How Hiking Helped Heal My Eating Disorder

Nibbling on a block of butter would look, to many people, like disordered eating, although most thru-hikers wouldn’t bat an eyelid. To me, it looks like recovery. It reminds me how far I have come since being a teenager with an eating disorder, counting every calorie I consumed.

A large part of that recovery came from hiking. Turns out putting one foot in front of the other for long enough can change the way you see food, your body, and yourself. 

Blame It on the Noughties

Like many of us who had the misfortune of growing up in the 2000s, I reached adulthood with a pretty warped view of my body. This was the era when size 0 was invented and became an obsession. When gossip magazines would draw red circles around a celebrity’s supposed fat thighs or tummy. When the Spice Girls were made to step on scales on television, in an unspoken competition for who would be the lightest. 

This all sent the message to girls that we needed to remain as small as possible. That eating or taking up space were shameful things. It’s no wonder that by the time I turned 10, I was already refusing to wear any clothes with a buttoned waistband, because I thought the way the button stuck out would make me look fat — and fat, in my mind, was the worst thing I could possibly be. 

By 13, this had spiralled into a full-blown eating disorder (ED). On the scale of EDs, what I experienced was relatively mild. I was never hospitalised long-term. I never dropped to a life-threatening weight. But I did stop having my period for a year, and I ended up in the hospital after collapsing in class. 

My eating disorder stayed with me throughout my teens. It eventually became less visible because I put on weight and started eating more. But my relationship with food remained deeply unhealthy. I had a constant voice in my head telling me to stop eating, telling me that I was a failure for not having enough self-discipline to starve myself. I regularly attempted crash diets, and on more than one occasion, I googled ways to relapse, to get back into my ED. 

And then I started hiking. I’d always loved walking and camping, but once I left home at 18, I started going for multi-day and multi-week trips. And gradually, the way I looked at food changed. 

How Hiking Turns Food on Its Head

What you look for in trail food is the exact opposite of what I sought in my disordered eating days. Back then, I was obsessed with low-calorie, high-volume foods. I would fill up on bowls of konjac noodles, lettuce, and sugar-free jelly. Anything high in calories was “bad.” Anything that made me feel full without actually feeding me was “good.”

Then I had to pack food for a 10-day hike across the Pyrenees. I planned to bring a pack full of cucumbers and cans of chickpeas. My seasoned hiking buddies took one look at my grocery cart and burst out laughing. “Pâté,” one said, adding it to my selection. “And more pâté. And some instant mashed potatoes.” I stared, horrified, at the fatty meats and carbs going into the cart. I hadn’t touched that stuff in years.

But once we hit the trail, something shifted. I wasn’t afraid of food anymore. I stopped asking for smaller portions. I stopped giving half my food away. I stopped feeling guilty. I was rewarding my body for being so awesome, for climbing peaks and walking for miles. On the trail, food wasn’t a moral decision, and eating wasn’t a personal failing. Food was just fuel. 

We assign moral values to food all the time. “Be good,” we tell ourselves when we pick the salad. “Aren’t I bad?” says a relative as they reach for a second slice of cake. We have “cheat days” and “cleanses.” These judgments bleed into how we view ourselves. Resisting high-calorie foods is often viewed as a moral victory, a sign of personal strength. Eating makes us feel bad, indulgent, and weak. 

Except I didn’t feel weak anymore. When I got back from that first hike, my then-boyfriend picked me up from the station. “You look so muscular,” he said. That word — muscular — would have wounded me just a couple of weeks earlier. It meant big. Unfeminine. Visible. But hearing it then made me smile. I was proud. My body had walked up mountains, carrying everything I needed, including my overthinking brain.

My boyfriend gifted me a box filled with homemade heart-shaped cookies. “It was the only cutter I had,” he blushed. Over the next few days, I ate the entire box. My family was shocked. It had been a running joke that you could trace where I had been in the kitchen, because I would carefully break portions in two, leaving half, putting it back in the cupboard. Always rationing, always controlling. 

Ups and Downs 

It wasn’t over, of course. I kept hiking, but my strict eating habits were hard to break. As you can imagine, the two do not pair well together.

I did half the Lycian Way in Turkey in a state of near-hypoglycemia. I wandered into a village shop and spent twenty minutes reading every label, checking the calories, before buying rice crackers and a banana. The shopkeeper looked at me with a stern expression and said, “That’s not enough food for lunch.” I ignored him, taking tiny bites, making the banana last. 

Another time, I hiked to the source of the Ganges at nearly 13,000 feet. Lighthearted, faint, and shaking, I thought I had altitude sickness — until my friend handed me a biscuit. Ten minutes after eating it, I felt fine.

But there were triumphs, too. Drinking yak butter tea in Ladakh and asking for a refill, despite the greasy slick glinting on top. Singing nonsense songs with a friend in a wilderness hut as we tried to stuff as much nutrition as possible into our pots. Eating fondue on a Swiss Alp, surrounded by cow bells. My friend’s pot probably still smells of cheese. Worth it. 

Gradually, the triumphs started to outnumber the slips. Hiking well became more important to me than skipping meals, and so I gave my body what it needed. It helps that there are no mirrors on the trail. Being in nature has a way of making you feel sun-kissed and sexy, even when your hair is a tangled mess and you don’t need a shower so much as a pressure washer. 

Hiking Has Its Own Triggers 

On the other hand, hiking comes with its own form of calorie obsession. On multi-day hikes, you think about food all the time, and you talk about it with your trail friends. People remark on their changing bodies. Many of us have smartwatches that tell us exactly how many calories we have burned. 

The line can get blurry between obsessing over calories burned and obsessing over calories consumed. It can be very triggering for people who have suffered from eating disorders. It is no wonder that people who do a lot of sport often fall into orthorexia, a pathological fixation on healthy eating. 

I want to reach a point where I remove calories consumed from my Garmin and take a more intuitive approach to eating on the trail. I currently use the tracker to motivate myself to eat. But there is a fine line between that and waiting for it to indicate that I “deserve” to eat. I want to let my body lead. Listen to my hunger. I’m not there yet, but I’m walking towards it.

Tips for Hikers with a History of Disordered Eating

Based on what I have learned from hiking while in recovery from an eating disorder, there are a few things I would recommend to anyone in the same situation.

Bring the food you want to eat.

Don’t bring the snacks that you think you should eat on the trail. Bring the things you will actually want to eat, including lots of sugar and salt. Many times, I have avoided bringing what I wanted so that I would be forced to eat healthy foods instead.

But after walking all day, I admit to feeling disappointed in myself. My body had walked all day. She wanted something good. And I had presented her with … trail mix? Really? That’s offensive.

Pre-empt your triggers.

Food and weight will come up on the trail. People will talk about how many calories they are eating. How their bodies are changing. You might see yours change, too. Consider what might trigger you ahead of time and plan some coping strategies that work for you. If you have a therapist, talk it through with them before you leave.

Stay connected to support.

When on a thru-hike, you’ll probably talk to your family and friends less than usual. You might also take a break from regular therapy sessions. If you’ve suffered from an eating disorder or any kind of mental health struggle, it is especially important to remain connected to your support crew. Try to schedule check-ins during resupply stops or rest days.

Look out for signs of relapse.

Use calorie tracking with caution, and keep an eye out for signs of obsessive thinking or relapse. This requires a lot of self-awareness and the ability to be honest with yourself about whether a behavior is becoming harmful.

One of the best ways to do this is to think ahead and work out what warning signs you should be looking out for. This can be based on tell-tale signs of relapse you have experienced in the past — a certain frequency of checking your watch, specific thought patterns that might start returning … whatever it is, take a mental note of it, and keep an eye out. 

Try Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating encourages listening to your body’s cues. Are you hungry? Full? Do you have a particular craving? Rather than focusing on the contents of certain foods, you gradually become tuned to how they make you feel, and to what you need.

When you’re hiking, your body will likely tell you to eat more, and you may experience cravings for sugary or salty foods. That is because you need more calories, and you need to replenish the salt you have sweated out and the glycogen you have consumed.

So listen to those cues. Eat when you’re hungry. Have the chocolate bar. Stop when you’re full. Trust your body. It got you over that mountain. It deserves respect. It demands snicky snacks. 

I don’t know if my tendency towards disordered eating will ever truly disappear, but hiking has definitely helped. I am not scared of food anymore. I love and respect my body enough to give it nourishment, regardless of how many calories I burned that day. 

In fact, I am writing this article in an airport Burger King, eating a Whopper before catching a flight to go hiking in Georgia. I’m excited about walking through the still-snowy valleys of the Caucasus. And I am even more excited to order Adjarian khachapuri — a boat-shaped flatbread filled with gooey cheese, a runny egg yolk, and a knob of butter for good luck. 

I’m not sure if this is what recovery looks like, but it is close. 

US National Alliance for Eating Disorder Helpline (9 a.m. – 7 p.m. EST M-F): 866-662-1235
US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (24/7): Call or text 988 or text ALLIANCE” to 741-741 for free 24/7 support
International resources here