Yes…it’s possible! The term “addiction” give us images of people in dark rooms, listening to bad music and sticking needles within their arms, but many addicts are available in the gym or on the neighborhood school track, getting just as addictive a fix. Actually, the positive nature of the word “healthy” makes health and fitness addiction all the more alluring. Despite the positive media, health addicts have done as much damage to their families and lives as any kind of addict. In this posting, we’ll look under the surface of health and fitness 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 should be applauded. You can find just so many temptations to accomplish otherwise. Exercise is mostly boring, painful and smelly, so those who endure it for about an hour, 3-5 days a week, have achieved a level of discipline most only dream of.
Health and fitness addiction is not about health or fitness…it’s about a compulsion to use 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 might explain why many people have problems with both sexual addictions and health addictions.
Types Of Health And Fitness Addiction: These are addictions to the activities of health and fitness, instead of the TV, Internet and shopping addictions that could involve health themes. Health 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 precise 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 because a common symptom of addiction is denial, that is even easier to have about health. That’s why it’s easier to find out from a friend or loved one if you have an issue of this type. For health addiction involving eating, see Anorexia Nervosa Quiz. Here are some things to look out for concerning fitness exercise addiction:
1. Do you regularly save money than 8 hours a week exercising and is the time you spend increasing?
2. Does your exercise schedule interfere with normal family activities, home or work responsibilities?
3. Do friends or family members complain concerning the time or money you spend on fitness?
4. Have you wondered if you’re being too compulsive about your fitness program?
5. Have you lied to your family, friends, or employers about the time you may 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 difficult in your fitness routine you hurt yourself?
In the event that you answered yes to any of these questions, you should consider yourself at risk of addiction. In the event that you answered yes to 3 or more, you’re probably addicted.
How Do I Recover From Health And Fitness Addiction? That is caused by a negative self-image, like any addiction. Instead of alcohol, you utilize exercise to fill a void you feel in yourself. Since the relief produced by exercise is temporary and you become conditioned, you will need regular increases in the activity to produce exactly the same relief. Unlike alcohol, some fitness activity is required for health, so, you can’t just quit. Instead, we need to hold ourselves to no more than an hour each day, 3-5 days a week.
Spend all of those other time you used to exercise likely to AA or other addiction meetings and participating in self-development activities. You can read, go back to school, join a volunteer group. You can take up a hobby, like gardening or building model airplanes. To greatly help in building yourself up, avoid negative mental inputs, like the news, drama, negative, insulting friends. Replace people that have 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 there are risks that health addiction could become full-blown anorexia, if you try to fail to get a handle on your addiction, please see a medical expert. Sometimes medical and psychological therapy can prevent a more serious condition from developing, and invite you the mental energies you must 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 and wellness at risk through dependence on exercise along with other fitness activities. In Home Hospice is, there is hope for anyone willing to live in and work on recovery.