[NaoB]

Even though I will feel guilty and restless, I will rest today, despite planning a test/benchmark run this afternoon. Because I started getting leg craps in my sleep, last night, because I’ve over trained and not rested sufficiently.

This is definitely a very worrying sign that you've been overdoing it....

[IanP]

In reply to lots of people.

The 'exercising in excess of one hour' is in context of using exercise as a form of purging so yes obviously state of mind has to be part of any disussion (as does type of exercise I guess, 2 hours at the wall the same as an hour's hard running).  And yes 'just' obsessive exercise is not sufficient not indicate an ED but I think it can quite often be part of a combined disordered perspective around food, weight and exercise.

For a different personal perspective on EDs and exercise:

https://www.fortheloveofclimbing.com/episodes/episode-9-shit-in-the-woods

Podcast (also transcript on the link) interview with a swimmer turned runner and then climber who had some pretty serious problems by the sound of it, just one quote below..

'I think the most detrimental one is you learn to lie really well. And it impacts a lot of relationships. People get really worried about you! They see you at the gym, they’re like, “Why are you here? Weren’t you already here earlier?” And you’re like, “Oh, I was looking for you.” It would get to this point where if I sat still for too long, I would panic and I would make up reasons why I needed to go. The university I went to had this huge lake: if I was out at the lake with my friends, swimming around wasn’t enough. I would be like, “Guys, I forgot I had some homework to do! Somebody needs to drive me back right now. I need to do an hour at the gym.” Being outside wasn’t enough. To this day, I refuse to play card games because it got in my mind: I was sitting, and sitting isn’t good. Like, you can’t sit. Sitting is not active. You’re not burning any calories.' 

[Oldmanmatt]

Most of my 1 hour+ sessions are taken up playing online scrabble whilst normal people (muggles) would be continuously at it on the treadmill

Our (superior and magical!) exercise is less continuous, true. Among the people I know who go running I think it would be unusual for their 'normal' run to be longer than an hour for example.

Edit; think this from mrjr is the key.

To my- unqualified- mind, it's the purpose of the exercise that needs discerning. Is it weight control?

I did an hour on the treadmill yesterday, then went and did 30 min Aerocap on the Lattice board after a half hour bouldering warm up.

I’m fucked, aren’t I.
Didn’t get off the couch this morning though. Now heading for a coaching session with the kids, I wonder if I can resist...

[IanP]

Some more thoughts on the nature of some of these discussions (sorry!). 

I think it pretty unsuprising that the sort of people who post on here and are involved in an obsessive sport like climbing could tick some of these flags and it's not possible to identify whether these are an issue with out an undertstanding of the motivations, control; and mental health impacts of these behaiviours.  The aim of having a more open disussions about sort of issues that can occur is so individuals potentially at risk and those who could support them might have a chance to avoid ending up in unhealthy behaiviours or to provide help them to recover sooner.

Taking it away from people on here the curious climber podcast had and interview by Mina with Dave MacLeod  and towards the end they talked about diet and Dave said 'I'm sensitive about discussing disordered eating in sport in general, because although underdiagnosis is a problem that needs to be addressed I also think overdiagnosis is possible as well'.  He then went on to talk about an athlete pushing himself to his limits as a necessarily obsessive behaviour with fine lines between healthy and the wrong path and he and Mina went on to discuss over-pathologisation and owning your behaiviour.   

My position would be underdiagnosis (together with lack of knowledge / awareness) is the more significant issue and the one we should be talking about more .  My potentially simplistic (and maybe biased) view is the main risk of overdiagnosis /over-pathologisation is that some sports people might have to take time explaining that they are in control and making  conscious decisions about risks and benefits of their behaviour which seems less significant than the risks of underdiagnosis.  Happy to hear about examples to the contrary.

[webbo]

The danger with over diagnosis is people with real issues go undercover.

[IanP]

The danger with over diagnosis is people with real issues go undercover.

That makes some sense - do you feel from your experience that over diagnosis is an issue?  My limited experience is that getting any diagnosis can be problematic, after we persuaded Amy that should seek some medical help her experience with the University health service was very negative and she felt she'd been told she wasn't ill enough or skinny enough.

Isn't one of the biggest issues with people going undercover the secrecy often part of EDs together with the potential stigma of very idea of having an ED.

[Oldmanmatt]

The danger with over diagnosis is people with real issues go undercover.

That makes some sense - do you feel from your experience that over diagnosis is an issue?  My limited experience is that getting any diagnosis can be problematic, after we persuaded Amy that should seek some medical help her experience with the University health service was very negative and she felt she'd been told she wasn't ill enough or skinny enough.

Isn't one of the biggest issues with people going undercover the secrecy often part of EDs together with the potential stigma of very idea of having an ED.

This applies across the spectrum of mental health issues, isn’t new and is likely to remain an issue.
When I was diagnosed with PTSD (in 1996!), I’d been trying to talk to my, supposedly trained, divisional officer for some weeks about my issues. It took an observant, female, Medical assistant, that I happened to pass in the ships main passage, to get that ball rolling. She turned and grabbed my arm (which was hardly protocol) and said “Are you crying PO?” , which I denied (because Senior NCO’s don’t do things like that, they make other people do that and are made of wrought iron and rawhide, stewed in bilge water). She wouldn’t take that answer, whisked me off to Sick Bay, made me a cup of tea, I broke down, told her everything and was in Stonehouse hospital two hours later. Up to that point, I wasn’t “ill” enough for anybody to listen, but in reality, I was on the edge of doing something irreversible to myself or the first person that pressed the wrong buttons.

I know, from my contact with much more recent sufferers, this is still a common theme, even after the epidemic of such illnesses, courtesy  of prolonged conflict, service men and women struggle to get that needed “First Aid” and initial recognition.

It speaks, again, to the difficulty, for an outside observer, to differentiate between “a bad day” and a “pathology”, even when they’ve had training in spotting the red flags.

I don’t know how you overcome that. Except that encouraging the individuals to feel safe in voicing their own concerns, or those close to them, at least, when they have doubts about somebody’s well being. But, basically, I don’t know.

[webbo]

I think answer is educate people from a young age about mental health and put massive amounts of money in to young peoples mental health services. Then if peoples issues are picked up early there is less likely hood of the developing long term problems.
However given that mental services struggle to provide services to their current caseload and there is a shortage of trained staff. I don’t know how you do this without some patient groups losing out.

[Oldmanmatt]

I think answer is educate people from a young age about mental health and put massive amounts of money in to young peoples mental health services. Then if peoples issues are picked up early there is less likely hood of the developing long term problems.
However given that mental services struggle to provide services to their current caseload and there is a shortage of trained staff. I don’t know how you do this without some patient groups losing out.

Ah, that would be ID 10 T syndrome, which affects peoples voting habits...

[IanP]

I don’t know how you overcome that. Except that encouraging the individuals to feel safe in voicing their own concerns, or those close to them, at least, when they have doubts about somebody’s well being. But, basically, I don’t know.

Absolutely, don't think even the experts really know but I do feel that kind of attitude has got to be a postive,

[mrjonathanr]

Bit sceptical about the concept of overdiagnosis here. Who is diagnosing a disorder that is not warranted, when and where is the data to evidence this? It is a chronically struggling service; it seems unlikely there is a plethora of people being wrongly diagnosed.

I find more likely that people may be more willing to consider the possibility and then quicker to draw those conclusions as laymen, friends and family. But misdiagnosis? Is there evidence?

[IanP]

Bit sceptical about the concept of overdiagnosis here. Who is diagnosing a disorder that is not warranted, when and where is the data to evidence this? It is a chronically struggling service; it seems unlikely there is a plethora of people being wrongly diagnosed.

I find more likely that people may be more willing to consider the possibility and then quicker to draw those conclusions as laymen, friends and family. But misdiagnosis? Is there evidence?

Agreed, I was trying to project an relatively open position irrespective of  my fairly clear positiion on this thread.  My personal view (probably fairly obvious!) is pretty sceptical that over diagnosis is an issue we really need to be worrying about.

[Loos3-tools]

‘Sick enough’ is a good medically orientated resource for anyone interested in diagnosis and the broad spectrum of difficulties associated with this topic. Dmac is hardly a good example of modelling ‘healthy eating’, what he lacks in genetics he made up for through restriction and a dedication to meta analysis of research which supported that approach (normal psychological defence and ascetic practices ). On the subject of ‘ownership’ of choices there’s an incredible sadness witnessing somebody with very low body weight continuing to punish themselves with restriction and exercise. This presents a very complex and distressing ethical, moral, philosophical and spiritual problem for all involved. Everyone must have passed the person running who looks tormented and barely alive, often in the early morning looking to burn calories before any fuel goes in.

[User deactivated.]

A ballsy response to the documentary from a climber who has successfully utilised weight loss as a redpoint tactic:



As a German, he's typically direct, and I think some of his opinions regarding women didn't come out quite right (and are possibly wrong), but for the most part I think his intentions were in the right place.

[spidermonkey09]

I've had this on in the background while working and my impression is not great. He refers to 'emotional pandering' and has complains that the doc wasn't 'objective' and 'didn't have enough data to look at.'

a) what the fuck?
b) it never set out to be objective
c) its a documentary about peoples experiences, not a scientific paper

He comes across as pretty uncaring and dismissive. As has been said ad infinitum through this thread, just because weight loss has been a good tactic for some people at the top of the sport doesn't mean it will be that way for everyone. The way he talks about it getting such great results is the worst possible thing someone struggling could hear. Although I'm sure he didn't mean it that way and taking into account second language considerations, that is tone deaf stuff on a channel with 90k subscribers.

[IanP]

My initial thought was 'I'm sure Alex doesn't have a German accent' 

Couldn't face watching it all by the time it got to around 10 minutes where he tried(!) to describe how women end on the route to eating disorders with the simplistic 'seeing a chubby girl in the mirror' trope.   Scanned through some of the rest but couldn't really be bothered.

Maybe cut him a bit of slack due to second language but given he managed to sound OK for the first couple of minutes before he got properly started I think it's mainly just pretty rubbish.

[Ballsofcottonwool]

As a German, he's typically direct, and I think some of his opinions regarding women didn't come out quite right (and are possibly wrong), but for the most part I think his intentions were in the right place.

As an Austrian you shouldn't take him too seriously, witness the comments in this video where he trolled his viewers while literally sitting under a bridge.

[Davo]

I have watched a fair few of his vids in the past and like his thoughts and general style. I basically thought that his vid was a fair critique of the Light “documentary “. I understand that there are areas in which he has simplified things and clearly he doesn’t emotionally try to understand or connect with anyone going through or being on the edge of an eating disorder. However much that he says is pretty true. I do get that someone looking at his vid could get the message that being at your lightest is the only way but that is not what he says.

Dave

[tomtom]

For me: Not what Davo says.

[Will Hunt]

I clicked the link, saw that it was over half an hour long and immediately closed it again.

[Duma]

Alizée Dufraisse has just put up a few posts on this subject:

Part 1
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLZu8DsjEuH/?igshid=1c145usas9k4m
Part 2
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLZu-FSD9jN/?igshid=1i7bv6jccbe8x
Part 3
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLZu_rzjDyB/?igshid=98tkduw9dkez
Part 4
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLZvBTAjz_O/?igshid=1lfb6vd3wrb7y

[abarro81]

Interesting posts, especially the third one

[IanP]

Interesting posts, especially the third one

Was going to stop posting on this thread, but have to say I agree 

Very interesting, also the 4th as well - being judgemental about body type/appearence in all directions can be really unhelpful.

[Banana finger]

Since my ED i can barely make a semi

[Duma]

Jo Neame interview:
https://exordi.net/2021/02/21/eating-disorders-among-elite-athletes/