Diary of an Exercise Addict

As a young Southern woman in her senior year of college, Peach Friedman set out to beat the blues—and a break-up with her boyfriend—by beating herself into shape. Running ten miles a day and taking in as little as 800 calories, she forbade herself from indulging in the sensual pleasure of food and worked her body to exhaustion to avoid dealing with her emotional pain. She fell from 146 to 100 pounds in three months. Friedman suffered from exercise bulimia—a compulsion to purge calories through excessive exercise, and a rapidly growing eating disorder that affects some 400,000 American women. Having lost all memory of the sexy, curvaceous woman she once knew, Friedman found herself at serious risk of cardiac arrest.In Diary of an Exercise Addict, Friedman chronicles her harrowing six-year ordeal—from her gradual descent into a life-threatening eating disorder to her remarkable recovery, and the setbacks and challenges she encountered along the way. With refreshing candor, she unveils her intimate relationships with family, friends, and lovers, as well as the repressed desire that finally finds its way to the surface as she finds her own way back to health. In this raw and illuminating narrative, Friedman does not shy away from recounting the most painful details about her body, her sex life, and her family, as well as her darkest, most terrifying thoughts. In a culture obsessed with weight management and fitness, this extraordinary memoir exposes the very real dangers of pushing your body too hard, while showing how one woman’s courage and determination helped her to eventually wind her way back to a full recovery. A book about accepting yourself—and your body—and embracing your true identity, Diary of an Exercise Addict will comfort, inspire, and captivate. In 2000, Peach Friedman, a college senior freshly broken up from her boyfriend, set out to beat the blues by beating herself into shape. Running ten miles a day and taking in as little as 800 calories, she fell from 146 pounds to 100 in three months and was at serious risk of cardiac arrest. What Friedman suffered from was exercise bulimia—a newly diagnosed and rapidly spreading eating disorder that affects some 400,000 American women, and which gyms and colleges across America are beginning to take seriously. In Diary of an Exercise Addict Friedman recounts her descent into a life-threatening illness, her remarkable recovery, and the setbacks along the way. With refreshing candor she lays bare her relationships with family, friends, and lovers and the repressed desire that finally surfaced as she found her own way back to health.