During this post, I’m going to dive a little deeper into my experiences with hiking and backpacking while in eating disorder recovery. In the world we live in today, it has sadly become the norm to be entrenched in diet culture and praise each other for a variety of behaviors that are disordered in disguise. It also isn’t uncommon for endurance athletes of all kinds to struggle in terms of their relationship with food and exercise as well. To split hairs even further, many of these individuals may be walking a really tight rope between pushing themselves in the outdoors because they truly enjoy it and an unhealthy obsession with excessive movement.
These are murky waters for sure and my intent in this post is to open a dialogue about how disordered eating can affect us all, especially in the activities we love the most. I want to preface this by saying, I am not a mental health professional or eating disorder specialist in any way and I don’t claim to be. These are just my personal experiences and my hope within this post is to shed some light on a difficult subject that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
It’s just about the food, right?
With that being said, let’s get vulnerable! My eating disorder didn’t fully develop until high school, but my body image issues and problems with low self-esteem started way before this. I grew up in a family with parents that for the most part were always on some sort of crash diet or unrealistic exercise regime. Did this cause my eating disorder? That’s the million dollar question, but these modeled behaviors definitely contributed to a skewed view of food, movement, and my body.
The root of my eating disorder I realized after years of therapy was a combination of negative core beliefs and a deep sense of feeling like I don’t belong anywhere. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but you get the picture. Genetics also plays a role, yet my point is, it’s not really about the food or exercise. Those are just the maladaptive coping mechanisms I use in times of stress, anxiety, depression, or any other intense emotion.
Escapism at its finest
When I discovered hiking, backpacking, and thru-hiking, I was drowning in a complex pool of therapy, treatment centers, programs, tears, and full blown apathy for recovering. I was always an outdoorsy person, so my mind just went wild as I dove into the rabbit hole of research about all things hiking related. I read books, listened to podcasts, bought an All Trails subscription; anything to distract from the toxic swirl of crap that was my eating disorder.
Suddenly, I had something to fight for. I soon realized that I didn’t have the strength to hike or carry a heavy pack up mountains if I wasn’t fueling my body properly. My goal was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail one day and that fire was my motivation to eat spoon full after spoon full of the foods that scared me the most in order to stabilize and eventually lessen the degrading voice I’d dealt with for so long. It by far wasn’t perfect, no recovery is, but my love for hiking and finding joy in the wilderness helped me get on track.
Trading one rock bottom for another
It felt like I’d just been given the keys that would unlock true happiness in life. Hiking was the freedom I’d been craving and escaping into the woods for hours helped me process the stress that I held in my body. It was my outlet, but it started to morph into an obsession. In some ways, I was symptom swapping; trading the euphoric aspects of restricting and purging for the high that is hiking in beautiful places.
I had to hike every day or multiple times a week no matter the weather or my busy schedule. If that meant waking up at four in the morning to hike 10 miles before work, bygolly I did it. And if I “failed” to hike what I had planned for that day, I felt immense guilt. I also was strict about the length of the hike as well as how strenuous it would be. I discarded shorter, flatter trails because in my head it didn’t classify as a true hike. Hiking 20-30 miles in a day soon became the norm and I was routinely praised for this by my work peers. In the eating disorder world, this sort of behavior would be labeled as overexercising.
I will say, not all of these hikes were completely disordered, but a lot of them were spurred on by unrealistic expectations I placed on myself. In the back of my head, instead of admiring the amazing views, I thought about how many calories I was burning and the weight I was possibly losing. This was a very slippery slope given my history with disordered eating.
It took a rude awakening to pull me back into a better mindset. I ended up developing a really nasty overuse injury (tendonitis in my IT band) which required me to be in physical therapy for a few months. During this time, I stopped all forms of movement for a while (per my therapist and dietitian’s professional opinion) and then slowly started to introduce it back into my life.
This time will be different
My knee jerk reaction to being granted the green light to hike again was to go back and keep overdoing it. Nothing was going to stop me! So, I did that. But then I eventually realized that I stopped having fun hiking a long time ago and that really bothered me. I didn’t want the eating disorder to take anything else away from me and the way things were going, something had to change or hiking would become tainted and very unhealthy.
With the help from my treatment team, I started exploring the needs that weren’t being met (causing me to seek a disordered outlet with exercise) and started adopting the same mindset for hiking as I have with eating: the concept of being more intuitive and mindful. It took a lot of patience, time, trial and error, and many frustrated Callie moments, but eventually I got the hang of it. It’s much easier said than done, yet here are some of the principles or boundaries I set in place for movement:
My body and mindset depending on the day determine if or when I decide to engage in movement.
If I am sick, injured, sore, too busy, in a disordered mindset, don’t feel like it, or honestly just don’t want to, then I don’t hike.
I have a choice as to how far I want to go. I can turn around at any point.
I do not track my hikes or pay much attention to the mileage.
I make it enjoyable instead of making it feel like work (hiking with a friend, listening to music or a podcast).
I try to be mindful of my environment and really appreciate the nature around me (listening to the birds, stopping to look at bugs or leaves, touching moss).
I also purposely tune into my body and pay attention to anything I feel or need in that moment instead of completely disconnecting (feeling the wind on my skin, noticing the temperature, hearing the crunch of dirt under my feet).
Slowing down is okay
Hiking for me nowadays, ebbs and flows. Sometimes I hike a few times a week and sometimes I don’t hike at all. And sometimes I choose other activities that I’m craving. There is a lot more flexibility and it feels good to reconnect with the purpose behind why I love to hike. Yes, I still hear little whispers saying “push harder, go farther, suck it up and get it done.” These thoughts have not gone away completely, but they have definitely decreased.
This change and possibly non traditional take on hiking and movement in general changed my relationship with the sport. In a world where hiking yourself to a breaking point by setting FKT’s (fastest known times) or practically killing yourself over a thru-hike is glorified, I understand the obsession. But for me, enjoying the journey, slowing down, and not putting so much pressure on myself takes precedence over any athletic accomplishment.
With that being said, I definitely think there is still a way to balance a healthy mindset with movement and reach lofty goals. I’ve still got my eyes set on the Appalachian Trail. My hope is by the time I set out in Georgia for Katahdin, I will go as Callie. And leave the eating disorder behind.
Thanks for reading and as always, happy trails!