THRU-HIKING BULIMIC TENDENCIES

In November of last year I got it into my head that I had to complete a long distance thru-hike over the summer. I was at an all time low due to a combination of family and personal issues and it felt as if my life was crumbling around me. Every day I made it out of bed felt like a miracle and I was desperate for change. I came to the conclusion that only some drastic event could turn my life around and get me out of the downward spiral I’d fallen into. I had to take action to save my own life because no one else could.

“Drastic” was the operative term here. I enjoyed day hiking and loved nature but I was a city girl with zero experience in backpacking or even camping. I’d been inspired by Cheryl Strayed’s memoir “Wild,” years before and had the Pacific Crest Trail on my bucket list ever since. So at first the PCT was what I had in mind: the 2,650 mile trek from the Mexican border to the Canadian one through California, Oregon, and Washington. I romanticized how glorious five months hiking through deserts, forests, and mountains alone would be and how I’d develop a most profound connection to nature and completely heal all my troubles. Somehow I felt like the solution to all the loneliness and isolation I’d felt in recent months would be to actually isolate myself - maybe making it real could fix it, because the distance I felt between myself and loved ones was not tangible. Maybe a tangible distance could force me to find my way back to them and to a version of myself that I recognized and liked.

Despite this romanticization and my desperation for a major change, I realized that hiking the PCT was likely completely unreasonable. As much as disappearing out of my life for five months appealed to me and seemed like a great solution for escaping from my problems, I recognized that completing this hike with zero experience was probably impossible. The logistics of having to start in May to finish by September (“before the snow flies” in Washington) were also problematic. It seemed unfathomable that I’d make it through my final semester at dance school in my burnt out condition, but I also couldn’t bear the thought of missing graduation and final performances in June and the disappointment it would surely provide my parents.

Luckily, through my first dabbling in PCT research I discovered the John Muir Trail, also known by its indigenous name, Nüümü Poyo, meaning “The People’s Trail.” The JMT is a much shorter hike, only 211 miles, through the Eastern Sierras in California, overlapping the PCT for much of its length. It takes most people 3-4 weeks to complete and while it was still a very ambitious goal, it seemed much more doable. I’m quite headstrong and easily get attached to ideas so I quickly became fixated on this one - I was determined to complete it that summer.

The trip required lots of planning and research, especially due to my lack of experience, and my google search engine quickly became accustomed to the types of articles I was looking at. At some point an article called “Thru-hiking gave me body dysmorphia,” popped up. I scrolled past it as quickly as possible. My relationship with my body was one of the things that was completely broken during this time. It had fluctuated between bad and worse for years through all my dance training and the challenge of the pandemic but I precisely despised my body at this point. I’d see it in the mirror during class and be filled with disgust. Dancing felt impossible - how could I do anything technically challenging or artistically compelling if all I could feel was a deep, painful self-hatred. So I didn't want to hear anything about how a thru-hike could negatively impact my body image. I didn’t want to hear anything that might counter my hope - hope that I could improve my life, turn it around, “fix” my relationship with my body.

I had already read that you can gain weight back quickly after a thru-hike because of the way your body adapts to the intense exercise and that it would even be likely that you gain more weight than you lost on the hike. The craving for calories may persist even when the exercise has ceased and the body also learns to store fat more quickly. This information made me briefly, but intensely, question my whole decision to hike the JMT, which I’d been planning for months by then. It was just like when I was considering college options and had done all this research to figure out which conservatory I thought would be the best fit. When I discovered that at my top choice I wouldn’t have a kitchen for the first two years, I nearly changed my mind solely for that reason. The prospect of not being able to control everything I was eating terrified me. Unavoidable weight gain instilled a similar sort of fear in me.

Leading up to my trip I continued running despite the sharp pain of runner’s knee on my left side because I felt that getting the cardio in was critical, especially during the summer when my body would be more exposed and the voice of disordered eating was louder than usual. I believed it to be of greater importance than my physical wellness - absolutely ridiculous considering the 220 mile, 45,000 foot elevation gain hike I was about to take up. But the cardio felt necessary for me for weight loss/maintenance.

And I did go into the JMT thinking that it would help me repair my relationship with my body. I also went into it hoping that it would lead to me losing weight and then I’d have the perfect summer body for the beach once I got back to the city - my sick thinking persisted. I’m not sure why I was convinced of the former when I was going in with this thinking in the back of my mind, but I do have to admire my brain in its ability to believe two conflicting ideas simultaneously. What I didn’t realize was how much the activities and culture of thru-hiking would be an extension of my already bulimic tendencies.

This is not to say that I didn’t find any healing on my trip. I did feel such a relief in the removal of my body from any aesthetic purpose: what it had been for years in the dance world and regular life as a young woman. And there were no mirrors in sight! What joy! I couldn’t constantly check how my body looked, which I did religiously at home and in the studio. Now my body was purely functional: its purpose was to hike up and down, up and down every day, and I’d fuel it with food to help it complete this function. There was beauty in that simplicity.

I also had to admire the incredible strength of my body. It was carrying me 10-20 miles a day through steep terrain with a heavy pack. The quads that I’d been told were “over-developed” by my dance teachers - not what one wants aesthetically in a modern dance or ballet body - were the strong muscles that allowed me to hike over passes without damaging my joints. How amazing is that! I discovered that my body had value beyond its visual aesthetic - the function of it was also equally valuable.

And when I took a side hike out to Lake South America and finally skinny dipped I felt like a beautiful nature goddess: connected to and of the earth. And if I had come from this beautiful earth that left me in awe each day, the beauty I possessed must also be awe-inspiring. Everything from the softness of my body, its rigid muscles, my ashy legs and too-tan skin were included in this immense beauty. Loving the landscape gave me a love of myself, which was the opposite of the desire that had grown so strong during the past months: to be able to escape my physical existence, to disappear.

But there were difficult aspects, too. Ones that outweighed that which was healing for me. At the height of my disordered eating during the pandemic I’d binge on food and then purge it, not by making myself sick, but by hardly eating for a day after that and then doing some intense, trendy “fasted cardio” workout that would leave me light-headed. I felt satisfied when my limbs were tingling and my vision was black around the edges. And I thought this was good, proper.

I no longer had severe binges and purges like that - getting back to a regular schedule and dancing for hours a day again proved that to be unsustainable (thank goodness), but the way I treat exercise is still with that punitive mindset and purging intention. I’d changed a lot of my actions but the disordered eating voices were still so loud and controlled much of my actions. So I let myself exercise a lot even when I knew I wasn’t doing it in a healthy way - the voices were too loud to fight, it was easier to surrender. Besides, exercise in itself couldn’t be nearly as bad as making yourself sick was - that’s how I rationalized it, at least.

And the trail mimicked this. Exercising for hours each day, especially in the steep sierras where you’d be gaining and then losing thousands of feet of elevation, is intense physical activity. It requires you to consume a lot of calories. And when you get to a hiker stop for resupply or to take a zero day where you don’t hike at all, you’d binge on the milkshakes, burgers, ice cream, and pie they had there, knowing it would be fine because you’d be back to hiking 15 miles in the heat the next day, purging all those calories away.

There was also the idea of consuming food only as fuel, not to enjoy it or for any other reason, which was an idea that had made me establish healthy eating restrictions, only eating food that would support my dancing body. But of course there are reasons other than energy to eat! Food plays a major role in culture and social activities and it’s something that should be enjoyed - it is so much more than just calories! - a major revelation to my disordered mindset but not one that I could fully accept yet.

Many of the blogs I consulted to plan for my trip when I was figuring out my resupplies and how much food I’d need each day suggested calorie counting. But calorie counting was such a dreaded, triggering activity for me. It took me back to when I’d shamefully record everything I’d eaten in a day, so I dismissed it and just made sure I had 3 meals, 2 snacks, and 1 sweet thing a day, assuming that would surely be sufficient.

During the first half of my hike, it was more than enough. The altitude left me with little appetite and I even ended up ditching the trail mix in my first resupply box because I’d hardly touched the one I started off with. This was before my “hiker hunger” kicked in and opened up like a bottomless pit inside me. Unfortunately, my final resupply was for the last 11 days of my hike which meant cramming 11 days worth of food into my required bear canister - nearly impossible. So I eliminated most of my snacks because they simply could not fit.

During that last stretch I wished so badly that I could get back the gallon ziploc bag of trail mix that I had left at Red’s Meadow. I still had my 3 meals a day with an extra bar for “second breakfast.” I certainly had enough food to survive but I was constantly hungry and always unsatisfied after a meal. I know I was not replacing all the calories I was losing in a day. And there was nothing I could do about it - not if I wanted to have enough food for the coming days. This was a strange, new sensation for me. I was used to being able to stand in front of the fridge to conduct strange binges of a weird assortment of foods: olives, croutons, dark chocolate covered almonds, spoonfuls of jam if I was desperate for something sweet but didn’t have it. I would shovel the food into my mouth blindly, the minutes passing by without my knowledge, and when I’d come out of this numbing daze I was left with an upset stomach, disgusted by myself and feeling thick with shame.

But I didn’t have that, it wasn’t even an option. It felt so strange to be truly hungry and unsatisfied in a caloric sense rather than feeling the need to stress eat for a more emotional satisfaction. But the feeling of hunger did give me some satisfaction. I thought, “Well now I’ll definitely lose weight like I wanted to.” How interesting to know how problematic the way you’re thinking is but be powerless to change it.

To further worsen my thinking about my body and how it might change was other hikers’ talk. I distinctly remember sitting around the campfire in the hiker-catered resort, VVR, when the conversation shifted to how people felt their bodies had changed and how much weight they would gain once they got back to their normal lives. One woman even said she’d made an appointment with a nutritionist the week she expected to get home in anticipation of it.

And this topic made sense of course, we’d all just eaten the ridiculously large dinner portion they serve there which is catered to us hungry thru-hikers: our zero day binge, but it instilled more anxiety in me about what it would be like when I got back, how my body would change back into something that disgusted me so quickly. And I felt disappointed towards the end of my trip because I didn’t feel like my body had thinned out the way I’d expected it to.

When I finished my hike and got to the town of Lone Pine, the first thing I did after washing my hands thoroughly in the bathroom of a pizzeria was lift up my shirt and look at my belly from the side in the mirror. To my disappointment it wasn’t a flat six-pack I had, there was still a pouch of fat there. And doing that immediately once I had a mirror again showed me that not much had changed at all in terms of how I thought about and valued my body.

The whole first week of my return to the real world involved so much eating - I of course wanted to indulge in all the foods I had missed on the trail and all my friends and family wanted to take me out and treat me, insisting I get dessert, too. And I wasn’t exercising - I was trying to let my body recover from the three weeks of vigorous activity. I tried to quiet the anxiety that was going off in the back of my mind and just enjoy my restful “transitioning back to real life” week.

I’ve since returned to a more regular routine: exercising regularly and eating more healthy, but I am aware that not much has changed in terms of my relationship to food and my body. I think the trip was mostly healing short-term - after all, life on the trail is so different from my regular life - the long-term effects were very small, like the tiniest beginnings of progress. I’ve taken up running 2-4 miles most days, partially because I’m antsy now that I’m no longer hiking all day, but also because it is still a method of purging for me. It feels like a cleanse, as if I can “delete” the food I’ve eaten. And I run despite the way it makes my knees and ankles ache and how this may affect my career in dance.

So what I’ve learned is that it’s not so simple. Completing the JMT did provide me with a strong sense of accomplishment and confidence as well as a greater sense of the value of my body beyond visual aesthetics. I feel more prepared to take on life’s challenges, but it didn’t “fix” my life for me. I learned so much and discovered that some of the answers I’d been seeking could be found within - not as some divine revelation whispered to me from the mountains, once again contrasting the visions of grandeur I’d had for the journey. The trail parallels life: up and down and taking you around corners and to places you’d never expect - nothing is simple and easy. Perhaps the trail was a small first step to healing and if nothing else, gave me tools to keep working towards it.

Kai McCoy was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York where she currently lives. When she's not writing she enjoys hiking, dancing, and reading.