It’s not hard to understand why many people overlook compulsive exercise as a serious problem. After all, we live in a culture that enthusiastically applauds people for their rigorous dedication to physical fitness and intense workout regimes. But what happens when the need to exercise causes you to miss out on social gatherings? What happens when it gets in the way of school, work, or family, and keeps you from actually participating in life?

Unfortunately, when we fail to acknowledge how the compulsive behavior is negatively affecting our lives, we only remain stuck in a detached, empty place. We might be able to reason at the moment that we are doing something healthy and admirable.  But in reality, compulsive exercise is anything but healthy and it’s taken on a life of its own.

Compulsive exercise often takes root as a way to provide relief from anxiety, and an escape from otherwise painful emotions.

However, if exercise becomes the only way that we have to manage our discomfort, we become a slave to rigid routines and seemingly unachievable goals.

The result is usually feeling an even deeper drive to push further, causing both physical and emotional damage.

Not only does struggling with compulsive exercise cause us to miss out on life for the sake of workouts, but it also becomes more and more difficult to measure up to arbitrary goals and to quell mounting anxiety. Physically, compulsive exercise can take its toll in the form of injuries, like stress fractures, when you can’t resist the compulsion, even when you physically should be abstaining and resting.

What are some signs I might be struggling with compulsive exercise?

Many people who struggle with compulsive exercise consider it apart of a larger pattern of disordered eating or even a full-blown eating disorder such as anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or orthorexia. Do any of these common signs look like something you deal with?

• You have an intense drive to exercise daily.
• The thought of missing a workout seems impossible and causes feelings of fear.
• The need to exercise takes primary importance in your life.
• You workout even when you are sick or injured.
• You find yourself saying no to plans with friends or family that would cause you to miss your workout plan.
• Workouts need to consistently get longer, harder, and more rigorous to feel acceptable.
• If you miss a workout, you feel withdrawal-like symptoms such as intense depression or anxiety.

How did we get here?

It started out by adding a couple of spin classes a week, but now you find yourself sprinting out of work to get there daily. A few months ago, you decided to add that circuit class in the morning, and now you are totally set with two-a-day workouts. Your friends ask you to meet-up for happy hour, but that would cause you to miss your spin class. That just feels impossible. Panic sets in.

You might wonder how you arrived at this place. In the beginning, you felt like you were taking steps to “get healthy.” Your friends applauded your discipline. It was easy to keep pushing further, to add lengthier and more strenuous workouts.

If you are struggling with compulsive exercise you know the unfortunate truth, though. You are all too familiar with the misery of feeling trapped by your routine, the need to push yourself more and more, and the inability to stop or even feel like you have a choice.

You might even feel ashamed that you let your struggles with compulsive exercise get this far or feel like you should be able to “get over it” on your own. If you’ve become aware of the how you feel stuck, that’s such an important first step in finding your way out. Please know that so many people are struggling with something similar.

Recovery is Possible

It’s so true that struggling with compulsive exercise can feel hopeless. However, if we can learn some practical methods for challenging these behaviors, we can get closer to a life filled with time spent pursuing goals that are in line with our true interests and values, such as connection, rather than goals that really feel arbitrary and empty.

With patience and practice, learning this new way of managing our emotions, you can start to feel truly free of compulsive exercise. Keep reading of 3 tips towards freedom from compulsive exercise today.

3 Tips for Healing Your Relationship with Compulsive Exercise

Yes, it can feel completely helpless and like you are a prisoner to your ever-mounting need to exercise, but it doesn’t need to be this way. Here are simple tips for getting started and shifting your thoughts and behaviors.

1. Get Honest with Yourself

If you are struggling with compulsive exercise habits, whether they are apart of a larger pattern of disordered eating or not, it can be difficult to really acknowledge just how deeply the behaviors are rooted. I often hear from clients how easy it is to validate adding that extra 30 min on the treadmill or that PM CrossFit class. They usually tell me how they honestly didn’t realize they had a problem until the habits had really taken hold.

It can be incredibly helpful to just try to get real with yourself about what’s really been happening. Try getting started with this task this by pulling out a pen and paper and making a list of all the behaviors you suspect might be related to a compulsive need to exercise. You might also find it beneficial to track what you are missing out on by adhering to this exercise regime, such as dinner with friends or more time with your kids.

Put your list in a safe place. You’ll find it helpful to pull it out as a reminder when you inevitably feel triggered to workout.

Once you allow yourself to become more aware of the way your relationship to exercise is impacting your life, you will find that you are more readily able to challenge these patterns of behavior in which you feel stuck.

For example, you might have identified that you have a deeply entrenched habit of tracking calories burned and equating that with how much you are “allowed” to eat that day. Try telling yourself simple statements like “I deserve to eat regardless of how much I exercise today.” You might not believe it at first, but with time you will begin to embody these beliefs.

2. Start small, move gently through the discomfort

If you’ve arrived at the place where you know you want to make the changes to tackle compulsive exercise, it can feel scary and overwhelming.  You probably have no idea where to start. However, I’ve found in working with clients who are struggling that through awareness, comes the ability to make small changes.  With each little change, you move closer to your ultimate goal of freedom from the need to exercise compulsively.

Take a look at that list of exercise-related behaviors that you’ve acknowledged have become a problem. Maybe you’ve identified that what used to be 30 minutes on the treadmill a few times a week has turned into hours a day.

In therapy, I’ll often help clients find a small change that feels doable, such as reducing those workouts by just 10 or 15 minutes a day. Make a plan to implement that change and see how it goes. It might feel super hard the first time you try it, but stick with it and it will hopefully get easier.

Implementing this small start to challenging compulsive exercise will also give you valuable insight into what feelings aspects of your life you might be seeking to avoid.

My guess is that it might feel uncomfortable to shorten those workouts, even by a small amount. Pay attention to this discomfort when you feel it. Try to identify the feeling underlying the discomfort, such as sadness or loneliness.

In therapy, I often work with clients to identify new ways to address that new, uncomfortable feeling that is now exposed. We seek out less destructive ways of managing those feelings, that more closely align with the kind of person they really want to be.

3. Cultivate a healthier relationship with exercise

Compulsive exercise takes you away from life and can feel like your own private prison. Challenging these behaviors is an uncomfortable, yet necessary part of recovery. However, that doesn’t mean that a life recovered from compulsive exercise needs to mean abstaining from movement altogether. There are steps you can take to shift your relationship with exercise that can even be healing at the same time.

The ultimate goal is to bring about a relationship with movement that’s rooted in mindfulness and an awareness of how our bodies actually feel while we are doing it.

In a healthy relationship with exercise, movement feels like a celebration of what your body is capable of, rather than obligatory or punitive.

Sometimes referred to as “joyful movement,” the key here is to tune into the pleasure we get from simply moving our bodies in different ways. I try to help my clients find movement-oriented activities such as dancing, walking your dog, or even yoga, that are less about reps or laps and more about how you feel while doing it.

Find an activity that you actually enjoy, that takes you away from counting or measuring. Make a plan to intentionally engage in this activity once a week.  Notice the difference in your body and how you are able to appreciate, rather than scrutinize, your body and its function.

Moving towards lasting freedom from compulsive exercise

I always remind my clients, when you are aiming to make changes to disordered behaviors and habits, allow yourself time and a good strong dosage of self-compassion. It can take both time and hard work to change behaviors that have been engrained and served an important purpose for you.

Living life as a slave to your workout routine is miserable, unsustainable, physically and mentally exhausting.

You deserve to spend your days surrounded by the people and things that you truly love, rather than stuck in the gym.

With the right tools and support, its entirely possible to ditch the Fitbit, recover from compulsive exercise, and develop a healthy relationship with movement and your body as a whole. As an eating disorder and body image therapist, I work with clients in my office in Westlake Village, CA and online with clients in both California and New York.  I’ve helped so many people to overcome these truly life-sucking behaviors and find freedom from compulsive exercise.  Give me a call now or click on the button below to schedule your free 15-minute consultation and find out how I can help.