compulsive exercise

New Research: Getting Ultra Ripped May Make You Ultra Weak [The surprising downsides of our obsession with leanness - like, oh, death]

February 27, 2013
ellen

“She’s so pretty! So what is it about her that makes her so ugly? And what is up with her makeup??’ My husband isn’t usually one to comment on such things. In fact, unless you’re an after-hours clown on on your way to host a Mary Kay party, he probably won’t even notice if you’re wearing makeup or not. (Upside: He thinks I look best in my PJs and a ponytail. Downside: He thinks I look best in my PJs and a ponytail.) So when he asked, I had to look. We were watching a TV show where the main [...]

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How to Deal With Exercise Guilt: Yours, Mine and Ours

February 18, 2013
guilty-puppy

Game night at our house always opens up some interesting conversation. (“Mommy? Why is there a candlestick in Clue? How do you kill someone with a candlestick?!) And tonight was no exception. We were playing “Whoonuu?” with some friends and in case you’ve never experienced the tiddlywink awesomeness of it all, the point of the game is to guess the other players’ favorite and least favorite things from a given list. The better you are at guessing your friends’ preferences, the more you win. So imagine my surprise when it came my turn and a friend gave me a card [...]

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Tween Running Phenoms Pose an Interesting Dilemma – That All of Us Have to Answer [New Research on Workout Frequency]

February 14, 2013
welschsis

Katylynn and Heather Welsch Little hands clamped tightly over ears, wee shoulders hunched forward, tiny body taut with anticipation: the pose that Katylynn, 12, and Heather, 10, Welsch were striking made me grin because it’s very familiar to me. It’s the one Jelly Bean, 3, makes every time a public toilet gets flushed (and heaven help us if it’s an automatic flusher, red-lasered-eyed toilet demons of the unhygienic mist!). The only difference is that Katylynn and Heather were anticipating a gun shot signalling the start of a 13-mile trail race and not a whoosh so loud it may or may not disembowel [...]

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8 Tips For Overcoming an Exercise Addiction [From a girl who's living it]

November 12, 2012
DSC_0311-001

My #1 motivation for getting better and staying better: These guys. Wanting to exercise all the time: Yeah, yeah, it’s the problem everyone wishes they had. But the compulsion that drives someone to be a gym rat is hardly enviable. First, just like eating disorders aren’t about the food, compulsive over-exercising isn’t about the fitness. People used to say to me, as I walked in the gym for my second or third workout of the day, “You’re so passionate! You must really love Turbokick/Zumba/Weight lifting/Running/Acrobatics with flaming hula hoops on a high wire!” And while I did – and do [...]

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Getting Your Body Back After Pregnancy: What not to do

December 20, 2011

See – she’s fine now! Check out that core strength!! Compare Jelly Bean’s fab plank to this woman’s – this has got to be the worst “fitness” photo I’ve ever seen! (And no comment about the two binkies. We’re working on it!) I love her one boot/one plaid sandal combo. She cracks me up every single day. “Huh, we never really figured out what happened with that blip,” the doctor said lightly as she traced her finger over Jelly Bean’s growth chart at her recent 2-year checkup. She didn’t even notice my uncomfortable fidgeting as she continued, “Ah well, no [...]

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How I’m Doing With My Eating Disorder These Days [Readers' questions]

October 5, 2011

While I don’t use numbers and do not remotely condone, excuse or justify my disordered behaviors past or present, please be aware that some of the following may be triggering to certain readers. Take gentle care of yourselves; you know what you need today.  photo credit Recently I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about how I’m doing in my eating disorder recovery now. Usually people ask because they’re curious or are struggling with similar demons themselves – truly I never had any idea how prevalent disordered eating and thought patterns are until I started blogging/writing about it [...]

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Exercise as a Cure For Depression? [Research Says Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes.]

September 7, 2011

Flying or Falling? Can you have one without the other? The thing about depression is that you don’t know how bad you feel until you don’t feel bad anymore. It’s like wearing a veil that subtly shades everything in your life until you can’t remember a time when rainbows weren’t made in varying grays and when the sky didn’t feel like a weight on your shoulders. But then perchance you get better and glimpse for a moment what everyone else sees: that the sky has been inspiring men to fly since long before Icarus and Daedalus took their ill-fated flight. And [...]

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Research Says My Workout May Be To Blame For Forgetting My Son At The Gym.

July 26, 2011

See? All that exercise made her forget which way gravity works. Happens to me all the time. It turns out that Sammy Sosa and Floyd Landis may not be lying – new research says they may reallynot remember how all those drugs got in their system. Apparently all the exercise got to ‘em. For myself, not being a professional athlete, I thought my steadily declining memory was all my children’s fault. Seriously, when you have to remember the exact location of 4 sippy cups, 3 lovies, and 6 flip-flops at all times things like the periodic table and who was president [...]

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Taking Your Workout Out of the Gym [Weird Places I Exercise]

May 12, 2011

image source Embarrassing people seems to be a specialty of mine. It’s bad enough that I have publicly humiliated myself in 200 different ways doing my Experiments (and that might be low-balling it) but to take down my friends and loved ones with my antics? I can only offer them this: Dear Children who may read this 10 years down the road in a therapy session, I am sorry you have an unusual mother. It’s not your fault. Someday I hope you will be able to laugh about my quirks with each other. That’s why I had four of you. [...]

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Should You Count Calories… In Your Workouts? [Measuring workout efficacy.]

May 10, 2011

Trust me, this is one exercise video you do not want to miss! (Eurotrain!!!) *A huge thank you to everyone for your patience yesterday- as you may have noticed, my site was down for most of yesterday due to problems on my web host’s end. Thanks for all the e-mails & sympathy! We seem to be back in business now…* You’ve seen the workout program ads: in between shots of glistening, contracting abdominals and hyper smiling people who only sweat in socially acceptable places – your amped up cleavage if you are a woman, your shaved pecs if you are [...]

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