Healthy Exercise Helps
Treat Eating Disorders

Adding an exercise program to the treatment of eating disorders appears to help women who have an unhealthy attitude toward exercise, new research shows.

Investigators found that women who completed an exercise program designed to encourage the attitude that exercise is for more than weight loss tended to develop a healthier approach to exercise.

Moreover, among women who were also anorexic, adding exercise to their treatment appeared to help them actually regain some of their lost weight.

Study author Rachel Calogero explained that most eating disorder treatment programs do not let patients exercise, permitting it only once patients have gained a certain amount of weight.

She added that women who use exercise to further their eating disorder -- by, for instance, over-exercising, punishing themselves via exercise, or working out to give themselves permission to eat -- are likely going to continue to exercise once they have been treated for their eating disorder.

This program may help by giving women the tools to continue to exercise in a safer way, Calogero noted.

"Perhaps they'll behave in a different way, and not abuse (exercise) the way they did before," she said.

All of the women included in the study had an eating disorder and an unhealthy attitude toward exercise, defined as exercise abuse.

Four times per week, 127 women spent 60 minutes practicing a variety of activities, including stretching, yoga, Pilates, strength training and aerobic activities, along with recreational games.

Before and during exercise, coordinators emphasized to women that exercise can be a tool to rejuvenate the body, rather than deplete it. Women were also taught that exercise can increase their mind-body connection and alleviate stress.

At the end of each exercise session, women discussed how the workout made them feel.

Reporting in Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, Calogero and her co-author found that women who participated in at least two exercise sessions were less likely to believe that they were obligated to exercise than women who were not allowed to exercise during treatment.

Exercisers with anorexia also gained more than one-third more weight than non-exercisers with anorexia, the authors note.

In an interview, Calogero, who is based at Syracuse University in New York, explained that women in eating disorder programs have to follow a meal plan, which often contains many more calories than they used to allow themselves. Exercise may help them relax about their new diets, thereby letting them eat more calories and gain weight, she said.

"By allowing them to exercise, it probably alleviated some of their anxieties about eating," she said.

Moreover, exercisers may have also absorbed the message of the program -- that you can exercise and eat in a healthy way, without becoming a "huge monster," as many of them fear, Calogero noted.

The study was conducted by the Renfrew Center Foundation, the nonprofit portion of the Renfrew Center, an eating disorder treatment facility.

SOURCE: Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, Fall 2004.

Reference Source 89
July 13, 2004

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