White first became aware of this phenomenon in the late 1980s, when she was leading therapy groups for women recovering from eating disorders and became frustrated with her inability to help her clients become physically active.

"I finally threw up my hands and just listened," she says. "What I heard was a litany of painful experiences associated with exercise ranging from humiliation to sexual abuse." Exercise resistance often began in puberty, White found, when girls' enjoyment of the thrill of play changed to embarrassment at being ogled when they moved.

"This kind of unwanted attention, and sometimes abuse, literally paralyzed them," she says. "Some women don't want the attention that comes from looking like a model in Shape magazine, so resisting exercise can be an attempt to control their body."

Never Good Enough
Many women also voiced anger or sadness at feeling they were never good enough at sports. These women linked exercise with a performance standard--and an appearance standard--that was impossible for them to meet. "Exercise became a kind of self-betrayal," says White. "They refused to participate in something that hurt them so deeply."

White focuses her work on women because most of her clients are female, but she says men can be exercise resistant, too. "Men's reasons for resistance tend to be different," she says. "It's usually less about sexuality and more about feeling inadequate in light of male cultural expectations of athleticism."