Autism and Exercise Addiction: Turning Traits into Tools

It’s no secret that people with anorexia often engage in excessive amounts of exercise. When you combine that hallmark restlessness with neurodivergent traits like anxiety, perseverance, masking, and being in a near constant state of fight-or-flight mode, you have the perfect storm for anorexia athletica – an obsessive relationship with exercise that becomes intertwined with disordered eating. In Part 1 of this autism and exercise series, I shared my personal story and how existential angst, nervous system regulation, and identity contributed to my exercise addiction. Now, it’s time to get granular on the autistic traits that can fuel exercise obsession, but more importantly, how you can shift these traits to work for you in eating disorder recovery.

1. Identity: Breaking Free from the Athletic Mask

The first step to creating a healthier relationship with movement is wanting to have a different relationship with movement. In other words, there has to be a desire to create a new identity. For me and many autistic people, eating disorders and everything they entail are a form of masking. A way to hide behind external identities so we don’t have to confront the existential angst and the possibility that our authentic self will be viewed as “wrong.” Eating disorders are a convenient way to shield us from responsibility. If people judge me, at least I know they’re not judging ME – they’re judging the mask. If I follow the eating disorders rules about what’s a good vs bad way to eat, I don’t have to discover my own unique way of eating. When things go “wrong,” I’m off the hook. While these are very valid mechanisms to protect oneself from an overwhelming world, we find ourselves holding a double-edged sword – because the very thing that’s protecting you is also the cause of your pain.

Beyond the Fear of Change

Humans do what we want, not what we need. This is especially relevant in the context of PDA (pervasive drive for autonomy) and why traditional treatment approaches telling us to "just stop exercising" are doomed to fail. Change has to come from within. For me, this meant confronting how deeply I'd wrapped my identity in being "the athlete," "the healthy one," "the fit one." As I write in my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger, our mind learns through experiences, which shape our beliefs, which in turn, form our identity. And since these beliefs are built on our actions (or in this case, non-action), I had to step away from exercise for a while. It goes without saying that this was terrifying. Beyond the obvious fear of weight gain were deeper fears: What if I neurally rewire my brain to become lazy? What if I never enjoy exercise again? What if my mental hunger isn’t actually a sign that I need to eat more, but rather, my thinking about food has just become a bad habit? These fears are the bars of the eating disorder cage. While staying inside might feel safer, acknowledging the cage's existence is the first step toward freedom. 

Embracing Neurodivergent Identity

My journey to freedom also required shifting my mindset around conformity. As an autistic person that has always felt like an alien in this world, adhering to diet culture offered a way to fit in, to follow the herd. Embracing neurodivergence means stepping away from this false comfort and into the uncertainty of authentic existence. Yes, this brings existential angst – but it also brings the possibility of genuine connection with ourselves and other neurodivergent humans.

2. Nervous System Regulation: Reframing "Compulsive" Movement as Adaptive Behavior

Another reason why reducing exercise – let alone taking a full stop break – can be challenging in neurodivergent eating disorder recovery has to do with nervous system dysregulation. When you live in a neurotypical world as a neurodivergent person, your nervous system is constantly on high alert. Every unexpected change, every sensory overload, and every awkward social interaction signals potential danger to your body. In response, your nervous system activates its sympathetic branch, preparing you to either fight or flee the perceived threat. In this sense, I find it helpful to view autistic behaviors as adaptive behaviors. The reality is that hypersensitivity to change, attention to detail, pattern recognition, and out-of-the-box thinking are all traits that would heighten your chances of survival!

Stimming in Eating Disorder Treatment

Another common autistic trait is stimming, short for self-stimulatory behavior. I actually prefer the term self-regulatory behavior, because stimming is done for the purpose of regulating oneself. Unfortunately, stims are often redirected in eating disorder treatment, especially pacing and other behaviors that are labeled as “compulsive” movement. The imposition of exercise bans doesn’t only trigger PDA, but redirection can invalidate the unique needs of neurodivergent individuals, which adds layers of trauma that are already trapped in the body due to (undiagnosed) autism. So is it any wonder that we find ourselves doing jumping jacks in bathroom stalls or planking under hospital blankets? The body innately knows it needs to release this energy, which is why we must replace traditional judgments around movement with awareness of the body’s powerful ability to adapt.

Compulsive Movement or Adaptive Movement?

Just as I like to view autistic behaviors as adaptive behaviors, it can be helpful to reframe “compulsive” movement as “adaptive” movement. The implications of this shift are twofold. The first aspect ties back to the identity piece. If you label an individual as “someone who engages in compulsive exercise,” you’re effectively intertwining their identity with compulsive exercise. And how do you ever expect to heal your relationship with movement if your current identity contradicts the identity of someone who is free? By contrast, when we acknowledge that someone’s current movement patterns are adaptations – the nervous system’s response to a lack of safety – we open ourselves to the possibility of adapting further. That is to say, adapting into the person we want to become.

Eating Disorders and the Autism Spectrum

The second aspect of this reframe connects to a broader understanding of eating disorders themselves. In fact, I prefer to view eating disorders as a spectrum of adaptive behaviors, something I fully unpack in the Autistically ED-Free Academy. Eating disorders are an escape, a way to flee the overwhelming world, a way to calm an overactive neurodivergent mind through numbing. For me, exercise – just like anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and beyond – was always an escape. It was a way to transcend my physical reality, a way to break out of this body I’ve always felt trapped in. Even today, sitting down remains SO difficult for me. Does anyone else find it impossible to get into a comfortable position? I still experience high levels of anxiety, and my body still operates in a state of fight or flight most of the time. But the difference now is that I no longer live in fear and limitation, which completely changes the experience of that mobilized energy within me.

How Restriction Increases the Urge to Move

Back in my ED days, instead of “falling” into the existential void – the void of vulnerability, risk, and fear of judgment – restriction and exercise gave me a literal sense of 'lightness.” It was my attempt at leaping up into the clouds rather than being weighed down by gravity. But here's the catch-22: the very behaviors I used to transcend into nothingness were also what kept my nervous system locked in stress mode. Just think about it: a lack of resources is one of the greatest threats to human survival! By going into energy deficit, you're effectively telling your body you're in a famine – so it will want to migrate and escape even more. Basically, the eating disorder puts the existing autistic fight-or-flight mode on steroids.

Escaping the Exercise Cycle

So how do we get out of the vicious cycle? How do we get off the hamster wheel of exercise obsession? Traditional ED recovery advice tells you to “just rest.” But similar to the all-too-familiar "just eat," we know this advice is as good as meaningless. Instead, we must replace judgment with curiosity. Instead of judging movement as “bad” or “compulsive,” and jumping to conclusions that movement is “a way to burn calories,” we might ask: How can we create space for regulation in a way that’s constructive rather than destructive? When we create the space to bring awareness to our intentions, we can start to use the autistic traits to our advantage in challenging the ED-related fears. What does this look like in practice? In my upcoming book How to Get Out of Quasi Recovery, I introduce the term “channeling energy.” What I mean by this is that you must give the trapped fight-or-flight energy somewhere to go. And thankfully, energy can take many forms.

Finding New Forms of Energy Release

During my exercise break, I discovered writing. Through words (literally!), I was able to process and release a lot of my childhood trauma. Here, we are once again reminded of the significance of shifting your identity, because tapping into this art form required me to open myself up to creative expression, which ultimately allowed me to create authentic purpose through contribution beyond myself. And it was through this newfound creative freedom that I rediscovered exercise – but this time, with clear boundaries.

3. Constraints: Finding Freedom Within Boundaries

After taking nearly a year off, I started craving movement again. To be honest, this craving terrified me in the same way my food cravings terrified me when I had extreme hunger. My associations with physical activity up until that point were memories of exhausting runs and dreaded cardio circuits. Where the heck would I even start bringing movement back into my life in a healthy way?

In the past, "free time" always had to be filled with exercise. I feared empty space, that existential void. Now, I feared I would become addicted to exercise again. But I knew that if I let this fear hold me back, the eating disorder would STILL be controlling my decisions. So I started with a few steps (literally, lol). I gained a love for walking while listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and I commuted to school on my bicycle while listening to music. I stuck to these everyday activities for nearly a year before introducing anything else, as I wanted to feel strong and resilient enough mentally before challenging myself physically.

The Paradox of Freedom

What I discovered through this gradual return to movement was that you can't have freedom without boundaries. Consider the creative process itself: you can't have "out of the box" thinking if there's no box in the first place! This is especially relevant for neurodivergent minds, because our relentless curiosity drives us to explore the edges. So when there are no edges, we stay stuck because we don't know where we'll end up if we venture out. It's like people lost in the desert who end up walking in circles – without reference points, we stick to what's safe and familiar. The same principle holds true for exercise. Without walls, we literally want to run infinitely.

This is partly why autistic people often think in black and white. When it's all or nothing, the boundaries are clear. During my eating disorder, I was always setting a "precedent" for movement. I was terrified of going under the amount of exercise I had set, but also terrified of going over – because that meant I had to do at least that much the next time. Once the new boundary had been defined, there was no going back. Because an ED is insatiable (the irony!), my metric was exhaustion. I believed that if I wasn't drained, the exercise didn't "count."

Creating New Associations Around Exercise

Healing my relationship with movement meant removing these labels. It meant acknowledging that something "counting" is a subjective opinion, not an objective truth. What counted was that I was acting in alignment with my authentic identity. And the only way to discover that identity was to create clarity on who I wanted to be in the first place. I had to ask myself the following questions: If I was free, what activities would I be engaging in? If I was free, what thoughts would I have about movement? Once I defined the boundaries of that identity, I could stay within it!

When I finally joined a gym, the sea of equipment and endless possibilities left me overwhelmed. I had no idea what I was doing, and the contradictory fitness advice on the internet only added to my confusion. Through trial and error, I ultimately found a flexible routine that aligned with my body's energy. The key was creating new metrics – ones that aligned with my unique version of freedom, rather than using exhaustion as a measure of achievement.

Building Your Own Framework

So here's my invitation to you: outline your ideal relationship with movement. Set concrete parameters to take away the abstract "just listen to your body" advice. Personally, I don’t go to the gym without time limits. This isn’t only to “protect” myself from overdoing it, but it also gives me a clear sense of direction. Over the years, I've discovered that even these boundaries can become their own form of rigidity. This led me to develop what I call “freedom routines,” which are like stretchy boxes – that is to say, structured containers that can flex without breaking. The power of adopting freedom routines is that they adapt with us while keeping us grounded. As nature teaches us, change is constant and inevitable. At the same time, our energy flows most freely when guided by clear boundaries, just like a river flowing between its banks.