By Sean Blake
I am sitting at home feeling calm and relaxed with no anxiety about my body, exercise or what people think about me and more importantly what I think about myself. I want to start on a positive note because I know some people reading this might be living a life of rules around exercise and food, I want them to know that it is possible to make it easier and start recovery.
This is not how it always was for me and although I do know that most people will be ok and have no problem around exercise and running. However, we need to remember that many will have an underlying pain that will allow the exercise to take control. I always had disordered eating in life and I can see that now, I wasn’t particularly into running in life and honestly I had never gone on a run until I was in my 30’s.
I want to tell my story from the point that I started to run because I know there are people who need to hear it and I feel so passionate about awareness of eating disorders in sports and exercise.
I was doing a work event and decided to do a bit of exercise just so I would be able to keep up. I always remember going out and not being able to do much, going out under the cover of darkness because I felt everyone would be looking at me. Overtime the distance would increase and the number of times I would run a week increased, people start to comment on my weight loss and achievements of running a certain distance. For once in my life I felt that I was good at something and people liked me.
I started to follow the narrative that we are all told we need to do if we want to be ‘’healthy’’ and that meant cutting out anything that we are told is ‘’bad food’’. My running turned into something that I could not miss and nothing could get in the way of it, I would go running even if it was raining, snowing, even when injured, I would get up at 5am and run every day. I went from barely being able to run to it controlling my life, I ran marathons and beyond.
I get asked sometimes did I ever enjoy it and honestly I don’t know if I ever did because I can’t remember but right now I can say no I hated it and still hate even thinking about those days. Between the running and food I was deep in an eating disorder and this continued for years. My amazing wife noticed this and I eventually I went to a GP, I hadn’t admitted to myself at this point that I had a problem and the GP said it was just me being healthy and that was a good thing. I don’t think in general GP’s are equipped to understand eating disorders and that’s down to training, it’s not their fault.
My family life was affected and the running and food became so dominant that until very recently I had never eaten out with my full family in a restaurant. I would only eat the same things every day, this crept in overtime as do most of the behaviours that come with eating disorders. I started reading labels, calorie counting and eventually found my safe place when it came to eating. When on holidays my running and food was the most important thing and my wife and 4 kids missed out on so much of me because of that.
This is just a brief description of my journey but it ultimately lead to me being diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa at 40 years of age and entering an inpatient eating disorder service and leaving my family to try and get better. I am passionate about raising awareness and really feel if we raise awareness in sports especially running it can make such a difference.
Open up conversations and check-up on anyone that you think might need help, if the signs and symptoms are more widely know we can catch things early. The running is not the cause but can be the trigger, we can do so much to try and make people aware when they need to check-in with themselves or others. My eating disorder has come from a deeper pain and since my recovery began I have become a different person. I no longer hate myself and I have achieved so much but I really want to raise awareness among sporting communities and running clubs. Bodywhys, the Eating Disorder Association in Ireland have great supports and information. Please reach out for support if you feel that you might have a problem because you are worth it and deserve to be happy.
Check out a clip from an RTE documentary below featuring Sean and his journey with overexercising and Anorexia.
