The Complicated Relationship Between Sobriety & Exercise- The Rebuild Week 18.

And why I'm retiring from the long run.

Aug 23, 2023

Long before I got sober, I was using exercise to help manage my mental health. It has probably been the most effective tool I have used to date. It’s undoubtedly played an integral role in helping me get sober and maintain that sobriety over the last 16 months, where I have used it most days, except when I have been injured.

During the last Christmas break, I used exercise to help me stay focused and minimise temptations by setting myself an active calorie goal of 1,000 calories per day. I knew that to do this, I would need to do 60-90 minutes of exercise daily. I also wanted to have it done before 9 a.m. I did this for a few reasons.

The first one is that if I burned that many calories daily, I would be tired enough to sleep each night without my mind wandering too much. I also knew that not having work to occupy my mind would mean that I would open the door to the risk of drinking, especially given what Australian culture is like around drinking at christmas time. So, I knew I would need those positive endorphins floating around in my head to prevent me from succumbing to cravings. Doing it before 9 a.m. meant I would start the day feeling good and positive. It also meant it would have minimal impact on my time with family and friends, which was the most essential part of Christmas. (Click here to read My Holiday Health Challenge)

I recently found myself in a similar predicament when I spent a fortnight in Thailand to attend my best friend’s wedding. I knew I would be more tempted to drink than I usually would have been. I was on a tropical island. Beautiful weather, a fucking wedding, and no work to distract me when my mind started to wander. I didn’t want to be overly strict on myself while there because I wanted to enjoy the holiday and not place unnecessary pressure on myself to hit extraordinary targets each day.

I decided on a 30-minute run each morning before my family woke up. In a place where the temperature only ranges from 27-29 degrees Celsius and the lowest humidity is 85%, I didn’t think it was necessary to do more than that. I’m glad I did because the sudden change of conditions made things much more challenging.

I ran for 30 minutes every day except for the day we arrived. 11 days straight. I had a severe near miss regarding sobriety, which I spoke about last week, but my plan worked perfectly outside that.

About a week into our holiday, I noticed a few things regarding my basic health metrics. It seemed I had found a bit of a sweet spot. By running for 30 minutes a day at roughly the same time every day, my key markers were starting to improve. I spent more of my time asleep in deep and REM stages of sleep. My resting heart rate was coming down. My respiration was improving. My HRV was improving, and that 30-minute run combined with the daily goings-on was getting me to 12,000-15,000 steps per day.

I thought it was odd because up until a week before my trip away, I had a streak of 27 days where I either ran or cycled for 60 minutes every day and didn’t see anywhere near that improvement in my health markers. Sure, I was in a significantly different climate. My stress levels were down a little because I didn’t have work to worry about, but I did have an almost one-year-old to manage on holiday in those uncomfortable conditions.

Since then, I’ve been reflecting and coming to a few realised that, ironically, I have an unhealthy relationship with exercise, particularly running. In many instances, I have been running for the wrong reasons. I have been seeking validation from others through my running, and seeking validation from others through any medium is unhealthy, full stop.

I’ve spoken openly about setting specific running goals and targets to keep me accountable and ensure I continue exercising because I know it’s good for my mental health. I would register for a running event, tell anyone who would listen to me that I was entering it and even sometimes raise money for a charity in doing so, all to keep me motivated to exercise and to have people to hold me to account. Ultimately, I still don’t see an issue with this, but it needs to change at this stage of my life.

I’ve been taking my running a little more seriously over the last five or so years. In that time, I’ve achieved some pretty cool things. However, the motivation behind most of those achievements has come from an unhealthy place. Sure, I enjoyed the physical and mental health benefits, but many aspects of what I was doing were largely unhealthy. I’ll give a few examples.

In June 2021, I set a goal of running 3,650 kilometres for the year. At that stage, I had only run around 1,000 kilometres, meaning I would need to run a little over 100 kilometres weekly for the rest of the year. I did it every week except for the last week of the year and fell 50 kilometres short of my goal.

It’s a pretty remarkable achievement. However, I would feel nothing each week after ticking off 100k. No sense of accomplishment. I realise now that this is because I was doing it for validation from others. I wanted a metaphorical pat on the arse from strangers on the fucking internet. I thought that would make me feel good. It didn’t, of course.

I ran marathons and certain running events for the same reason. I wanted internet friends and people in the running communities I was a part of to think I was pretty good. I felt that people would value me more as a human if I could achieve certain running feats.

I was obsessed with running no less than 10k every time I went out for a run. I had this attitude that anything less than 10k wasn’t worth heading out for and that if I ran less than 10k, people on Strava would think less of me, and I’d get fewer kudos/likes, and we can’t fuckin’ have that!

The worst thing for me, though probably the hardest to admit, is this. Often, I would run the distances I would run so that I could worry less about what I ate. I’ve struggled with binge eating all of my life, and on reflection, it’s no surprise that when I got older, I struggled with drugs and alcohol. Food was/is a coping mechanism for me, just like drugs and alcohol had become. I’ve always been super self-conscious about my weight and my body. If I didn’t love a binge so much, I would be at risk of suffering from an eating disorder because even at my absolute skinniest, I still felt overweight and needed to lose more weight.

I’ve been loosely tracking calories in vs. calories out for some time now. But again, I have also started to develop an unhealthy relationship with that. Often, my motivation to head out for a run will come from telling myself that if I don’t go out and run, I won’t be able to binge on junk after dinner that night. Exercise and nutrition are about balance, and to a degree, I was and am balancing it, but when you feel like you need to be running 10k every single day to balance out the amount of junk you might want to eat later on, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

So here I am, five years after starting to take my running seriously, thinking, “What have I actually gained from this?” I’m fitter and healthier than I was, and I’ve ticked off some bucket list shit along the way. I‘ve used my running to help me achieve and maintain sobriety. These are all terrific things, and I am grateful to myself and running for allowing me to get where I am. But now it’s time to do more work because I know that my relationship with this thing that has given me so much is still somewhat unhealthy, and this is why I have to let go of it a little and not rely on it so heavily to help me through my day to day life.

Running is allowing me to avoid doing work that needs to be done. I need to improve my relationship with food. I need to prioritise time with my family.

My son turned one earlier this week. They say that 75% of the time you spend with your child is between the day they are born and the day they turn 10. Statistically, 7.5% of the time I will EVER spend with him is gone. 95% of your time with them is gone when they turn 18. And here I am bashing round some fucking fire trail for 60 minutes to four hours because I want to eat a pizza and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s that night. My family is going without because I haven’t been brave enough to confront my poor relationship with food and because I’m seeking validation from people who don’t really matter and people who ultimately don’t give a fuck how far I run, how quickly I ran it, how many metres of elevation I ran or what fucking heart rate zone I did it in.

So many of my issues stem from my fear of what other people think of me, and this is all a part of me reiterating to myself that, realistically, nobody actually cares about what you do. They’re too busy worrying about themselves; if they do care, that says more about them than what it says about you. It’s time for me to start acting in the best interests of myself and my family.

I won’t be signing up for any more marathons or other running events in the foreseeable future. I won’t be heading out for three hours on a Sunday for my long run. I’ve done enough of that shit. I don’t need the stress of building endurance for a particular event. I feel obligated to hit a certain number of kilometres for the week and ensure I’m running for said duration on a Sunday. Only to feel like a complete failure because I ONLY ran 50 kilometres in a week, I should have run 70.

But I have to do something. After all, exercise has played such an integral role in my sobriety and mental health, and I’m certainly not here to slag it off. It’s just that I personally have become far too reliant on it. Exercise is brilliant for mental health, but it should never get to a point where not exercising enough detracts from your mental health, which is a place I find myself in sometimes.

So here’s what I’m going to do. This afternoon, I am catching up with the legendary nutritionist James Kuhn. The last time I worked with James, I was drinking, but I was also running faster and more than I ever have. He’s the one who helped me get down to as lean as I was in the picture above.

This time, though, the plan will be different. I will base my plan on no more than 30 minutes of daily exercise. As I mentioned at the top, this seemed to be the sweet spot for me when I was on holiday. It’s enough to make me feel good mentally. It’s short enough so that it doesn’t impact my family life and short enough so that I’m not too physically drained or sore to have enough energy left for work and my family.

I’m sure it’ll be challenging, particularly at night when I love eating shit. But actual growth has to be earned. Nothing is given.

Cheers Wankers.

Have you ever developed an unhealthy relationship with exercise or food? I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences and what they did to deal with it!

The Complicated Relationship Between Sobriety & Exercise- The Rebuild Week 18.

And why I'm retiring from the long run.

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