Exercise Addiction Explained
Both medical experts and the media stress the importance of exercise and its beneficial effects on people’s health. In addition to improving one’s mood, staying active and doing sports is crucial for bone and muscle health and the functioning of vital organs.
Knowing all this, it might surprise you to hear that physical activity can, in fact, be harmful. Namely, exercise addiction is a serious compulsive disorder. As such, it can be detrimental to your mental and physical health and reduce the quality of your life.
Exercise Addiction – Help and Support
In essence, people suffering from exercise addiction have a frequent, unstoppable need to exercise. As a result, they take part in physical activities to such an extent that it becomes a health risk. In these situations, the joy of exercising and all its positive effects become overshadowed by psychological reliance. In addition to its psychological effects, affected individuals often suffer illness and injuries.
Exercise addiction often affects those whose jobs or hobbies entail intense and regular workouts, like runners or triathletes. In addition to them, people who struggle with eating disorders are especially vulnerable. So, although exercise addiction can exist on its own, it often coincides with bulimia, anorexia, and other similar disorders.
Fortunately, exercise dependency is treatable. If you or your loved ones are struggling with a compulsive urge to exercise, it’s important to seek help. At AddictionRehab, we offer extensive dependency treatment programmes, applying knowledge gained from years of experience in treating addiction.
When starting the treatment, you’ll first undergo a free assessment session to discuss your concerns with an addiction consultant. Our specialists will then evaluate your situation and develop a healing programme tailored to your specific needs.
Our comprehensive 28-day addiction programme includes exercise addiction therapy. In general, the recovery plans include behavioural therapy and are designed to help you take charge of your life again. That being said, the nature of the treatment you receive, as well as its duration, will depend on how severe your dependency is.
Diagnosing Exercise Addiction
Since exercise is usually an important and beneficial part of people’s lives, deciding when it becomes harmful isn’t easy. Adding to the complexity, exercise dependency can often closely resemble the high-intensity training that many athletes follow when preparing for competitions or races.
Consequently, studies and experts suggest that this disorder should only be diagnosed when it significantly impacts an individual’s life and those around them. This typically includes instances where intense workouts lead to injuries, or when it starts to interfere with work and personal relationships.
What is Exercise Addiction?
Diagnosing this disorder presents a challenge, largely due to the positive image that surrounds physical activity. To better understand the issue, it’s important to first define what exercise dependency is. It is a compulsive disorder distinguished by an intense, overwhelming desire to engage in excessive amounts of exercise.
A notable difference between healthy physical activity and compulsive exercise is that the latter will disturb different areas of your life. In other words, the fact that you don’t have control over how much you exercise will compromise your relationships and interfere with your work.
In addition, people who develop a dependency to exercise actually stop enjoying physical activity. Then, whatever joy they used to feel is replaced by the unstoppable compulsion to keep working out.
As previously mentioned, exercise addiction frequently occurs alongside eating disorders such as anorexia. This fact is hardly surprising since both types of disorders are typically centred around a distorted body image and perception. Additionally, both often lead to extreme weight loss.
Since an addiction to exercise can manifest itself either independently or alongside other forms of disorder, there have been two distinct types of exercise addiction identified: primary and secondary.
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Primary exercise addiction
The primary type of exercise addiction exists on its own. In other words, individuals who suffer from it don’t have other psychological issues or addictions. It is more prevalent in men than women, and it’s mainly caused by endorphins, commonly known as ‘happy hormones,’ which are released during physical activities and fuel one’s desire to keep exercising. In the treatment of individuals with this type of addiction, the primary concern revolves around excessive physical activity, making it the main focus of therapy.
Secondary exercise addiction
On the other hand, when someone suffers from the secondary type, exercise addiction isn’t the main issue. Instead, it’s a consequence of an eating disorder or another mental health condition.
To illustrate, bulimia involves episodes of overeating followed by purging, while people suffering from anorexia frequently restrict their food intake and engage in extreme exercise. Therefore, when dealing with secondary exercise addiction, it’s important to treat the underlying cause rather than solely focus on the surface issue. This approach will help resolve both disorders and lead to recovery.
The signs and symptoms of exercise addiction?
In the diagnosis of exercise addiction, the type of physical activity or workout routine is not the primary focus of the assessment. Instead, experts concentrate on evaluating the effect of excessive exercise on your overall well-being. If you suspect exercise addiction in yourself or a loved one, it’s important to consider these common symptoms:
- Persisting with exercise despite an injury or mental health challenges
- Constantly thinking about working out and planning your exercise
- Reducing the time you spend on other activities
- Straying from your exercise plan and intensifying your workouts
- Requiring more intense exercise to get the same enjoyable feeling
- Experiencing irritability or other withdrawal symptoms at times when
you can’t exercise due to other factors
Social symptoms of exercise addiction
Exercise dependency can affect your life on various levels, including your relationship with other people. After all, individuals with this addiction tend to spend a large part of their free time on physical activities. Primarily, you may start choosing exercise over socialising with people whenever possible.
In addition, people might begin asking questions about your exercise habits, which can easily spark a conflict and further alienate you from your loved ones. Then again, you may decline your friends or family if they tell you they want to exercise with you. Namely, you might see them as a nuisance and a distraction from your workout routine. Ultimately, all of the above can lead to loneliness and unfulfilling social life.
When it comes to work, education, and other responsibilities, the situation is equally serious. Namely, you may begin to feel like these tasks are preventing you from satisfying your compulsive need to exercise. As a result, you might start to skip university classes or take time off of work. All of this can jeopardise your career or education and have other negative long-term consequences on your life.
Psychological symptoms of exercise addiction
Unsurprisingly, having a compulsive urge to exercise can cause deep distress. In the case of primary exercise addiction without additional disorders, there’s a high risk of depression. For many people, exercising is a perfectly healthy way to deal with hardships and stress. So, if there’s an injury, for instance, and a person has to abstain from working out, it can be hard to find another outlet for negative emotions. This, understandably, often leads to depression.
Your emotional well-being can suffer even more damage if you’re affected by other mental conditions at the same time. Notably, eating disorders usually involve a lack of confidence and a negative body image.
In addition to that, you might experience anxiety whenever you can’t do your workout as planned. Generally, people who regularly exercise often take a break for a day or two to let their bodies recover. However, if afflicted with this disorder, you might start feeling agitated by the lack of physical activity soon after finishing the previous session. In some cases, this restlessness can occur in as little as six hours.
What are the Causes of Exercise Addiction?
If you want to understand the reasons behind exercise dependency, it can be beneficial to look at other forms of addiction for valuable insights. Specifically, addiction to drugs like ecstasy or cocaine shares similarities in how it affects individuals.
By releasing dopamine and endorphins, exercise creates an enjoyable feeling of being ‘high.’ Similar to drug addiction, this feeling can fuel your desire to exercise more often and more intensively. Over time, this can lead to dependency.
Subsequently, whenever you’re not working out, these feelings of joy will disappear quickly. What’s more, they’ll be replaced by agitation and feelings of unease. In order to soothe that discomfort, you’re likely to start working out again the first chance you get. In summary, even if it may not appear so, various forms of addiction exhibit very comparable patterns.
Who is Most at Risk of Developing Exercise Addiction?
As previously discussed, exercise can lead to addiction due to its ability to trigger the release of certain chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine. Nonetheless, many people don’t develop dependency even though they exercise intensively. This fact suggests that there are more factors at play.
Individuals who place too much importance on staying fit are particularly susceptible to developing unhealthy exercise behaviour. This includes people who are trying to lose weight by extreme dieting but also those suffering from eating disorders.
Furthermore, according to research, having other addictions can increase the likelihood of exercise dependency. Notably, people who struggle with alcohol abuse or drug addiction often turn to exercise as a way to fill the void after quitting these habits. In essence, if you have an addictive personality, you’re at a higher risk of being addicted to exercise than most people.
Treatment for Exercise Addiction?
For most people, receiving this diagnosis is difficult to deal with. However, it’s important to keep in mind that you can get better with the right treatment. Our programmes are tailored to assist you in managing the compulsive urge to exercise while teaching you how to redirect this impulse towards healthier activities.
When starting your journey towards recovery, the first thing you’ll need to do is acknowledge that you’re struggling with unhealthy behaviour. After this, your focus should be on learning new methods for controlling your urge to exercise. Moreover, you’ll also have to adopt a new mindset regarding fitness and active lifestyle.
Making adjustments to your workout routine, such as changing the type or reducing the frequency, can help with this process. Additionally, you can expect to undergo behavioural therapy that will consist of tailored sessions aimed at transforming your perspective on physical activity.
If you are simultaneously dealing with an eating disorder, you’re likely to have deep-seated misperceptions. For instance, you might believe that overexercising is an effective way to lose weight. For that reason, you’ll need to tackle the underlying cause of your dependency before you can start to heal.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are
tiny matters compared to what lies within us
Behavioural therapy for exercise addiction
At the moment, there are no medications used in the treatment of exercise addiction. Medication may only be considered if you’re dealing with anxiety or depression caused by unhealthy exercise patterns. However, addiction programmes often resort to behavioural therapy to treat this type of dependency.
Considering how beneficial exercise is, the therapist won’t recommend quitting physical activity altogether. Instead, the goal will be to deal with the compulsion and put a stop to excessive workouts.
Admittedly, during the inpatient treatment, you’ll be taking a break from physical activities until you can manage the urge for overexercising. But once you complete the programme, you’ll be free to start working out again, this time in reasonable amounts.
Therapy treatment for primary exercise addiction
If your addiction is independent of other disorders, you will need to learn methods and acquire tools to effectively deal with your desire for an unhealthy amount of exercise. This part of the therapy usually involves individual sessions where you’ll be talking with an addiction expert.
Namely, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a proactive, solution-oriented type of talk therapy. With primary exercise dependency, the goal is to get to the bottom of what causes the unhealthy behaviour. On top of that, the therapist will help you acknowledge the extent to which the addiction is affecting your life, health, and relationships. Just as importantly, you’ll work on replacing the unhealthy attitude towards exercise with a more constructive mindset.
Therapy treatment for secondary exercise addiction
If, on the other hand, your dependency coexists with other conditions such as eating disorders, the treatment approach required will be different. That’s because the real cause of the addiction lies in the negative body image or other issues related to bulimia or anorexia. Therefore, instead of focusing on exercise dependency, the therapist will assist you in addressing the underlying concerns related to your body image and boosting your self-confidence.
The primary focus of the treatment will be on identifying and addressing the root cause of your unhealthy behaviour. Throughout the progamme, you’ll participate in both group and individual therapy sessions, along with receiving guidance on nutrition. In the early stages of your therapy, if deemed necessary, an addiction specialist may also recommend mood-stabilising medication or antidepressants.
Final Thoughts on Exercise Addiction?
For those facing the challenge of exercise addiction and seeking a way out, it’s important to remember that recovery is achievable. While the presence of coexisting eating disorders can complicate matters, and some individuals may need long-term or even life-long support, there is hope. Fortunately, with the guidance of our specialists, you can regain control over your exercise habits and embrace a balanced and healthy lifestyle.
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