Exercise Addiction

My ability to achieve a high level of physical fitness while maintaining an active social life by attaining a sensible balance between exercise and lifestyle is something about which I am rather proud. However, over the past couple months, I’ve delved back into the realm of exercise addiction and food obsession. I recently came to this realization when I found myself planning social events based on my diet and exercise schedule.

Exercise addiction is when you feel like exercising 5-7 times per week is an absolute necessity. If you find that you can’t take a day off, you’re likely addicted to exercise. Upon first glance, it may seem that you are simply committed to maintaining your regimen. But, in order to prevent injury and overuse of muscles, days of rest are critical. Additionally, you have to consider your underlying motivation for exercising. When you are never happy with the way you look and fear that having just a single day off will ruin all of your effort up to now, then you are probably suffering from exercise addiction.

Food obsession is very similar to exercise addiction in that it revolves around self image. This problem often begins with a sense that one's outward appearance is always lacking. Taken to the extreme, food obsession leads to serious eating disorders. My credentials are insufficient to thoroughly discuss a food obsession of that sort. However, I will share my current food obsession and how it affects my life.

I began to face a food obsession problem when I decided that my body fat should measure lower than ten percent. But, the question remained as to the lengths to which I would go to achieve that goal. I’m not a fitness model. I never enter competitions. During the current colder months, only my wife and I are likely to see very much of my body. I’ve made the decision that physically, I’m just as healthy at 10% body fat as I’d be at 7% body fat. It’s not worth the lifestyle sacrifice to obsess over food and exercise.

While food obsession and exercise addiction symptoms are problems over the long term, I think a little obsession in the short term is just fine. When trying to get in shape for a upcoming holiday or for the summer, it is perfectly reasonable to put in maximum effort into getting into the shape you want, and to do this you have to obsess slightly over your food and exercise routine. Also for anybody trying to cut down a lot of weight, good habits can come from food obsession at the beginning. You simply have to realize when you are becoming addicted and obsessed with these things and it begins to have unhealthy repercussions to your life.