Yes…it’s possible! The term “addiction” give us images of individuals in dark rooms, hearing bad music and sticking needles in their arms, but many addicts can be found 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. Regardless of the positive media, health addicts did as much damage to their own families and lives as any other kind of addict. On this page, we’ll look under the surface of health addiction and find a way 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 accomplish otherwise. Exercise is mostly boring, painful and smelly, so those that endure it for about an hour, 3-5 days a week, have achieved a level of discipline most only imagine.
Health and fitness addiction isn’t about health or fitness…it’s in regards to a compulsion to utilize healthy activities to fill a void we see in ourselves. Addicts are compelled, not disciplined. The addictive chemicals involved with exercise are much the same as those in sex and porn addiction. This may explain why many people have problems with both sexual addictions and health addictions.
Types Of HEALTH Addiction: They are addictions to the actions of health and fitness, instead of the TV, Internet and shopping addictions that could involve health themes. Health and fitness addictions are compulsions to activate in “healthy” activities, like exercise, dieting, etc. In fact, anorexia and bulimia nervosa have both been referred to as severe health addictions. Two key symptoms of these mental disorders are exercise and dietary control to a compulsive and excessive extreme. The specific exercise or diet program doesn’t matter. It’s an addiction once you feel compelled to accomplish it.
How Do I Know I’m Addicted? We addicts don’t often recognize addiction because a common symptom of addiction is denial, that is even simpler to have about health. That is 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 a week 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 family complain concerning the time or money you spend on fitness?
4. Have you wondered if you are being too compulsive about your fitness routine?
5. livegood Have you lied to your family, friends, or employers about the time you spend in fitness activities?
6. Do you often see fitness as a way to gain acceptance or praise from others?
7. Have you ever pushed so difficult in your fitness program you hurt yourself?
In the event that you answered yes to these questions, you should think about yourself at risk of addiction. In the event that you answered yes to 3 or even more, you’re probably addicted.
How Do I Recover From Health And Fitness Addiction? That is caused by a negative self-image, like any other addiction. Instead of alcohol, you use exercise to fill a void you are feeling in yourself. Since the relief produced by exercise is temporary and you also 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 have to hold ourselves to only an hour each day, 3-5 days a week.
Spend all of those other time you used to exercise going to AA or other addiction meetings and participating in self-development activities. You can read, get back to school, join a volunteer group. You can take up a spare time activity, like gardening or building model airplanes. To greatly help in building yourself up, avoid negative mental inputs, just like the news, drama, negative, insulting friends. Replace those with good music or reading or other activities that build you up. Push all the negative, self-defeating, limiting thoughts out of your mind with positive, uplifting, encouraging thoughts.
Because you can find risks that health addiction could become full-blown anorexia, if you try and fail to get a handle on your addiction, please see a doctor. Sometimes medical and psychological therapy can prevent a far more serious condition from developing, and allow you the mental energies you have to get control of yourself.
Health and fitness addiction can be just as severe as any other addiction. It can imprison us into destructive, compulsive activities. We are able to place our families, our careers, even, ironically, our health at risk through dependence on exercise along with other fitness activities. The good news is, there is expect anyone willing to reside in and work on recovery.