I am Addicted to Exercise

The Never-Ending Workout
Always at the gym and no time for life

By Nando Pelusi for MSN Health & Fitness

Q: I'm addicted to exercise. While I mostly enjoy it, I'm emotionally unable to skip a day. I work out seven days a week for at least 2.5 hours a day—usually 60 minutes of cardio machines, 30 minutes of weight training, then 60 minutes of kickboxing or other cardio workout. If I'm not at the gym every day, I have trouble sleeping that night, worrying about how much weight I might have gained by not exercising that day. The rest of my family is obese, and I'm determined not to look like them. It seems like I have no life outside of work and the gym.

A: Exercise has many health benefits, but like anything, you could be doing a good thing for the wrong reasons, and therefore overdo it. Even professional athletes allow an essential period of recuperation and rest that helps them stay fit. You seem to be aware that you’re doing a good thing to a potentially harmful degree, since you call it an addiction.

You might be falling into several errors in thinking, making you more driven than you have to be to stay healthy. Are you telling yourself that if you slow down, you’ll start an inevitable slide into obesity? That type of all-or-nothing thinking drives you to exhaustion, and then may tempt you to call it quits altogether, making it hard to stay fit with a healthy regimen.

It’s possible that you have some genetic predisposition to obesity, and your rigor is good, but your absolutism could create physical strain or other problems. Then, if you’re sidelined, you might succumb to depression. Perhaps the absolutism about your fitness regimen is telling you: “I can and must attain perfection.” That also drives you to an extreme, and scares you into driving yourself to exhaustion.

The vicious spiral: You have less and less of a life outside of exercise, so you exercise more, then have less of a life, and so on. This is a recipe for depression. Better to schedule some healthy fun and social activity, get yourself out and interact with people.

Perhaps your endorphin levels are helping you to feel better temporarily (after an exhausting workout), only to fall back down, making the contrast seem depressive. This may warrant a question: Are you depressed? Are you masking feelings of depression with busywork that keeps moving hard and fast, never allowing yourself time to reflect in the least (lest you feel down)?

Your desire to fight your familial tendency toward obesity is to be commended. We want to encourage your dedication to health—but you need to focus on the long haul, rather than running yourself ragged, emotionally and physically.

Fight this absolutist thinking by asking yourself: Why must it be all or nothing? Ask yourself why you can’t keep to a rigorous—but not rigid—regimen.

Exercise is great, but if you do it for the wrong reasons you may do it too much. That could create problems and might mask underlying issues like depression. Tap into your talent for discipline and desire to stay fit and to schedule a daily regimen, but refuse to give in to self-talk: “You’ll go totally downhill unless you make exercise the sole focus of your life.”

Nando Pelusi is a licensed clinical psychologist. He has a doctorate from Hofstra University and is a certified supervisor in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. He maintains a private practice in New York City and serves on the board of advisers of the National Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists. He regularly leads workshops on cognitive behavioral therapy for both the public and professionals. He also serves as a contributing editor to Psychology Today. (read his full bio.)