BITE BY BITE | Honest Conversations About Eating Disorder Recovery

36. how downhill MTB saved me from my eating disorder with Ashleigh Erickson

BITE BY BITE | Honest Conversations About Eating Disorder Recovery

Show Notes

In this episode, your host Kait is joined by Ashleigh Erickson to talk about the role downhill mountain biking played in their eating disorder recovery. Throughout the episode they discuss how mountain biking has played a crucial role in their recovery, emphasizing the importance of community, support, and the joy of riding. The conversation explores the parallels between mountain biking and recovery, highlighting the significance of calculated risks, nourishment, and celebrating progress, not perfection. Through their stories, they aim to inspire others to embrace their journeys and find freedom in both biking and recovery. Episode takeaways: Mountain biking can be a powerful tool for recovery.

Community support is essential in overcoming challenges.

Recovery is a messy process, much like learning to ride.

Calculated risks in recovery can lead to significant breakthroughs.

Finding joy in movement is crucial for mental health.

Nourishing the body is vital for both biking and recovery.

Fear can be a motivator for growth and progress.

Celebrating small victories is important in recovery.

The biking community is often more accepting than other fitness communities.

Sharing experiences can help others feel less alone in their struggles.

Episode guest: Ashleigh is a lifelong lover of bikes who battled an eating disorder from her teens to early 30s. While certain genres of biking have played a role in her eating disorder, she found downhill and enduro style mountain biking have given her a passion to heal her relationship with exercise. She found the purpose she has been pursuing when she and her now husband opened a small bike shop that largely specializes in downhill and enduro mountain bikes Connect with Kait 👉🏼 @bitebybiterecovery 👉🏼 bitebybiterecovery.org 👉🏼 Book your FREE Discovery Call for 1:1 recovery coaching 🍒 Recovery resources Affiliate Links COMFRT FIND THE GOOD

More from BITE BY BITE | Honest Conversations About Eating Disorder Recovery

Jul 2, 2026

Welcome back to the Recovery Companion Series. 🎉 In this episode, Kait and Eric tackle one of the most frustrating and damaging misconceptions in eating disorder treatment → the idea that weight restoration equals recovery. Kait shares the moment she was discharged from partial hospitalization in 2016 because insurance stopped paying, and what the years that followed actually looked like. Together they unpack why basing discharge and treatment access on weight alone leaves so many people without the support they actually need and why that gap is a system failure, not a personal one. They also challenge the language around recovery, what it actually means to be recovered versus recovering, and why you can struggle with any eating disorder at any size. This is the conversation the treatment world needs to have.

Jun 16, 2026

In this milestone solo episode, Kait marks 50 episodes of Bite by Bite with a real talk about where the podcast is headed, what her coaching looks like now, and the thing she actually came here to say, the most common objections she hears from people on the edge of choosing recovery, and what is really behind them. Kait has heard them all. She has said them all. And in this episode she breaks down what each one actually means when you strip away the eating disorder voice, and why none of them mean what you think they mean. This episode marks the end of Season One. Bite by Bite will return September 1st, 2026 with Season 2.

Jun 9, 2026

Join Kait and Taylor Angelise, registered nutritionist and eating disorder recovery advocate, as they have a conversation that is long overdue. The profound and scientifically backed overlap between eating disorders and addiction. From compulsive behavior and dopamine-driven cycles to isolation, secrecy, and relapse rates, Taylor and Kait break down why these two struggles share so much more than anyone in traditional treatment is acknowledging. In the episode, they also get personal, sharing their own experiences with the way one coping mechanism can quietly replace another when the root cause goes unaddressed. This episode also tackles the hard truth about finding the right provider, why the wrong one can make things worse, and why advocating for yourself, even when you feel like you don't deserve to, might be the most important thing you do in recovery. This is one of the conversations the treatment world isn't really having yet. Until now.

Jun 4, 2026

Welcome back to the Recovery Companion Series. 🎉 In this episode Kait and her co-host, Eric, sit down for an honest, unfiltered conversation about what trusting the process in eating disorder recovery actually means and why the phrase alone often does more harm than good. They break down why resistance to the process is valid, how to find the parts of recovery you can actually buy into, and why showing up even when you're only 2% in still counts as progress. They also explore the all-or-nothing thinking that makes trusting the process feel impossible, and offer a reframe that makes it feel a little more human and a lot less overwhelming. No toxic positivity. No empty reassurance. Just two recovery coaches with lived experience telling you the truth about what this process actually looks like from the inside.

Jun 2, 2026

📞 Interested in 1:1 recovery coaching? ⁠CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ⁠

See all episodes →