Never taking a “rest day” or allowing your muscles to recover
Feeling anxious, irritable, ashamed, or restless if you cannot exercise
Lack of interest in other recreational hobbies that you used to have fun with
The Physical and Mental Complications of Exercise Bulimia
A team of researchers at Anglia Ruskin University found that some individuals with exercise bulimia think their lives will become “unbearable” without fitness. This mindset can lead to many dangerous physical and mental health ramifications, according to the Bulimia Project, including:
Joint, bone, or muscle overuse injuries like sprains and stress fractures
Loss of menstrual cycle (amenorrhea) in pre-menopausal women
Abnormal fatigue and low performance during exercise
Frequent respiratory infections or weakened immune function
Acute or chronic tendinitis—a painful inflammation of the tendons
Cardiovascular issues like heart arrhythmias and other irregularities
Dehydration, malnourishment, or electrolyte imbalances
Chronic joint pain, arthritis, bone density loss, or osteoporosis
Infertility and other reproductive health complications
Gastrointestinal issues like abdominal pain, bloating, or acid reflux
Depression, anxiety, social isolation, perfectionism, and low self-esteem
You Don’t Have to Suffer from Exercise Bulimia—Recovery Is Possible
If you want to cultivate a more balanced relationship with exercise and release yourself from the harmful messages of wellness culture, please know that healing is within reach. You can start with practical measures, such as limiting your social media consumption to tune out unhealthy fitspiration influences or reclaiming movement as a source of freedom and playfulness instead of control and compulsion. But there’s no shame in asking for help, too.
At Project HEAL, we remove the barriers to eating disorder healing, so that everyone can access these potentially life-saving resources. Our programs make it easier to find the right level of care, regardless of your financial situation and insurance coverage (or lack thereof). When at all possible, we can also help match you with clinicians who affirm your race, gender, culture, body size, sexual orientation, physical abilities, and other identities.
Exercise bulimia can feel impossible to overcome when it’s taken control of your life, but it’s not impossible—and you don’t have to navigate the journey alone. Real wellness has nothing to do with the number of miles you run or the shape of your thighs in the mirror. It’s about caring for yourself with activities, nourishment, and connections that make you feel alive from the inside out.
