Is it possible to be addicted to exercise?
Let me start off by saying that exercise is NOT inherently a bad thing. Getting out, moving your body, lifting weights, spinning, biking, running, hiking, Crossfitting, or bending yourself into a yogic preztel–whatever your poison, what truly matters is the dose.
The difference between committing to your sport/training/gym routine and having an addiction is the psychological and physical dependence that begins to occur when you overdo it–and when your exercise begins to take precedence over everything else in your life.
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Like an alcoholic who can’t stop at just one drink, an exercise addict can’t stop at just one hour. Or just three days a week. Or just one trip to the gym a day. It’s not just about “getting thin” or getting in shape”–exercise becomes the entire system by which you define your values and achievements.
And you don’t have to have an eating disorder in order to develop an unhealthy addiction to exercise, although the two can go hand in hand.
So how do you know if you or someone you love is addicted to exercise? If you can answer the following questions “yes,” then it might be time to seek help.
- I can’t take a rest day–other people can, but I need to work out.
- If I don’t exercise, I am irritable, depressed, or angry all day.
- It’s impossible for me to rest–I need to be constantly moving.
- I’m tired/exhausted all the time, but working out gives me the shot of energy I need to keep going.
- I’m an athlete or I’m training for a competition/race/etc., but I feel like I need to exercise even more than what’s prescribed in my training regimen.
- I can’t go out with my friends at night/have a social life/do anything with you this weekend because it interferes with my workout.
- My relationships come second to the weight room/my yoga studio/my running shoes/etc.
- Exercise is better than sex.
- I’ve stopped getting my period, my bone density is low, and I’m starting to obsess about food/weight/body comp. (i.e. the symptoms of Female Athlete Triad)
- I don’t have a problem with exercise–the only problem I have is your problem with my exercise. (I’m becoming very defensive of my habits, and I feel like I have to hide them from people who are confronting me about the frequency of my workouts.)
- I define myself by my accomplishments in the gym/on the track/at the yoga studio–they determine my value.
Basically, if you can define your current exercise status as reminiscent of the quotes on a fitspo image, you might want to take another look at how you’re using exercise in your life. Remember that post about how fitspo and alcoholism have the same message?
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And just as with alcoholism and with eating disorders, exercise addiction can have some serious physical repercussions. At a certain point, you can actually exercise yourself weak. Here are some of the awful things that too much exercise can do to your body:
- Adrenal exhaustion (You feel tired until you get the cortisol spike from working out)
- Osteopenia or osteoporosis (You lose a little or a lot of bone density and are more likely to fracture something)
- Loss of muscle strength/performance
- Decreased testosterone (Sex becomes undesirable)
- Amenorrhea (You stop getting your period)
- Immunosuppression (You get sick more often)
- Inability to concentrate
- Depression, anxiety, compulsive behaviors
- Disordered eating
I can personally attest to the fact that exercise addiction, well, to put it in scientific terms: sucks. It’s what kicked off my final relapse with ED—back in the days when everything Tosca Reno said was the gospel, and all I wanted was to become one of Oxygen Magazine’s “Future of Fitness” features. (By the way, Oxygen, you can really stop sending me those “resubscribe” notices now…)
I started exercising to impress my then-boyfriend, but when I didn’t get results as quickly as I wanted, I increased the intensity, duration, and frequency of all of my workouts. It was a pretty quick spiral, but in the course of three months, I had become tired, irritable, angry, determined to drop out of my grad program because it interfered with my gym schedule, prone to crying for no reason on the subway, unable to get close to the people in my program because going out meant potentially missing my morning workout…and, worst of all, my sex hormones all but stopped working, so a few days before I was supposed to fly out to see my boyfriend, I broke up with him. I couldn’t handle the idea of him even seeing my body. And, of course, it was at that moment I decided to recommit to my calorie restriction and manipulation in order to get the body I wanted.
Look, exercise is a wonderful thing. I love it. I love squats and deadlifts. Bikram yoga is amazing. MovNat is exhilarating. Running is meditative. Whether you prefer Ironmans or lifting up heavy things and putting them back down, exercise is a beautiful part of a balanced lifestyle.
The key is balance. Once you find that you’re unable to manage your life because it’s getting in the way of your exercise, I really encourage you to seek help.
In today’s podcast, we interview Katherine Schreiber, who has experienced exercise addiction firsthand—and is now writing a book about it.
Whether or not you or a loved one is struggling with an exercise dependence, you’ll want to give this one a listen. At the very least, you’ll find out why you shouldn’t keep bananas in your bag.
Go Listen Now!
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And if you ARE suffering and aren’t sure where to turn, let me know. I’m happy to help support you in taking the first steps to get help!
Stay hungry,
[Signs & symptoms adapted from the MonteNido treatment center website]
The post UN-Podcast 040: Am I Addicted to Exercise? appeared first on In My Skinny Genes.