by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: September 01, 2010

Exercise is obviously beneficial for your health, but as with anything it can be taken to extremes. If your whole life is being dominated by the need to exercise then clearly something is wrong because exercise should be something that you enjoy doing and that makes you feel good afterwards. If you feel as though you have to exercise for hours at a time every day you are unlikely to feel happy about things, yet your compulsion to exercise overrides everything else. If the compulsion to exercise is overwhelming and your life is starting to suffer you have to take action to change the situation.

It can be easy to overtrain if you’ve always had an interest in sports and like keeping active because doing exercise comes naturally to you and you want to improve your performance. You’re always hearing about how adults should be doing at least half an hour of exercise, five days a week and you feel content that the amount of exercise you do is far more than this. You like being known as a fitness enthusiast and having a toned body, but at the same time there is a certain amount of pressure you put on yourself to remain that way. You don’t want to start putting on weight and for people to think that you’ve let yourself go.

An obsession with exercise makes it extremely difficult to lead a normal life because you won’t let anything interfere with your workout routine. If you have got into the habit of spending a couple of hours in the gym before going to work and a couple of hours there after work you won’t exactly have much time for a social life. Your compulsion to exercise can affect your self-esteem and your relationships, but you become so fixated on getting some exercise that you try to block out how much it is interfering with your life and that instead of making you happier and healthier, exercise is actually causing you problems.

You convince yourself that if professional athletes can exercise all the time, so can you. However, professional athletes know when to push themselves in their training and when to rest. If you exercise for hours at a time every day and give everything you’ve got every time your body is never going to get a chance to recover and you will find yourself suffering from fatigue. You will also become more susceptible to illness and injury, though you will probably continue to follow your hardcore exercise program because you can’t seem to stop yourself. If you develop an obsession with exercise your health and quality of life will suffer, which is why you have to keep the need for exercise in perspective.

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