'Lifetime' Spotlights Local Woman, Eating Disorders

Lifelong Lake Forest resident Terri Lynn Cole was recently featured in the nationally televised premier episode of "Starving Secrets with Tracey Gold," a Lifetime show that showcases the plight of women suffering from eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

Terri, like host Tracey Gold, has recovered from an adolescent eating disorder and as a clinical exercise physiologist now works with those patients in their journey towards recovery. During the premier episode, Terri is shown providing metabolic testing and body composition analysis for Melissa, one of the show's primary patients, at a Lake Forest eating disorder treatment program. The episode aired Dec. 2. [Click here to watch the entire episode.]

Lake Forest Patch: Will you share a little bit about your personal fight with disordered eating as a young woman?  

Terri Lynn Cole: I went on my first diet when I was 8 years old when we moved to California from Texas. Other kids teased me, saying that I was "short, fat and ugly and waddled like a duck." I joined gymnastics and began starving myself with a vengeance and over-exercising by the time I was in the sixth grade. In the eighth grade I became a compulsive overeater and gained lots of weight. An innocent remark from a family member about my weight the summer before ninth grade was enough to trigger my anorexia again. I ran track and starved myself down to 101.5 pounds (at 5 feet, 2 ½ inches tall).

Lake Forest Patch: How did your eating disorder affect you?

Cole: My weight would fluctuate a full 20 pounds throughout high school and college depending on my eating and exercise behaviors. I was what’s called an athletic bulimic—I purged my calories through compulsive over-exercising rather than through vomiting. I believe this was fueled in part by an endocrine disorder called polycystic ovarian syndrome that I have struggled with since I was 12. Up to 67 percent of bulimics test positive for PCOS.

Lake Forest Patch: How did you recover?  

Cole: Finally, near the end of completing my bachelor’s degree I got sick and tired of having an eating disorder. It was all-consuming and it defined my days, whether or not I had a "good" day or a "bad" day was defined by the number on the scale. I was finally at a place where I was sick and tired of having to think about what I could or could not eat, how many hours of exercise I would need to do to compensate for what I ate, and/or defining my self-worth based on my clothing size. I decided to educate myself and learn how to do things the right way so I went back to school and got my master's [degree] in kinesiology. 

Lake Forest Patch: How did that experience influence your career choice?

Cole: I now work with women who struggle with eating and exercise disorders and/or PCOS. It made me want to help people get things right. I’m not trying to be right, or important … my goal is to be useful and help other people get things right for themselves, too.

Lake Forest Patch: How did you get involved with the Starving Secrets show?

Cole: I was working as an independent consultant at an eating disorder clinic where [patient] Melissa was brought for treatment.

Lake Forest Patch: What was it like working with show host Tracey Gold?

Cole: Tracey is an amazing, down-to-earth, very caring and concerned person who also wants to help people get things right and find lasting recovery. 

Lake Forest Patch: What was it like filming the episode?

Cole: It was definitely interesting working as a part of a series. Hours of filming over the course of several months went into the production but only a small portion of that actually made it onto TV. I’ve been on the news before with Lori Corbin when I won a national PTA healthy lifestyles grant in 2009 [but] that was much different than being a part of something bigger.

Lake Forest Patch: Could you share some tips for young women and men about how have a healthy relationship with food and exercise? 

Cole: I highly recommend an Intuitive Eating approach (this phrase and the IE movement were coined and made popular by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in their book Intuitive Eating).

When it comes to exercise, you have to get enough without getting too much. Most people are unaware that both over and under-exercising cause some of the exact same negative health consequences, which includes osteoporosis and loss of muscle mass. Two weeks of complete bed rest for example are as detrimental to bone mass as the equivalent amount of time spent in outer space. So, according to research and statistics by NASA, lying around just doing nothing is the same thing as going to the moon! At the opposite extreme, the average 24-year-old female marathon runner has the bone density of a 54-year-old woman due to the constant, repetitive over-training, according to research and statistics by Dr. Barbara Drinkwater.

You have to find the right balance, getting enough exercise without getting too much. I’m tackling a lot of the myths associated with exercise in my upcoming book Fit, Fat, or Just Plain Full of It? It will give people a picture of how much exercise they need without under- or over-doing it.