Fit or Fanatic? An Elite Runner Discusses When Determination, Perseverance, and Willpower Go Wrong

In this episode of Becoming Recovered: Body and Soul, Carolyn Costin sits down with Rachael Steil, author of Running in Silence and founder of the organization by the same name, to explore the complicated intersection of athletics, eating disorders, compulsive exercise, and recovery.

Rachael shares her personal experience as a competitive runner, including how disciplined training and a desire to improve gradually became entangled with food restriction, calorie counting, body image concerns, binge eating, and secrecy. Together, she and Carolyn discuss why eating disorders can be especially difficult to recognize in athletes, particularly when harmful behaviors are praised as dedication, discipline, or commitment to the sport.

They explore warning signs that coaches, parents, teammates, and athletes themselves may overlook, from fatigue and withdrawal to missed periods, underfueling, rigid eating habits, and an unhealthy relationship with exercise. The conversation also examines RED-S, perfectionism, appearance-based pressure, and the culture of pushing through pain at all costs.

Rachael reflects on what ultimately supported her recovery, including therapy, working with a registered dietitian, and learning to listen to and strengthen her healthy self. Carolyn and Rachael also discuss how coaches and schools can better recognize eating disorders, respond with compassion, and create systems that support athletes before they reach a crisis point.

ABOUT RACHAEL:

Rachael Steil (pronounced "Style") is an author, cross country and track coach, and nationally recognized speaker. Her book, Running in Silence, details her experience with an eating disorder as an NAIA All-American runner, and challenges the stigma surrounding eating disorders, looks past appearance, and dives into the heart of obsession.

Steil was awarded the 2021 Aquinas College Outstanding Young Alumni and the 2025 Kirsten Haglund Foundation Advocacy awards for her work in founding the non-profit Running in Silence. She has presented at schools and conferences nationwide, sharing honest, inspirational stories from her time as an athlete to empower the athletic community to address disordered eating in sports.

Steil has appeared on The Dr. Nandi Show, WGVU’s Family Health Matters, Vogue, U.S. News & World Report, and Women’s Running, and has written for Runner’s World and Techniques magazine.

Rachael's website: https://runninginsilence.org/
Rachael's book: https://runninginsilence.org/cart/

Thank you for listening. Please take a minute to review our helpful links and resources below.

Important Links:

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RECEIVE 20% OFF your purchase of the 8 Keys to Recovering from an Eating Disorder (book).

Recovery Resources and Support:

The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA)

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National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD)

Carolyn's Bio: 

Carolyn Costin is a world-renowned eating disorder clinician, author, and speaker. Recovered from anorexia, she pioneered the belief that full recovery is possible. Founder of Monte Nido, she transformed treatment with a holistic, home-based model. She later founded the Carolyn Costin Institute, training coaches and clinicians worldwide. She has authored six books, ...

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Becoming Recovered, Body and Soul, a podcast not only for individuals struggling with eating disorders and body image issues, but for loved ones and professionals trying to help them. I'm Carolyn Coston. I recovered from an eating disorder in my teens and have spent the last few decades helping countless others do the same. But this podcast is about bringing in the real experts. People from all walks of life who, like me, became recovered themselves. They will be here to provide insights, discuss their journey, and inspire you on yours. This podcast is intended for educational purposes only and is not a replacement for professional therapy or treatment. Please understand that we mostly avoid what might be unnecessarily triggering content, but this is a real show about the reality of eating disorders and recovery. So there is a chance something might be personally triggering. If you're struggling, please reach out to a qualified provider for support. You can also check our resource list. Welcome everyone to becoming recovered, body and soul. And today we're going to talk about when exercise and eating disorders collide. I'll start with the quote for the day movement should be a gift you give your body, not a punishment you demand from it. And being strong does not just mean pushing your body, it means listening to it. And feeding your body should not be based on whether or not you've earned it, but simply because it is your home. My own recovery from anorexia or nervosa led me through a journey that included a serious exercise addiction. I loved running. And uh when I started to gain weight and recovered from anorexia, I pretty much just turned my obsession from calorie restriction to an obsession with running and exercise really in general. Our culture pressures people, specifically females, but males are included too, to exercise or move their bodies specifically to change their weight and shape. If you ask young girls, and there's been studies that show this, uh, why they're exercising, a high percentage, sometimes around 50%, don't even mention health at all. As an eating disorder therapist, I've seen countless bedraggled women, tired, exhausted, uh, walk into my office far from the radiant glow of health, all of them exercising without consuming enough food or letting their bodies rest and getting praised by others for their 10-mile run they had or their 10-point score. One young girl, 17-year-old girl I was treating for anorexia and nervosa, was about to discharge my program. And she was, this is such an interesting story. She was pleading with me and her parents that she wanted to go back to the gym and she wanted to start running again. And I told her she needed to be healthier, she needed to gain some weight first. Instead, her parents let her go to the gym the day after she discharged from the program, and there was a contest going on at the gym for who had the lowest body fat. There was a contest for men and for women. And my client at 9% body fat won the blue ribbon and came to her session the next time with me holding this ribbon and saying, you know, uh, you say I'm unhealthy, and here I am winning this ribbon from the gym. So mixed messages. We're gonna talk about how that happens so much in sports and how some sports are actually pretty much often based a lot on appearance. And I'm gonna talk today, I'm gonna introduce you today to someone who has had this experience, recovered from an eating disorder, and she's a runner. And and and she's I hope I get this right. She's a national champion. She now is a track and and cross-country coach. And uh so anyway, I'll talk a little bit more about her in a minute. She helps other people, other athletes particularly, and and people who are training athletes to spread awareness and education and help people prevent, hopefully, the ordeal that she had to go through. So, Rachel Steil, my guest today, thank you so much for being here. And we only met recently, and I learned about your story, and I know you're out there trying to spread awareness for this collision between, especially athletes, but not just athletes, people who exercise and get into bad habits that go from disordered eating all the way to eating disorder. So um tell them a little bit more about yourself. You have a book, you have an organization running in silence. Tell a little bit about your story and what you're doing now, and then I'll ask you some other questions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yeah. Well, thank you, first of all, so much for hosting me. And it's been wonderful being able to meet you. We met at the Kirsten Hagland Foundation where you received your award and um got to know you and your work a little more after hearing and reading about it over a period of years. So thank you for all the work that you're doing. I was a high schooler who was concerned about how my body appeared as a young girl. I heard comments from other people like a babysitter about my large stomach. And it was just like, you know, a little bit, I had a little tummy, and there was no concerns about my weight really, but I internalized those comments. And so they always stuck with me. But I was also a runner. I started running when I was five years old and just loved it, like loved the discipline and hard work that it took, you know, to have results because you had that discipline and put in the work. And then by high school, I started comparing myself a little bit to my teammates, and it did not take over my day. It was not a full-blown eating disorder at that point. It was just like, uh, I'm not totally in love with my body, but I love to run and I'm running well, and this is fun. But by my senior year, I started comparing my body to my sister who was losing weight because she was pursuing modeling. And anytime. Yeah. Anytime we hear about modeling, you start to think, oh, you know, eating disorders, trying to lose weight, and um, people making comments about her body. So she did lose a little bit of weight. And I thought, oh, maybe what I'm doing with running isn't helping. Maybe it's all about food. And so I started trying to control my food more and I was counting calories. And when I initially lost weight, my running performances improved for a small amount of time. So I thought that was the secret to success. And my eating disorder really became entwined with intertwined with running. And those it was just a horrible mix there over the next few years because I had defined myself so much with running, and now food came into the picture and exercise and this sense of control that I thought I had and led to having an eating disorder and just destroying my love of running and the pursuit of success.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Well, uh, let me ask you something about why do you think it is? And I have my own thoughts about this. I actually wrote um a chapter in a book called Your Dieting Daughter called Fit or Fanatic. And I talk a little bit in there about the kinds of qualities that athletes have that people who have eating disorders have. And there's this sort of list of qualities you mentioned in your in your subtitle, you talk about perfection, you know? Yeah. Sort of this drive for perfection. What do you think are some of the qualities that you had as an athlete that also helped drive an eating disorder?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah, well, I mentioned discipline. I had a whole schedule every single day, and it was the same with so many other things in my life with my homework. I was a straight A student, and I wanted to pursue excellence. So with discipline, it was good to have those habits and the discipline to do those habits because it did make me a good runner. But when the discipline got so intense where I was trying to make everything perfect, that's where things started to go off into the deep end. I also focused so much on willpower. And later I would learn from my dietitian how that wasn't necessarily something you can continue to, it's not like a character trait. Um, you can know you can harness only so much willpower for some time, but your body gets tired. And I've gained so much more respect for my body, having learned some of that. But, you know, some of those things within certain amounts, like discipline, can contribute to sports success. It's when it goes too far and it starts negatively impacting so many other parts of your life where it's time to take a better look at what's actually going on.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Well, that's why it's a slippery slope, you know, um going from something where, you know, too much, too much of a good thing can be bad. So it's really about balance. And one of the things that I talk about a lot is how we have these traits and they can work for us or against us, you know, like being driven and you know, the kinds of things like the self-discipline you said, that you willpower, you know, the things that you need to be a good athlete. I always remember growing up, and I don't know if they do this a lot, but that no pain, no gain. And and we've had to take a look at athletics. It's not just in runners, it's all kinds of sports, you know, in in dancers and wrestlers and and male jockeys, and you know, it's these striving to reach something and being able to do something that other people can't do. And so you went through quite a journey. I read the book. What I really like about it is, first of all, your honesty, the integrity you had of coming out, you first came out, you know, uh blogging about it. But it took a lot. It took a lot for you to do that. So I guess talk a little bit about. I think the it would be really good for viewers to know some of the sort of stages you went through and what you think really helps kind of get it. And you have a few things that you said that made a difference in terms of of turning you around. So anyway, any of those things.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah, well, I mentioned initially when I lost some weight, my performances improved. And that can be a really tough thing for very dedicated athletes. They think that there's, you know, the secret to success or doing something, manipulating their food to help them be better athletes. But really, I mean, I lost my period, which will contribute to bone density issues over time. Um, and that wasn't a huge red flag to my doctor at the time. A lot of people, I mean, you'll hear stories of people telling their doctors they've lost their period like 10 plus years ago. And it was like, oh, well, you're an athlete. So a lot of excuses made. And everyone else on the team has lost theirs too. Right. Yeah. Right. And eating healthy, everyone thought, oh, well, she just wants to be a really good runner. And I made that excuse as well, especially when I was pursuing what was called a raw food diet. Um, I do not recommend this, but it was something I came across and I thought it would help me to be a successful runner. And I thought it would also fix this, what I thought was a broken appetite. I thought there was something wrong with how hungry I was, even though I was running many miles a day. I was comparing myself to other people. And so I tried to fix something that wasn't really broken in the first place, except maybe the rules and regulations I started to put on myself. Yeah, I love that you say that. Yeah. So I started this diet after already being really restrictive with my food, trying to fix myself. And that eventually led to a lot of binge eating. And I didn't think athletes really struggled with binge eating, so I felt even more alone. And I that made me just be more silent about my issues. I was literally running in silence. And as I gained some weight, um, it was unintentional weight. I wasn't working with a professional or anything. It was partially with the binge eating. I just felt so ashamed and I felt like my discipline and willpower were going out of control. And as an athlete, that's a really scary thing. And I didn't understand what was happening with my body. So over time, I eventually told my mom about what was going on. And I first told her through an email because I was so scared to say it out loud, to tell her in person. And I even downplayed it in my email. I was like, you know, it's not that bad. Like I just, you know, I've been struggling, but now I'm going to fix it with more diets.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

You know, I say a lot uh about people with eating disorders that they're often not completely in denial there's a problem, but they're often in denial about how bad it really is. Because you you often think, oh, I can get out of this. You know, I'm gonna the next diet I find is gonna change it and make it better. And that was an interesting part of your book, all the different things you tried. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

And I was always someone who was like, I'm never going to diet. Like athletes don't diet. But there's a way of some of these diets that are out there that are can be very convincing when people stumble across them and they're already struggling with food. And this diet promoted, like, this isn't a diet, it's a lifestyle. Like you're just manipulating your macronutrients and you know, you're just trying to be healthy, you know. And my idea of a diet was, oh, well, you're only eating certain foods in small amounts, and I thought it was different. So yeah, I told my mom about what was going on. And as you probably read in the book, that first conversation didn't go very well. But luckily, she did eventually offer to get me professional help and support. And unfortunately, I refused it because I thought it wasn't that bad. I'm an athlete, I'll fix this myself. And I was embarrassed. Like I didn't want anyone to hear me say, Oh, I possibly have an eating disorder. If they looked at me and I looked like I was at a normal weight and I was competing. So eventually I did get help, and that was a game changer for me. It didn't mean I was suddenly recovered overnight. I thought I was going to go to a therapist for like a month and be better because I, again, thought it wasn't that bad. And it ended up being multiple years and eventually working with a dietitian who was a huge part of my recovery process and helping me to understand all these dieting things that I was doing wasn't helping me. It was making things even worse. And yeah, I learned the value of actually getting the correct information from experts, like a registered dietitian, not an online health guru.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Which you had many along your path. Many. Let me stop you for a second because there's so many things you said I want to talk about. Let me just think where. Okay, one, the idea that um, and this was a really interesting quote in your book, and I I don't know if I can find it. I wrote a couple of your quotes, but it was about how if people look at your body and they don't see it, because the people that would they would be concerned about is maybe someone who's, you know, a stick-thin figure, then they maybe they would be concerned about it. So that's sort of the hidden shadow of eating disorders. But also there are people with eating disorders. I think it's more recognized in sports now, and we'll talk to that in a bit in a minute, because you're trying to help with that. But there are people when when I was younger, right before I opened my clinics, actually, my residential programs, there was a, I don't know if you remember this at all. Uh, there was a gymnast. I think her name was Chrissy Heinrich. And it goes to something else you said about someone making a comment about your body. An Olympic coach told her, um, I think she was about 4'11 and 90 pounds. And a coach told her, if you if you don't lose weight, you're never going to make the Olympic team. And she died a few years later at something like 52 pounds. And people watched her getting thinner, you know. So sometimes even when they see you getting thinner, they don't do anything about it. But these ways that we get triggered into it, and these ways I think we've gotten better maybe at identifying the people who become emaciated, but I don't know how well we've gotten at identifying people who it's not visible on the outside. So can you say anything about how you help coaches? You know, I know you speak at schools and conferences, and how you help them identify when their athletes might be having a problem. Or do you speak directly to the athletes themselves too?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I do both. So I love speaking to coaches as a high school and cross-country coach myself. I see how much coaches have on their plates. Like it's a lot. And we also aren't certified on a bunch of things. Like we have to take concussion trainings, but there's no mandatory trainings for something like eating disorders, which is even more prevalent, but has very similar long-term consequences like concussions. And concussions are incredibly important. We need those trainings, but there's so much more that coaches don't get enough information to be able to best help their athletes. So, yes, I speak to coaches and share my story, but through the story, talk about how behaviors are important to look for. Because I, you know, have photos of myself where I'm at all different weights. And I emphasize it's not about looking for an athlete who's lost weight, although they may, and they may not gain or lose weight at all. Like they, it's all a mental illness. And that's part why on the cover of my book, it's a picture of my head. It's happening in my head. And it can affect people in so many other ways, but looking for behaviors like maybe the athlete isn't coming to team dinners that are being hosted. Maybe the athlete is very withdrawn. They don't seem as energetic, they're not performing as well in their workouts. Um, they may be going um starting a diet like I was. I I told my coach that I was starting a diet and told him it was to be a better runner. That should have been a red flag. But again, coaches aren't always given this kind of information. So, yeah, it's it's a lot about the behaviors. Again, physical symptoms can appear, but we don't want to just focus on those.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

And you know, I think the thing you talked about in terms of losing your period and and how it become becomes so common in sports, or anyone who's out there, you know, exercising and restricting their diet. We used to call it the female athlete triad, but now uh amenrhea, osteoporosis, and the food restriction. But now there's something called reds. Yes. Um, have you heard that? And and I think it was uh changed to include males because males get this also, but they're obviously not losing their period. But but it it is um a serious thing to consider uh because all what does it stand for? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, it's relative energy deficiency in sport. And it shows how underfueling can affect all systems of the body, not just fertility and bone um health. It's also cardiovascular. Uh, and for men, it can affect their testosterone. That's not spoken out about a lot because, like you said, it's periods for women.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

And then bone density, because when the women lose their estrogen, like I've had some 20-year-old girls with the bone density of a 65 or even one with an 80. 80, you know, the doctor said her bones look like an 80-year-old woman. Yeah. And males were left out of that for a long time, that discussion. So is that something that is brought into athletic directors or their, you know what I mean? This kind of talk? Or are you out there fighting against an up an uphill battle?

SPEAKER_00 21:11

It's an uphill battle. I think mental health as a topic is coming to the forefront more, which is a great start. But I think when we say eating disorders, it scares people a little. But this is a real thing that is happening and it's directly affecting athletes. You know, athletes are at an eight times higher risk of injury and higher risks of suicides. Like these are really dangerous situations. So we need to be talking about this.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

And I remember you said they have a higher rate of eating disorders than the general uh population. Isn't that true? Correct. Something like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah, 13.5% of all athletes, that includes men and women of any sport, can struggle with eating disorders. And it's different with each sport, but there's not enough statistics and information yet because we haven't done enough studies, although there are more coming out. But yeah, this is something that should be on the radar for athletic directors. It's not something to just put off to the coaches to learn. Um, athletic directors should be in the know, and schools as a whole should have like eating disorder protocols, just like they would for concussions. You need to have an action plan to know how to address eating disorders because they are going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yeah, they're there, whether you know it or not. Yes. I like you're making the comparison to concussions because it took a long time for people to take that seriously in sports, and now they do. So when you say that, it's an immediate visceral effect I have when you when you make the comparison. I'd like to go back to you personally, because I want the viewers, listeners who may be struggling, you know, and and people who are trying to help them, um, what are some things I often find that first of all, during the journey, there's many times when you think there you think there's things you absolutely can't do, and then you find out that you can. Can you think of any of those that happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Well, first, I was I thought I could never gain weight, I wouldn't be able to handle it. And just going through that and realizing, oh, well, it's not that bad. Like this is okay. And I was going through this is a good one. This is a good one to talk about. Yeah. When I was with my therapist and my dietitian, who my dietitian ended up weighing me instead of me weighing myself, which I think was helpful. Um, I just needed someone to record the weight, and it helped, yeah, me refrain from doing it myself.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

I'm so glad you said that.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Thank you. I didn't know what you were gonna say about this, but I'm so glad you said that because I always weigh people with their back to the scale. There's different philosophies about this, but I just say, let me take it, you know. I don't say don't worry about it at all, because that's too far to make a leap when someone just says, I'll tell you if it's going out of control, I'll tell you if there's a problem, but I wean them off of weighing themselves. So that's such a good uh uh piece of learning that you put out there.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, I thought my whole world would crumble if I gained weight, and it didn't. I found so much more of who I was beyond what I weighed or what I was eating, and who I was beyond my sport. That was another thing I thought I could never live without running. Who would I be? And that was a huge problem. That's what kept me so tied to the eating disorder, too. So figuring out who I was beyond running was a huge part of the recovery process as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

And you realize some people, I don't know if you had this, but some people also have um, I don't know, their identity gets wrapped up also in their weight loss or their eating disorder. You know, I don't I I thought to myself, who am I gonna be without this? And I realized I just get to be me without this, you know. Yeah, well it's interesting about the sport too. Who am I gonna be?

SPEAKER_00 24:57

And I loved when I was recovering and unintentionally gaining weight, I did not like it. But people would say, like, wow, Rachel, you're smiling, like you seem so happy. And that was the biggest compliment. Um, because some people would say, like, oh, it looks like you got more meat on you, you look good. I'm like, I don't need that. But when people said I looked happy, that just made me happier. And also like, oh, it's working to like find myself beyond running and develop relationships with my friends and see what other things I could be good at or even bad at. Like I needed to fail at some other things to see who I was beyond my sport and beyond the eating disorder.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

So I'm gonna ask you about some other things that I know that you wrote about a bit uh that that helped turn you around. One is being able to tell the truth, first to yourself, I think, but also to your friends and listening to some of their truths.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

So talk about that. Yeah. Um so I first started sharing about my eating disorder on the website runningandsilence.org. And I was so scared, but I had taken a lot of writing classes in college because I wanted to write a book about running someday. I just didn't know it'd be about an eating disorder and running. And I remember a quote in the class talking about like, if you write your truth, it's so much more interesting to read. And I did find that as a reader myself, I was always seeking books where people were very honest. And my best writing pieces came from that kind of honesty. And I saw that the more honest I was, the more relatable I was as well. So I think I just became a better person through it.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I don't know if that fully answers your question, but yeah, I mean, I just noticed I was looking for when your turnarounds happened and being really honest and starting that blog, even though at first you wrote it as oh, the the things I did in the past, but then as you saw people responding to that, how people respond to your vulnerability, how people respond to your honesty. And I'm always trying to teach my clients that too. Vulnerability is not a weakness, it's a strength, you know, when you when you put those things out there. Another interesting thing you talked about was grieving. Do you remember that that piece? And I find that's something I have to help clients with. So can you talk about that? You wrote about it really nicely.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah, I had to grieve the runner I was before. I had to grieve the smaller-bodied runner that I thought was the key to success because I I liked pieces of the eating disorder, but I clearly saw it wasn't serving me over time. But I would still reflect back on where I was before. And I just it was a grieving process. It felt like a piece of me had died. And the only way to move forward and to truly be in love with my sport was to be okay with my body wherever it was at and whatever my performances were, and that helped me through the grieving process a little. I talk about breaking the scale in my book, and yeah, that was my next question.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah. I've had smell bashing parties with clients before.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Yeah, yeah, it it is so tough thinking back to the grieving process, and it's hard to explain to people because it's like no one died, but a piece of me died, and it was a good thing because I needed to see the Rachel beyond all of this. And the scale was a huge part of that because it almost signified, like, okay, I have to be done trying to go back to where I was before. That that person did not serve me, didn't serve other people. I can do so much more with my life. And getting on a scale day after day and basing my sense of worth and happiness on how fast I'm running is not worth all of this.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Yeah, it's you know, standing on this lifeless piece of metal. Am I good enough today? Am I a bad person? You know, uh measuring success by that. I I did the same thing. So I'm a big advocate for just get rid of it. Even when I go to the doctor's office nowadays, I just say, take my blood, take my urine, listen to my heart, do all that. No, I don't need to get on a scale. You know, that's not gonna tell you anything about my health, you know. Right. It's so, it's so interesting. Also, there's a part in your book, there's this these excerpts you have in your book where you write about the the voice, you know. And I don't know if you know much about my philosophy of eating disorder self, healthy self. Do you know about that? A little bit, yes. So I believe that we have to get in there and strengthen the person's healthy self, and it's that part that heals them. And I want to read you something from you you wrote in your book where you the voice was saying to you, just eat less, and then you you sort of talk back. I don't want to eat less. And then it says, You don't want to run fast, and you say, I do, but I don't want to be hungry. I did that already, and I don't like it anymore. I don't like this game. And then the voice says, You don't like success, and you end with the healthy part of you saying, I do, but at what expense?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

That to me, that dialogue is what I try to bring out in people, but you somehow you recognize that you had those two parts in there and you started listening.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

And there's a few other ones, I think, that you I don't remember all of them, but there's a few others where you're listening to that part and it it it wakes you up a bit, I think. It's like you wouldn't you wouldn't treat anybody else or tell any of your teammates to do to themselves what you were doing to yourself. So you had a healthy self in there. It was just hard to bring it out for you for you.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Yeah, and I think that's what I discovered through working with my therapist too, that I could be happy without running and without the eating disorder, because for so long I felt like I needed those things to be successful, and that success defined my worth as a person. And so seeing Rachel, myself, as more than those things was a huge part of finding my healthy self beyond the eating disorder. And your quote kind of reminds me too of someone said um it was in a support group. It was something along the lines of you're not, it's not about replacing the eating disorder, it's about finding something better. And I think that resonated with me a lot because I would keep going back to the eating disorder if I didn't find something better and healthier that I would stay myself with. I talk about pouring the good stuff in to get the bad stuff out. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and I often call it like my core happiness. Like my happiness isn't based on how much I weigh or what kind of foods I'm eating or how fast I'm running. My core happiness is me as myself, and that's enough. And I I learn so much more about myself through other people and developing relationships, getting involved with other hobbies. And I mentioned I coach today. That's a wonderful part of my life, but it's also not my entire life. And then all these presentations I do for running in silence is a great part of my life, but it's not my whole life. I have all these things I'm involved with, and I have to learn how to balance it all. But it's not just the one thing that makes me who I am.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, it's so good to remember. I mean, it's about balance, and you talk about that in the book, and you know, you had a coach. Um I mean, there was a kind coach in there that really seemed to care about you above whatever your athletic performance was. I I thought that was a hopeful part in the book because I do know there have been, I think, people who have um taken Nike to task, you know, runners who have been talked about how they were given arbitrary weights to meet and things like that. Yes. And uh and how hard it has been. And it that that part in there showed me a bit about how important it is to have somebody who is responding to you in that way, not about you as an athlete, but about you as a person.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Yeah, I was so fortunate because I've heard horror stories from other athletes interacting with their coaches. And I ended up with a coach that just really cared about who I was as a person. He loved my success too. You know, he was very competitive. He's brought so many teams to the national meets year after year, but he puts the person first, and that was so important. And some people may think, like, oh, maybe he doesn't really care about success as much, but he does. Like I said, he's competitive. And I think when you put the person before the athlete, they actually do end up performing better. And I learned so much from my other teammates who did have much better balance in their life, and they ended up being good runners.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Yeah, you can have both balance and good running. Um, so I want to switch a bit and talk about because we're talking about athletes who get eating disorders, but they're also athletes who get exercise addiction, which is a different kind of thing. And and it's hard to tell the the difference between the two. Did you ever think you had a problem with that? Or did anyone ever accuse you of that?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

No one accused me of exercise addiction. I think people who are outside of running thought, like, wow, she's running way too much. But in the running world and the athletics world, what I was doing was perfectly normal. And I would say there were definitely moments where I was trying to restrict how much I was eating. And this was like in the binge eating part of my eating disorder. I would go like on a walk to burn off calories, and I didn't normally do those kind of things, but when I was so feeling like I was out of control, I was trying to find ways to burn calories. But normally my training was very focused on the training. Like I didn't want to do more than I was supposed to because I didn't want to it to be detrimental to my performances in my sport. So I did not deal with exercise addiction, but I can see where it would happen to other people.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

It happens in that, well, it happened to me. I mentioned it earlier in our discussion. Um, you know, I gained weight and I just took my obsession about food and turned it into an obsession with exercise, which seemed to me like a healthy alternative until it wasn't, you know, and that slippery slope. And, you know, and what I mean by exercise addiction, and I'm just doing this for the people who are out there that might have this problem with exercise, um, you know, a rest day felt like weakness. I lied how much I was exercising because people started commenting about it. Nothing could interfere with exercise, including, you know, Christmas morning. Everybody had to wait for me to open presents because I was off on my run. I ran on stress fractures. It was so bad. At one point, I even asked a doctor, you know those boots they put on your on you when you get a stress fracture. I don't know if you've you probably have seen those. Yes. Even if you haven't had one. Um, and obviously I wasn't eating enough and I was running and I got a few stress fractures. And I remember asking a doctor not to put a boot on to actually give me a cast, because if he gave me a boot, I knew I would take it off. Now that's a sort of a weird split ego state, right? Two personalities, you know, part of me um wanting the doctor to do it, and part of me knowing I couldn't control myself or I was gonna take it off. And, you know, I had to get over my predisposition from turning something like the drive that you have, obviously, and you talk about the self-discipline and all that. I had to learn how to use my traits in a healthy way. And balance comes up again, you know, when I think about that. And I want to, just for readers, and then I come back to a few questions about you. So I'm just gonna read them and you can have access to them in the show notes afterwards. You can you can download this. If you suspect someone might have an exercise addiction, here are some questions to ask. Do they maintain a high level of activity, not resting or taking time off when they're ill or injured? Do they depend on exercise for self-definition, self-worth, or mood stabilization? Do they judge their day as good or bad by how much they exercise? Do they have an intense driven quality to their exercise? Are they resistant or angry about any suggestion to reduce their amount of exercise? Do they seem to have or even express the lack of ability to stop or control the exercise? Do they lie about it, deny it, make excuses for it, and defend how much exercise? Do they avoid or cancel family or social engagements in order to exercise? Do they continually feel the need to increase their exercise, adding laps or miles or time or weight? Have others expressed concerns about their exercise, and then have they stopped menstruating, lost weight, or shown signs of inadequate nutrition? And I can see there's a crossover there for people who have eating disorders and exercise too. But I put that out there because I think it I think those are questions to ask. I think it is good to have a conversation. I know when your parents found out, not about the exercise problem, but about the eating disorder, I don't think they knew exactly what questions to ask, you know. And although they did try to help, I thought it was funny when your dad was helping you learn how to cook meat. I thought that was interesting because you were going from one kind of diet, you know, to another. Um, what do you think about those? I know you haven't had an exercise addiction, but you've been around a lot of athletes. Anything you would add to that? You think I covered it pretty well?

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I think you covered it well. Yeah, I've often had concerns if anyone worries about their recovery or rest days that they're not exercising. I'm like, it's a very important part of training, and it could be a sign that something more is going on if they feel like they can't rest. And I know, you know, my eating disorder was so tied to food versus exercise. And I on my recovery days, which I knew needed to happen, I wasn't going to exercise, but I would try to control my food even more. And I would be hungrier on those recovery days because my body still needed enough calories. And it, your bodies aren't perfect calculators. You know, you may be hungry on recovery days. So that's something I tried to emphasize too, because it drove me insane too on those days where I was just so hungry and felt like I couldn't control that hunger. And it was not a hunger that needed to be controlled.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah, I love how you say I was never broken, you know. I think that's such a big message to put out there. Okay, let's talk for a minute about people who are in trouble and they really are overexercising, they're not eating enough. Um, you know, you you you suspect yourself out there that you have a problem. What are some things to do, or what are some things I would recommend as a therapist who's treated people? And then you chime in, Rachel, if you think of anything else to add. Um, one of the things I would say is first, you know, you have to look at the person's physical parameters, you know, what's going on with their heart rate and their temperature and their blood sugar. This is a big issue. So you should get a medical exam, should get things because one of the main reasons, I'm just going to throw this out there, that people with anorexia die is blood sugar problems. And that's a uh not commonly known thing. And you can run out of blood sugar if you're going for long periods of time without eating or exercising too much. So sometimes I would have to limit people's exercise and would have to say, you absolutely have to stop running. But I would shift it over a little bit and say, let's try what I would call yin yoga, for example. So you don't not move at all, but you don't do like bikram hot yoga or something like that. But you get to be using and moving your body. We would do that a lot of times at the residential program. But if I'm working with an athlete that just can't cut back and all this, I start saying things like, could you take one rest day? One rest day, because they often are not doing that at all. Or I would say, like really compulsive exercisers, I would say, can you drop your mileage down one mile, take 15 minutes off of a run? And these are things, or the stairmaster or whatever, because these are things. I mean, I've worked with people who are getting up at 4 a.m., going for a run, then going to the gym, then going to work, then going to the gym or some kind of athletic practice afterwards, and um just have no life left anymore. So sometimes I just try to help people make small steps in decreasing because it's very helpful to uh, you know, it adds up. And I learned from my own eating disorder that I didn't have to do everything at once. Um, like Rachel and I were talking, if you tell a runner you have to give it up, they might just stop coming. Um, and and you know, they just fire you. But uh you can often get them to look, if you really want to show me you have self-discipline and willpower, um, take a rest day, because that's actually harder for you than not that than going out and running. You think that's self-discipline, but I'll tell you right now, that's easy for you. So you want to show me you have self-discipline, take a rest day, or take that 15 minutes off, or run one less mile, and they'll get all hey bejeeby about it because they realize I'm right. That is hard. So I say, do the harder thing, and that kind of gets them because it goes to their value, which is self-discipline. Um, but we always have to look at the at the medical part when we're practitioners out there helping. And I think I would say, is there anything you would add to that, Rachel?

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah, I think if you're questioning if you have some sort of exercise addiction or you're doing too much, it might be worth from an athlete perspective, if you're doing more than what your coach. Is asking from you, or you're practicing uh you're competing or running more after practice, more than your coach would recommend, it's probably a problem. And if it's negatively impacting other parts of your life, your performances competitively, it's probably a problem you want to start looking at.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

And I I think we would both say um if you are questioning it yourself at all, then it's probably an issue. Yes. Because it takes a long time to start to question it. So um, if you're questioning it, then it then um to me that's a red flag right there. Um is there other advice you can think of that you want to give to people out there struggling, or it could be to those trying to help them, because you've been on both sides now. You know, a lot of people become recovered and but they don't necessarily go back and try to help others. They move on with their life or whatever. But from both sides, is there any piece of advice that you I haven't asked you about or you would want to suggest to people struggling or helping?

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Yeah, I just really want to emphasize you don't have to have gained or lost weight to warrant it being an eating disorder. It is valid. Your struggles are valid, especially if it's affecting other parts of your life, socially and emotionally, not just physically. It's incredibly important that you get help and you support yourself because you deserve that support. So say something, even if you're scared. I was terrified when I first emailed my mom about what was going on. And when I first started my website, I was very scared and it kept me up at night. But it's so worth it to say something. And if the first person you approach about it doesn't really respond appropriately, don't stop there because I almost did that. I thought, oh, maybe it's not that bad. Maybe I don't need to talk about this. Find someone else because there will be people who will listen and support you and hopefully get you the right kind of support that you need. You know, I was scared also to get professional help. I thought they would make me stop my sport. You know, everyone's situation is different, but it is worth getting professional advice and thoughts and someone to look at your situation to see what will help you. I was scared to go to a dietitian because I thought she'd make me eat foods that I deemed unacceptable. And I actually learned so much about, you know, taking care of my body and listening to my hunger. And again, like I said, it was all the rules and regulations that I put on myself that made everything worse. You do not have to keep living with an eating disorder. You are so much more than your eating disorder self. You can get your healthy self back and have it thrive and actually have a great life. I thought my life wouldn't be good without my eating disorder, which is wild to think about now because I'm so much happier. Um, yeah, so I can't emphasize enough getting the right kind of support and help from the professionals, and you do not have to go through it alone.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

That was fantastic, by the way. Because it is, it is, it's hard to see the other side when you're in it. So I think peace that's why I so promote people who are recovered going out there and helping others, because we didn't see it at one point either, and we didn't think it was gonna happen for us. And it's really hard to get a clear picture. But I think when we share how we were, and you share the honest truth about how desperate, I mean, you share some pretty desperate moments in the book, but you also question the reader to look at, you know, you have food for thought and mile markers. Um, you want to say something about that at the end of each chapter?

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Yeah, I give some prompts for people like coaches or other athletes who are going through something similar to think more about what they read in the chapter. It's almost like a book club thought, you know, at after that is the chapter. Yeah, I just want people to not just read the material, but also think deeper about what I was going through. Maybe it relates to them somehow and encourage them to get the kind of support that I was getting. Um, and maybe, yeah, again, think about their own struggles or maybe someone else they know that could be struggling and create the next step that they could possibly take to support themselves.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

Okay, I'm gonna ask you a question that I ask a lot of people. Uh I'm not gonna end yet because I have a couple, a couple places to go, but um this may be a hard one for you because you've been all around the the issue with different kinds of dieting and restricting and binging and all that. But I ask people a lot, how's your relationship with food like your relationship with people? And I and I I obviously ask people that when they have an eating disorder to help them begin to look at themselves and how their traits play out with food and play out in relationships. So if you can think of a way to describe all of it, um uh your relationship to food back then and how it sort of was similar to your relationship with people and how that is now. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. I think so.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah. So when especially I was first restricting food because I was trying to lose weight, I wouldn't, I wasn't as energetic. I was so sluggish, and I didn't know why. Of course, I wasn't fueling myself well enough. Yeah, so I was very quiet at dinners with my parents, uh almost like a shell of a person. And being so limited with my food created a lot of anger, especially between me and my dad when he was trying to cook meals at home, and I didn't like it the way he cooked it, or he put something on it that I deemed unacceptable. So it created tension. And I think food is a bigger, it's it's sharing something or a almost a symbol for something deeper going on. Um, you know, we were fighting about the food, but really I was struggling with myself at the time and my relationship with myself and needing to control everything. And especially when I started my raw food diet, that made things even more limited. Like I was I went out to eat with my teammates and only ordered one thing on the menu, and it it eliminated so many other things. So I spent more time in that experience focused on my food and what I could or couldn't eat instead of engaging with my teammates. And that really cut me off from the relationships I could have developed in college. And I missed out on so much because of that. And then when I was binge eating, you know, I'd go home and isolate myself and eat in secrecy because I was too scared for other people to see what I was doing and I was still restricting the kinds of food. So I was so focused on what I needed to control that I wasn't really seeing what was around me and what was happening at the time to develop relationships with other people.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

And now?

SPEAKER_00 51:12

Now, oh yes, I eat whatever I want. I take a lot of the information I learned, you know. See, I'm lighting up already. I just I know.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

This is what I talk about, you know, your relationship with food, you're smiling and you're happy. And I remember in the book, your relationships with people were quite constricted or forced or uncomfortable. And now you look like you're comfortable in your skin, you know, with food and and and people.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

Yeah. And I tell people, I was so boring to be around back then. One of my friends, my teammates, said, like, I feel like I can only talk to you about nutrition and running and nothing else. And that hit me. I was like, oh, I yeah, I was kind of boring back then. Um, so now I, after I've learned everything from my registered dietitian, she taught me how what a meal can look like and how to include all the food groups, which it felt like learning to walk again. But now it's not even a second thought. And I still keep some of those things in mind as I'm putting a meal together, making sure I'm having each food group and it tastes good because tasting good is part of that process as well of enjoying your food and being satisfied. And sometimes I'm going to overeat and sometimes I might unintentionally undereat. And that's just all part of the process. Like our bodies are not perfect calculators. And I love having that flexibility. And I can travel and try new foods and be excited about different tastes and go out with friends and not worry about what's on the menu. It just creates so much flexibility.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

And you're not measuring, and and you know what? We're not measuring our self-worth based on what what what our consumption was. You know, that's that's a whole big thing. Well, I always like asking people this because the difference between how they describe, you know, their relationship to food and others then and now is so, and I think it's really nice for people to hear. I could have that too. Um, the other thing I want to say is, you know, this podcast is recovered body and soul. And we talked a lot about the body stuff. You're kind of getting into a bit of the soul pieces. You light up there.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Can you address a little bit about ways that you take care of that soul-self in there?

SPEAKER_00 53:28

Yeah, I think it goes back to the balance and making sure I'm not just healthy by eating perfectly or exercising X amount. My soul is nourished by developing relationships with other people, with getting enough sleep, with giving my mind a break every day, not working constantly. And yeah, allowing myself to eat what I enjoy and not limiting myself in any way. Um it it kind of comes back to that core happiness of I'm not just one thing. One thing isn't going to define me, and that's what feeds my soul.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Yeah, I saw some athlete recently say, you know, our bodies are not robotic machines. Um, an athlete, I think a soccer player, um, kind of complaining about how the field and coaches and stuff were treating her. Um, okay. Uh there might be something that I haven't asked you that you want to say. Um, but I also asked people towards the end if they have any question for me.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah, well, I know you're one of the pioneers in terms of identifying eating disorders and so many people and writing books about being one of the first few authors even writing.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

I have been around for a while.

SPEAKER_00 54:52

Yeah, well, you're full of wisdom, and I admire that. And it's so funny because when I wrote my book Running in Silence, I didn't see a lot of other books about athletes with eating disorders. Um, so yeah, your contributions and literature um writing about this topic really started so much of the education we have today, which is just amazing. Did you see, I guess, a lot of athletes or have you worked with a lot of athletes? I know you talked about exercise addiction, but that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Yeah, you know what? When I opened Montanito in 1996, on um the cover, I put that we treated eating disorders and exercise addiction. And the reason I put that was because I had myself, you know, I had switched from one obsession to the other. Um, but what happened is a lot of people who didn't necessarily have exercise addiction but had an eating disorder and were athletes saw that and came. And I think what they recognized because of some of the stuff in my brochures and things like that is I had a fitness trainer that worked with people that came and we had um fitness training, we went on hikes, we had yoga. I mean, of course, I did it appropriately and made sure they were getting their nutrients in and all that. But at the time, a lot of hospitals was you can't let them exercise. And I always thought wrong approach, wrong approach, not just with athletes, but athletes wouldn't come if they thought they were going to lose all their conditioning, they wouldn't even come. But it wasn't just athletes. I think for anybody, they needed to learn how to do it appropriately. Because if we contain them, and I ran hospitals before I opened Montanito, if if we contain them and didn't teach them at all how to appropriately use their body in exercise, they would just go out and have no direction and we're kind of, you know, uh, it was a wild west in terms of how much should I exercise and how much do I need if I'm exercising and all that. So I ended up getting really interesting tennis players, equestrians, an Olympic snowboarder, um, some interesting people, a bodybuilder, uh, with several runners. And I don't know if you know this, but running, one of the interesting things about running is that there was a study done. I wish I could cite it right now, but I can't. But there was a study done that showed it was one of the number one things that would lead to relapse if a person went into treatment and had a treatment for their eating disorder and they went back and immediately started running. Part of the reason I there's lots of reasons for that. It it's it's you get a high from running, it it there's sort of a addictive qualities to it in a way. Um, could be a a good kind of addiction, you know, you know what I mean. Um, but I think it was because nobody was helping them and nobody was putting the two into it together, and nobody was saying, you know, you can have both. You don't have to give this up. Because if you said that to runners, you know, if someone told you you have to give up running, you would not, you would just say, Well, I'm giving up you. Yes. You know? So that's a good question. Yeah, it it it I have seen um quite a few people, athletes, and people who were not athletes but who had eating disorders or exercise addiction. So, wow, it it's been almost, I think, a whole hour of, and there's so much more, right, to talk about. Yes, I'll mention a couple other books. There's a book uh called Treating Athletes with Eating Disorders by a woman named Kate Bennett, and then this duo you may have heard about, because you're right, there's not a lot out there. Um, Ron Thompson and Roberta Sherman wrote Eating Disorders and Sport. Yes. Those are some things that have been out there. But I really like Running in Silence because I like how you're directly asking people not just to read the chapter, but to check in with themselves at the end. How do you relate to this? What is something you've done in your life that might be similar to this? You know, I I love that part about it because and I and I would suggest that people take that and use that. Uh, you and I both believe that getting good help is important, but take that your book and use it with somebody else, you know, answer those questions in the book and go over them with somebody and get some feedback about how you want to make maybe some changes. So I think this is very hopeful. I think you are a hopeful person shining the light out there. And I really, really appreciate you being on the show today.

SPEAKER_00 59:42

Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Thank you, or Rachel.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Well, thanks for thinking of me. And even I'm honored that I'm a part of you starting this as well, and for reading my book and the time you've taken for all of this. I I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Well, you're welcome. I I I really liked that book. So I'm glad to put it out there for people because you're right, there's not much. After all this time, when I first wrote Fitter Fanatic in 1996, after all this time, there's still so little. Yes. So, okay, thanks everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I know how difficult and scary it is to understand, treat, and recover from eating disorder and body image issues. And I'm here because becoming recovered is possible and worth it. And I know that hearing from others has been there really helped. So if you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast where you'll receive updates regarding future conversations on becoming recovered body and soul. And if you're interested in working with an eating disorder recovery coach or training to become one, contact us at CarolCustin.com where you're going to find information about coaching at the Caroline Costum. Take good care of your body and soul, and I'll see you next time.