Yes…it’s possible! The word “addiction” give us images of individuals in dark rooms, listening to bad music and sticking needles within their arms, but many addicts are available in the gym or on the local school track, getting just as addictive a fix. In fact, the positive nature of the word “healthy” makes health and fitness addiction even more alluring. Despite the positive media, health addicts have done as much damage to their families and lives as any other kind of addict. In this article, we’ll look beneath the surface of health and fitness addiction and find a path to recovery.
How Can Something So Good Be Bad? In our modern Western culture, those ready to pay the purchase price for fitness are to be applauded. You can find just so many temptations to do otherwise. Exercise is mainly boring, painful and smelly, so those who endure it for about an hour, 3-5 days weekly, have achieved a level of discipline most only imagine.
Health and fitness addiction isn’t about health or fitness…it’s about a compulsion to utilize healthy activities to fill a void we see in ourselves. Addicts are compelled, not disciplined. The addictive chemicals involved in exercise are much the same as those in sex and porn addiction. This may explain why many people suffer from both sexual addictions and health addictions.
Types Of HEALTH Addiction: These are addictions to the activities of health and fitness, instead of it, Internet and shopping addictions which could involve health themes. Health and fitness addictions are compulsions to activate in “healthy” activities, like exercise, dieting, etc. livegood products Actually, anorexia and bulimia nervosa have both been described as severe health and fitness addictions. Two key symptoms of these mental disorders are exercise and dietary control to a compulsive and excessive extreme. The specific exercise or diet plan doesn’t matter. It’s an addiction once you feel compelled to do it.
HOW DO YOU Know I’m Addicted? We addicts don’t often recognize addiction just because a common symptom of addiction is denial, that is even simpler to have about health. That’s why it’s easier to find out from a friend or cherished one if you have an issue of this type. For health addiction involving eating, see Anorexia Nervosa Quiz. Here are several things to watch out for concerning fitness exercise addiction:
1. Do you regularly spend more than 8 hours weekly exercising and may be the time you spend increasing?
2. Does your exercise schedule hinder normal family activities, home or work responsibilities?
3. Do friends or members of the family complain about the time or money you spend on fitness?
4. Have you wondered if you are being too compulsive about your fitness program?
5. Have you lied to your loved ones, friends, or employers about the time you spend in fitness activities?
6. Can you often see fitness as a way to gain acceptance or praise from others?
7. Have you ever pushed so hard in your fitness program you hurt yourself?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should think about yourself vulnerable to addiction. If you answered yes to 3 or even more, you’re probably addicted.
How Do I GET OVER Health And Fitness Addiction? That is the effect of a negative self-image, like any other addiction. Instead of alcohol, you use exercise to fill a void you feel in yourself. Since the relief produced by exercise is only temporary and you become conditioned, you need regular increases in the experience to produce exactly the same relief. Unlike alcohol, a certain amount of fitness activity is necessary for health, so, you can’t just quit. Instead, we need to hold ourselves to only an hour a day, 3-5 days a week.
Spend the rest of the time you used to exercise going to AA or other addiction meetings and participating in self-development activities. You could read, get back to school, join a volunteer group. You could take up a spare time activity, like gardening or building model airplanes. To help in building yourself up, avoid negative mental inputs, just like the news, drama, negative, insulting friends. Replace people that have good music or reading or alternative activities that build you up. Push all the negative, self-defeating, limiting thoughts from your mind with positive, uplifting, encouraging thoughts.
Because you can find risks that health addiction could become full-blown anorexia, if you try to fail to get a handle on your addiction, please see a doctor. Sometimes medical and psychological therapy can prevent a more serious condition from developing, and invite you the mental energies you have to get control of yourself.
Health and fitness addiction can be just as severe as any addiction. It could imprison us into destructive, compulsive activities. We are able to place our families, our careers, even, ironically, our health at risk through addiction to exercise along with other fitness activities. The good thing is, there is hope for anyone willing to live in and work on recovery.