by Judi Ketteler
When Brieanna Quinn started at Indiana University, she
was ready to soak in all university had to offer. What
she wasn’t prepared for, though, was the culture
of thinness that hit her in the face. “All the girls
were really thin and really beautiful,” she says.
It wasn’t until Brieanna joined a sorority that
she discovered they were all hanging out in the gym. When
she first signed up, she just wanted to be able to run
a mile. Her sorority sisters went with her, and going
to the gym became a social event. Brieanna lost a few
pounds and people began to compliment her, and it felt
good.
But by sophomore year, everything had changed. “It
all snowballed,” she says. Going to the gym and
running became the focus of her life.
Healthy vs. Unhealthy
Brieanna
wasn’t anorexic. While it’s true that, at
120 pounds, she was too thin for her five-foot-four frame,
she wasn’t skeletal. Her unhealthy relationship
with exercise and food pointed to a lesser-known disorder:
exercise addiction (also known as obligatory exercise
or exercise bulimia).
Getting a handle on exercise addiction is tricky, even
for medical professionals. In the June 2005 issue of the
journal The Physician and Sportsmedicine, exercise addicts
are defined as “people who will not interrupt their
exercise schedule, even when they are injured or when they
know that continuing to exercise could cause physiologic
or psychological changes that could harm their lives.”
The syndrome is most common among high-endurance athletes,
such as runners and triathletes, as well as gymnasts, bodybuilders,
weight lifters, wrestlers and dancers. According to David
Coppel, a sports psychologist and professor at the University
of Washington School of Medicine, exercise addiction affects
about one percent of the population, though the tendency
toward compulsive exercise may be more widespread. “The
line between a healthy attitude and an unhealthy compulsion
to exercise is determined not necessarily by how much you
exercise but by what happens if you can’t exercise,” he
says.
Exercise addicts crave the endorphin release – followed
by exhaustion – just to feel normal. And, like any
addict, they experience withdrawal if they can’t
exercise, including mood swings, anxiety, excessive guilt
and even bouts of depression. They can’t deal with
the emotional fallout of skipping a workout. And because
they almost always choose exercise over anything else,
it’s not uncommon for them to have strained relationships
with spouses, friends and even employers (especially if
they make it a habit to leave work early to get their workouts
in).
No Rest for the Addicted
“Exercise addicts and people who over-train think
only exhaustive exercise is beneficial,” says Renee
Jeffreys, a clinical exercise physiologist with the Cincinnati
Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “They don’t
understand rest cycles and don’t allow their bodies
time to recover.” Basic physiology tells us that
building strength is a matter of shortening and lengthening
your muscles: when you break them down, they come back
stronger. “But whenever you break muscles down, there
is trauma at the cellular level,” explains Jeffreys. “If
you never rest, you don’t give your muscles time
to recover and get stronger.”
Back in the drivers seat
Treating exercise addiction is a matter of empowering
the person so that exercise can once again become a free
choice, says Coppel. This can be achieved through therapy
and, in many cases it may be the only true exercise addict
can work through her issues.
But exercise habits exist along a continuum, and many
people have some compulsive tendencies –they may
not be crippling, but they may be harmful to your self-esteem.
Reflecting on yourself honestly, reassessing your exercise
goals and listening to yoru body is the best medicine to
prevent that slippery slide into full-blown addiction.
It’s also about changing your mindset to focus on
fitness, rather than appearance.
For Brieanna, it’s about feeling athletic rather
than feeling sick. She still runs, but her motivation ois
fitness, and she has finally learned she has to take days
off to be fit. “I feel normal now,” she says. “Exercise
no longer controls me, I control it.”
Got something to say about gym addictions? Write to us
at: webeditorial@oxygenmag.com
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