Hey everybody, Happy Thursday!
I hope you all are having a wonderful week
and enjoying yourself!
The weather's warming up, and oh....
so hot here in California
if you're here you'll know what I'm talkin' about
but I know for those of you who don't live here
it is starting to warm up!
And that's exciting!
Summer's coming, yay!
So today's question is something I haven't talked about
probably a year or more;
and this topic is excessive exercise.
Dum da dum dum!
And, so the question says:
"I would love it if you could talk more about excessive exercise
and the need to keep on increasing it.
Why would we want to do this?
It would be helpful to hear it from your respective."
Now
The first thing I want to talk about,
is really is defining what excessive exercise is:
and I know those of you out there with an eating disorder that involves exercise
are going to hate me a little during this video.
And I don't apologise!
But, excessive exercise to me
and I know that different clinitions will have different ways of verbalising it,
but overall excessive exercise is exercise that impairs you ability to live your life.
Does that make sense?
What I mean is,
lets say I'm going to go out with friends for dinner
I haven't seen them in a while
I'm so excited.
But...
I have an extra meeting come up:
I had a call that ran over.
My sessions with my clients just ran over
somebody had an emergency one pop up
and I couldn't get my exercise in.
[GASPS]
Cue horror music:
[ KATI MIMICS HORROR MUSIC ]
And so, instead of a normal exercise, or say
"Oh that's OK, I'll work out tomorrow or whatever"
"I'll go for a walk later"
"That's fine... whatever... no biggie"
An excessive exerciser will cancel plans with their friends
to go exercise.
They will do anything to make an excuse to exercise.
And so that is what excessive is:
It impairs your ability to just live your life, and enjoy things.
Exercise is compulsory:
you have to do it;
it's not something you get to chose, or enjoy
OK?
That's just my definition: if you disagree, let me know what your definition is below.
So the question that she's asking is
why do we want to keep increasing it?
and the truth of it is that
wating disorders and OCD
they're like best buddies.
And often, in the therapy world,
err, people struggle to diagnose both separately
because they're often part of the same thing;
part of them, what we call differential diagnosis
how you decide what to diagnose someone with,
is recognising does the OCD component only apply to eating disorder behaviours
and so because, it's such a component right
it's even in the DSM, right
it is part of the eating disorder that OCD sufferers
part of the eating disorder
We don't give them a diagnosis of OCD on it's own.
Is that clear?
So, OK, we've separated those out...
So, because that is so well known to be a problem;
with eating disorders you can see this compulsion to exercise.
And the obsession that comes from our eating disorder voice
Just FYI: we all have an eating disorder voice
leads us to create bizarre calculations:
OK, well "I ate blankety blank di blank"
So I have to do blankety blank di blank.
Oh now I have to go to the birthday party,
heaven forbid, and I had a piece of cake right,
and I did something out of my regular schedule,
now I have to add on this.
and this and this.
Here comes the really screwed up part;
and why eating disorder voices are so fucking nasty
is that we can never take that back.
I've had clients who have had all these things they have to do
exercise like every day, because once you add something on,
often times you can't take it off.
and so the list of things, the number of hours just increases, increases, increases
until... it becomes excessive.
And it impairs you ability to live your life.
and so....
that's where it comes from: that little OCD part of our eating disorder;
that little nasty voice that nags us
like "get up! You're lazy/You're stupid!"
and that's why it's....
horribly annoying as it is
My first task of my free eating disorder workbook
available on my website for download whenever
if you have trouble getting it, let me know I can shoot you out an email with a PDF file of it.
Erm, I know some people have had trouble downloading it.
So, the first task in that workbook is talking back to that eating disorder voice,
and that's why I talk about it all the time because
otherwise, it keeps adding all these other things on
and we feel, in that OCD type brain
that if we don't do it, something terrible is going to happen
like "I'n gonna get fat"
Errr, usually that's the number one thing with eating disorders
it's gonna be like "I'm gonna get fat" or err
or you know "my pants aren't gonna fit"
"people are gonna think I'm lazy"
"I'm gonna think I'm lazy"
"I deserve the punishment"
Errrm
I'll try and think of other things patients have told me.
But those are all the top -- the ones I hear the most.
OK?
And so...
we're gonna have to fight back against that voice.
And trust me, we don't act out!
A couple times, right, we think about it
"OK I recognise it, it's my eating disorder voice
I'll talk back to it until that voice gets a little bit quieter,
and I don't do the exercise it told me to do"...
Then you'll slowly start to have these little "ah ha" moments where you're like:
"WOW! Nothing terrible happened!"
"I didn't get fat overnight!"
[ KATI GASPS ]
"The eating disorder has been telling me that it's going to happen forever!"
and it LIED
let me tell you that eating disorders fucking lie!
So, that's why we keep adding up and trying to exercise more
it's because it's a part of that eating disorder, always pushing us to do more.
And trust me, hear me out
Somebody should create a GIF of this:
The eating disorder will never be happy, you can never do enough.
OK?
So, please start talking back to it,
please start talking to a therapist and a dietician
we can help you so much with managing exercise
and over-exercise because
in all honesty, it's so scary
and is so hard on your body and your heart
and it just gives me all the worries.
So, please take care of yourselves, please reach out
Erm, and like I said, check out my eating disorder workbook
on my website, it's free!
And if you're new click here to subscribe,
and if you want more information about stuff like this, click over here
and I will see you next time, BYE!
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