Measuring exercise in eating disorder patients: a Delphi study to aggregate clinical and research knowledge.

Exercise is an important feature of most eating disorders. Researchers have found that people with an eating disorder exercise because they feel driven to do so, or because it helps them cope with negative emotions. This type of exercise is called 'compulsive exercise', and it can have detrimental physical and mental effects. There is some disagreement in the literature about how to define compulsive exercise, and there are many ways to measure and treat it. The aim of this study is to collect expert researchers' and clinicians' views of compulsive exercise, and elicit suggestions regarding how to reliably measure this behaviour in order to promote consensus in the field.