Life isn’t all rainbows, butterflies, and rock climbing

A great writer and friend once told me “the best writing comes when you’re vulnerable”. I gave it a try. She offered up the prompt - when did you say “I’m fine” but really weren’t?

“You sure?” my mom asked. “Yes, I’m fine” I replied as I frantically checked there was no evidence of what I had just done on my shirt or face. “I’m fine.” Repeating that phrase a second time made it no less false. I wasn’t fine. Five minutes earlier I had squatted on my knees over a toilet at the Mexican restaurant. Middle finger shoved down my mouth, I coughed, choked, and puked up the massive burrito I consumed earlier. Tears rolled down my cheeks from the pressure in my chest and head. Probably some caused by shame, sadness, and humiliation too.

My mom and dad weren’t the only ones I lied to about being ok. For eight months, I lied to my roommates, coworkers, brother, and random strangers that may have heard me in the bathroom. Even if they didn’t ask, I said “I’m fine” with my blank stare and gentle smile, all the while holding back anger, frustration, and more tears. In fact, I kept this such a secret fewer than ten people know about this history of mine. Seven years later it’s time to come clean.

I would diagnose the start of my bulimia halfway through sophomore year of college. I was attending the University of Montana. It was Thanksgiving break and I was climbing in the Utah desert. I had just broken up with an amazing girl. I ended the relationship using the stupid cliche “it’s not you, it’s me”. Only in this case it was me. She did nothing wrong.

I have been a climber since early high school. I am not claiming that sport caused my condition, but I do know the climbing community is riddled with eating disorders. It’s a sport that encourages a high strength to weight ratio and often to an unhealthy degree. I obsessively climbed my way through high school. I noted the lighter I got the better I climbed. I walked into college six-foot-one in height and weighing 136 pounds. I took a body-fat test at the University’s gym and it was 2.3%. 3% is considered necessary for survival. At this point, however, things were actually fine. I was happy, climbing my best ever, and loved my new home in Montana.

The summer after freshman year I hooked my dream job. I lived in the Canadian arctic for three months studying polar bears, snow geese, and other arctic flora and fauna. I had no direct communication with the outside world. I could write a letter to my girlfriend that would take three weeks to get to her and then three weeks more to receive a response. I was surrounded by bears, wolves, and beluga whales. I saw the northern lights. I rode in helicopters. I was in heaven. So much in heaven I didn’t realize what the long days of hiking the tundra were doing to me. I arrived back in time for fall semester ten pounds lighter. Ten pounds I didn’t have to lose.

At this point I was receiving comments from friends and family about how skinny I was. “You look like you came from a concentration camp” was a common one. But I let them slide. The comments didn’t get to me because I was climbing my hardest ever. 

Then my body shut down. I lost the energy to finish a standard three hour climbing session. I lost the energy to study. Most frightening, I lost libido. I loved my girlfriend and cared for her but I simply didn’t have the energy to hang out and try. I didn’t want to have sex. I was losing the drive to complete the one thing evolution says is necessary for our species’ survival. The biggest shocker came when I started dry-finishing. My body had quit.

I can’t say one day or one event started my mental spiral. But the culmination of feeling less than enough for my girlfriend, hearing endless comments about how skinny I was, the final break-up, and possibly my body going into survival mode threw my brain overboard. It didn’t all happen 0-60. Like a standard bell curve, my negative thoughts, experiences, and actions grew over time until reaching a threshold that luckily I was able to pull out of. We’ll get to that. 

It started with just a lot of eating. Binge-eating disorder they call it. But not eating the good stuff. My body craved the highest calorie foods that I never used to care for. I ate so much I felt full, sick, and bloated. Weight started to pack on. While I didn’t like it, at first the weight was definitely healthy. I climbed to 150 pounds over the first month. After that it was excess bad weight. By the end of sophomore year I was 190 pounds, hated the way I looked, felt terrible, and couldn’t see an end in sight. I could no longer do the forty consecutive pull-ups I was used to. Now I could barely do ten. I would be so tired and full from over eating I would flake on plans to mountain bike with friends. The crippling effect on my favorite outdoor pursuits heightened the frustration. During that time the binge eating progressed to purging. An action I never thought I was capable of yet soon became a daily event. 

I would puke sometimes after lunch, sometimes after dinner, sometimes both. And if I couldn’t puke I would pass out from feeling full and bloated. I felt helpless. I didn’t know how this would end and I was scared of the ending. But I kept it a secret. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and frightened. I didn’t tell anyone that entire semester. I should have. But my stupid macho, male, self-reliant mentality kept me from it. People would mention my weight gain but always in a positive light. For during this time I was also excessively working out. A failed attempt to offset the weight gain. But to others a sign I was likely in a “bulking” phase at the campus gym. The fact others said nothing negative kept me extra silenced. I buried my feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress through the cover of “getting stronger”. Ironically I only felt weaker. I was falling apart. 

Near the end of the semester a friend told me about Spartan Races. He knew I felt at home in the woods and figured I’d enjoy one. They are organized 5-20 mile trail-run races interspersed with strength-based obstacles. The Spartan organization holds them around the country and in May they were coming to Kalispell, Montana. Not being a runner and being at my lowest physical state in life, I signed up for the shorter five-mile race. I ate too much the night before, felt sick on the run, and was ashamed of my physical abilities. But I had fun. A lot of it. Covered in mud and sweat at the finish line, I felt alive for the first time in months. 

I wish I could say that post-race high ended my struggle with food. Soon after I moved to New Mexico for the summer to work on a mountain lion and mule deer research project. I lived in a broken down ranch house with one other guy for three months. He and I would split up each day to do field work separately. I was practically alone all summer and had lots of downtime. Downtime and no social interaction is not great for someone with an eating disorder. Not to mention our ranch house had a limited supply of food. Binging and purging could spell disaster if we ran out before our next resupply. This summer would be a make or break situation.

Still excited from the last race, I signed up for a 16-mile Spartan Race in Canada. It was incentive to train and turn my life around. It was scheduled for September. I had to be out of the chaos by then. I’d love to say I immediately stopped my bad habits with this new drive. I didn’t and the first month in New Mexico was hard. I binged. I purged. I lied to my boss. I struggled to not destroy the last food in the pantry. But with so much downtime I had a chance to think. Think about what I wanted from life and where I was going. I had time to listen to podcasts. When I wasn’t working with the lions and deer or catching rattlesnakes, I would listen to Spartan Race and other fitness podcasts. 

And next I started working out. I used a Spartan Race 30-day challenge fitness routine. My boss would come home and I was sweating. I would do pull-ups on the radio tower, sit-ups using the edge of the couch after checking for rattlesnakes underneath first, and push-ups in my room. I coughed from the flies that my heavy breathing would suck into my throat. I ran miles on the dirt road leading to the house. I carried a 15 gallon water jug up local hills. It took awhile but for the first time in six months I saw a change in my body for the better. It felt good. I was addicted. 

Fast forward through the summer. I was 180 pounds. Still high for me but I had turned it from fat weight to muscle weight. I felt fit and relatively happy and my purging episodes were decreasing. At the height, three times a day was normal. Now it was maybe once a week. I was on the downslope of that bell-curve, or so I hoped. 

My parents flew to Albuquerque to join me on my road trip back to Montana. Travel is a main way my family bonds and we love the open road together. I was so happy to see my parents, recall stories from the summer, and show them the antlers and arrowheads I found in the desert. 

Then it was dinner time. Sitting at that Mexican restaurant was the first time in three months I had access to endless food options again. I ordered too much and ate too fast. I felt the negative thoughts coming back. I stood up from the table and went to the bathroom to “pee”. I had reverted. I took a U-turn and was climbing back up the bell-curve.

Maybe because I took awhile my mom asked “are you ok?”. “Yes, I’m fine” I replied. I wasn’t. I was so filled with guilt from what I had just done. More so, I was scared. Scared that maybe the positive change was only possible in the isolated desert conditions of New Mexico. Was this roadtrip heading me straight back to disaster as I re-enter society? 

I arrived in Montana. Seeing my friends again was incredible. The new classes and new housing gave me a sense of change. My world could be different and I could be different. It was a new start and I wasn’t going to let my old, negative habits enter this new life. I didn’t want to lose the progress I had gained in summer. Plus that Spartan Race was a month away. My purging didn’t end but I resisted the climb back up the bell-curve and thankfully returned to forward progress. 

Late September came and I drove alone 14 hours to Kamloops, British Colombia. Two days before the race I came down with my first head cold in over a year. It didn’t phase me. If I could overcome a huge mental sickness I could crush this physical one. I drank gallons of water and spoon fed myself garlic on that drive. 

Race day came. My head cold subsided. I was in heat two. The first “normal” heat of runners after the 200 or so “elite” runners took off. The gun fired. I ran. 

I largely blacked out during most of this race and don’t remember much. My body felt great though. I climbed my way to the front of my group and soon found myself performing obstacles with the “elite” heat runners that left earlier. I crossed the finish line 16 miles and 5000ft of vertical gain later. Endorphins flooded my body. I felt the high, elation, and euphoria I had experienced with the first race. Not knowing anyone there I gave myself a high five and started changing out of my muddy, wet clothes. 

As I was draining water from my shoes a lady approached me. She was a race official and asked, “are you Neil Moore?”. “Yes”, I replied and she proceeded to tell me out of the 2000+ racers, including the “elites”, I placed 5th. I hadn’t noticed because 40 people crossed the finish line in front of me but they had also started 15 minutes earlier. I had qualified for the Obstacle Course Race (OCR) world championship. 

No words can really describe the surprise and elation that overcame me. Simply put, I was proud. Proud of myself. Proud of everything I had conquered that summer. The 5th place finish was just a topping on a larger mountain of accomplishments. I drove the 14 hours home straight in one push through the night. I was wide awake running on the high of feeling amazing again. 

Back in the states I never over ate again. I never purged. I felt healthy, fit, and happy. I felt in control of my brain. That race marked the end of my fight with bulimia. 

People ask why I have a modified Spartan Race logo as a tattoo. “Those races took me out of hard time in college” is my usually response. I could never dive into such a story during a short conversation. But now you know. People ask why I am always so happy, positive, and energetic. It’s not that I don’t feel negative emotions. Of course I do. But I reached such a rock bottom during that year in college that everything now seems miniscule. I know how unhappy, frustrated, and scared I can be. My worst days now don’t begin to compare to what I dealt with during that fight. I wake up every morning feeling thankful for this new life and it’s hard not to smile every day.

I saw a cliche poster recently with a film camera and under it read “we evolve from the negatives”. I believe it. During the ordeal I would have paid my life’s savings to end it. Now I am glad it happened. I don’t wish the experience on anyone but I am grateful I went through it. I learned so much about myself. I learned how to overcome life’s obstacles. I learned how to take control of my future. Do I wish I tackled it differently? Yes. I should have been more vocal and asked for help early. Everyone’s road to recovery is different. But we can all benefit from the love and care of our friends and family. Humans are a social species like wolves and we need our “pack”. We aren’t meant to deal with life’s issues alone. Speak up and get help. Don’t be a selfish, scared asshole like I was. 

I am more fit and healthy than I was before the experience. Sure, I can’t climb the hard routes I used to. But my body is healthier and working properly. 40 consecutive pull-ups may not happen anymore. But now I can pack-out elk and moose, hike endless miles, and complete long alpine ascents my past frail self couldn’t. Plus, with my added insulation, I am warmer during winter. 

Today, you may see me not eat for 16 hours. Or maybe I’ll gorge 3000 calories after a long backcountry climb, ski, or hunt. Don’t worry. It’s not binge eating disorder. It’s not anorexia. And I am not purging. It is me listening to my body. A skill I used to take for granted but now I feel like I’ve learned and earned. Ask me if I am ok and I may respond “I’m fine”. More likely I’ll say “I’m great!”. This time I mean it though. And if I am not ok, I promise I won’t lie to you.