The majority of people who worked on losing weight at any point of one’s life at least once had a particularly intense workout with an aim to lose all the calories consumed beforehand with something yummy but not necessarily healthy. Unfortunately, some people choose such a behaviour as a norm for their exercising plan. It might seem logical that in order to burn more calories one just need to exercise more, however, this belief can lead to serious health issues.
The list of possible problems is quite long including enforcing a poor diet rather than working on its improvement, a higher probability of getting injured or even turning sport into a punishment. Finally, this can also trigger a sport addiction or compulsive workouts.
What is compulsive training?
Compulsive training is similar to any other forms of addictions and compulsions. A person suffering from such an issue is just unable to live without workouts while the frequency and length of these workouts has to constantly grow. Otherwise a person feel unsatisfied, while not being able to go for a workout can make a person feel rather anxious.
Compulsive training is rather widespread. According to the statistics, over 40% of people suffering from food disorders are also addicted to sport. This addiction is popular among other people as well, yet in this article we are focusing on the sport addicts who are doing it for the sake of losing weight or keeping a stable body weight.
Obviously, the compulsion for exercising is strongly connected to anxiety, a low self-esteem as well as lack of acceptance of one’s body.
Other symptoms of sport addiction
There is a whole range of behavioural patterns typical for people with spot addiction. One of the most common of them is a constant need to increase the intensity of exercises or frequency of workouts in order to get the same effect of euphoria. For that reason they are not working according to any plan as they are rather prone to increasing the amount of exercises regardless to their workout curriculum.
In the situations when a person is not able to have a workout, he or she becomes particularly nervous and anxious even developing sleep problem. For that reason such people will do anything in order not to miss their workouts even if it requires neglecting other responsibilities, exercising during an illness or after an injury or just depriving oneself from sleep. More time is also needed for preparation for workouts as well as for recovery after them.
Undoubtedly, such a behaviour can lead to problems in any sphere of life including relations with other people, work, education and health.
How is the practice of burning extra calories with workouts related to sport addiction?
Now, when you know about such a condition, you can easily imagine how a person can develop compulsive exercising while using the strategy of burning calories coming with junk food.
If a person seriously believes it is possible to eat whatever he or she wants and just burn anything with exercises, he or she can use this method not only after occasional cases of enjoying something delicious and unhealthy, but even after any meal at all. This can put a person into a cycle of eating and exercising accompanied by a fear of putting on weight with even the healthiest food.
Even if a person understands it is not the case and such a behaviour is not just unnecessary but it can also be disruptive, it might be rather difficult for him or her to resign from it. This is actually the nature of an addiction.
Why is compulsive training dangerous?
Some people believe being addicted to exercising is better than a substance abuse, however it is not true. As you have read above, the addiction requires a lot of time which actually might be more than in the case of addiction to some substances. This affects the entire life. Another crucial problem is a health risk as a person is absolutely neglecting any symptoms or physical needs for the sake of exercises. This can turn out to be detrimental to health. Finally, when the addiction is accompanied with food disorders, it can make the life of such an individual even more challenging making a person to work for any meal hard.
Probably the only addiction that is not harmful to our body. Of course, if it is not a chronic addiction