The REDs Recovery Rollercoaster
by Constant Wiederkehr
My name is Constant and I’m a 25-year-old amateur runner from France. My journey with REDs and an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise has been far from smooth, but it’s shaped who I am today.
It all began when I was a young road cyclist. I wasn’t particularly talented, but having started later than my peers, I was determined to make up for lost time. After a couple of fun years in the sport, I decided to get serious and enlisted the help of a respected coach. He agreed to mentor me, and after completing my first ever lab test, he told me I had potential. He said I would "fly" if I could drop a few kilos. His intentions weren’t bad, and I did have much to learn about nutrition. But looking back now, I realise I was already a powerful cyclist. With patience and a few more years of consistent training, things would have fallen into place naturally.
In the cycling world, we were often told that "lighter is faster," and it wasn’t uncommon to judge ourselves based on weight or appearance. With nothing to hide under the thin layer of lycra, it was easy to feel inadequate, and when I discovered how restricting my food intake affected my weight and appearance, I became very dedicated about it. I pushed my training to volumes I had never reached before and started cutting out all the foods I had labeled as "bad." Within three months, I had lost around 10 kilos.
At first, I was proud of the numbers on the scale and the power meter. But what I didn’t realise was how much damage I was doing. I became single-minded about cycling, overly restrictive with food, and isolated myself from others by doing all my training alone.
My coach’s scientific, performance-focused plan ignored two essential components of success: health and longevity.
My first race of the season ended with a bad crash. The disappointment, combined with my restrictive eating, triggered my first ever binge eating episode. I was starving myself every day, always thinking about food, and occasionally bingeing on massive amounts of "junk" food I normally avoided. I felt helpless and unable to control this destructive, but entirely logical, behaviour. It was exhausting.
Each morning, I would wake up determined to eat "perfectly" and train hard to undo the damage and burn off the excess calories. avoided. I remember the helplessness of not being able to control this destructive (but logical) behaviour and how exhausting it was to endure these episodes. Despite this, I would wake up the next day, resolve to eat "perfectly," and train hard to burn off the excess calories. This cycle continued for years, until I could no longer handle the pressure, and I decided to quit racing.
That marked the beginning of a long road to recovery. I sought professional help, but I wasn’t happy being told by some therapists that my drive for performance was the problem, or those who believed I could be "fixed" simply by being told to eat more. When I discovered an eating disorder clinic in my town, I felt hopeful, but as is the case for many others too, I was told I wasn’t "ill enough" to receive treatment.
So, I did my own research and started to understand that I could binge less by eating more. I also learned that my attempts to control every detail of my training and diet were ways of coping with deeper psychological issues. Interestingly, I found help through social media, which had often been a source of trouble. Through a connection with a member of an eating disorder nutrition clinic, I was able to start gradually letting go of the rigid food rules I had created.
Since then, things have moved in the right direction. I’ve become a better-functioning human being. I’ve found my drive to run again and most importantly, I’ve rediscovered how fun it was when I first started. I’ve even started advocating for eating disorder recovery and sustainable training on my blog.
But recovery isn’t linear. While I’ve mostly healed my relationship with food, my struggles with overtraining and rest persist. My identity is still deeply tied to being an athlete, and while that’s not always a bad thing, it can make finding balance difficult.
The good news? I’ve made peace with imperfection. Recovery is an ongoing process, and I’ve learned to embrace the journey, not just the destination.
If there’s anything I’d like you to take away from my experience, it’s this:
You are enough, you have enough
Your desire to achieve a certain result or weight may hide a deeper need for self-worth. But this is a dangerous game. Even among the best of us, how many have struggled when they realized the achievement they worked so hard for didn’t bring the satisfaction they craved?
Educate yourself
Be open-minded, but don’t blindly accept everything you’re told. You have the right to ask questions and disagree, especially in complex fields like training, nutrition, and recovery. Everyone has different beliefs and opinions, but the truth is that we still don’t know everything.
Change follows action
Action is the scariest but most essential part of recovery. Take baby steps, one foot after the other, and work to free yourself from the rules you’ve created. Only by doing this can you reduce the intensity of your fears. Accept where you are and learn to enjoy the journey.
Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space
"In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." – Viktor Frankl. This quote beautifully captures the fact that, even as you recover, negative thoughts might creep in. But you don’t have to engage with them. Fill that space with a breath, a mantra, or a call to a friend. Over time, you’ll gain freedom from the patterns that hold you back.
Above all, know this: you are not alone. Whoever you are, and where ever you are on your journey, there is hope.
