Eating disorders involve more than what you don't eat. Recovery requires a holistic approach

One late-summer morning a few years ago, Lauryn Lax was at her gym in Green Hills, Tennessee, where she spent almost six hours every day. She was frail – weighing in at just 79-pounds – but pushed through her strenuous workout, just as she always did.

What she didn’t know was that a group of nine fellow gym-goers had been watching her weight decline for some time and were quite worried: they didn’t know if Lax was dealing with an eating disorder or another medical condition, but they felt like they should say something. They’d already decided to approach her that August morning and express their concerns.

Though awkward and invasive, her fellow gym-goers’ intervention led Lax to check herself into Vanderbilt Hospital that day. After her admission to the hospital, the doctors considered placing a pacemaker inside of the 23-year-old because she was near death and her heart struggled to beat.

Lax is now deeply grateful, because she, unlike so many other people with similar problems, survived. But near-death experiences are sadly not uncommon among those with eating disorders: they are the most deadly mental health disorderamong both men and women in America, and they are even on the rise in young children.

While the stereotype of someone with an “eating disorder” is someone who just doesn’t eat (anorexia) or eats and then purges through induced vomiting or usage of laxatives, it’s actually not that simple.

Some studies have reported that as much as 75% of people with anorexia or bulimia are also over-exercising – in addition to calorie restriction or elimination and other forms of purging – to get to and maintain an unhealthy weight. This mixing of different behaviors usually only associated with one type of disorder, called “Eating disorder not otherwise specified” or Ednos, is actually the deadliest.

Like Lax, once I was out of treatment and back to exercising and eating in a healthier way, I had to combat my unhealthy urges to over-exercise and under-eat, and to force myself to eat and to work out far less.Ednos better describes Lax’s own experience, and mine.

That led us both to Crossfit.

Though not founded with people who have eating disorders in mind, many people like Lax and I find the regimentation of the exercise program like Crossfit, combined with the focus on eating as a function of how we train, helps re-orient our negative thoughts about food.

Lax told me that the program helped her to see food as something that she couldn’t have envisioned before: good for her. “[I am] tremendously better,” Lax explained. “I eat real food – and know I must fuel my body if I want to feel good - inside and outside the gym.”

While in the thick of her eating disorder, she had heard about Crossfit but veered away because she thought the program was too short: the 10-20 minute circuit sessions she joked, “was a warm-up for me then!”

“My driving force for over-exercising was a means to cope with stress, achieve an unattainable image and strive for ‘perfection.’ Now I keep my stress in check, and no longer use image or perfection as driving forces – it’s a whole new ballgame.”

I, too, had to learn how to stop letting scales and calories and miles and mirrors define how I felt about my body. I had to learn how to see food not as a weapon I was using against myself, but as something vital for my health. Having a program and a community invested in more than my appearance or my stats helped me get there.

For instance, after a recent workout, I lay down on the floor and my coach sat down next to me and asked, “What did you eat today?”

Years ago, that question would have made nauseated me and filled me with anxiety; now I cannot only tell the truth, but talk about how to eat more next time.

To people who have never battled an eating disorder, that might sound like a silly thing to be excited about. But to people like Lax and myself, it’s a big deal to feel excited about food – even if it’s only a handful of blueberries.

There have been a lot of criticisms about CrossFit, and I’m cognizant of them as I exercise – and that what works for me might not work for someone else. But when the very symptoms of my mental health condition – diet and exercise – are things I need to maintain my physical health, I’m working on more than my body each time I exercise and each time I eat.