Exercise Addiction

Has your commitment to fitness become an exercise addiction?

Have you begun to realize that you're overdoing it, and your body and mind are paying the price?

All around the world, health organizations are worried about rapidly rising obesity levels and lecturing us all on the problems that arise from not having enough physical activity in your life. At the same time, increasing numbers of people seem to be running (note that word) into the very opposite difficulty. They have too much activity in their lives.

We're not talking about people being forced into hard labor here. We're talking about people who voluntarily increase, by a large margin, the amount of muscle work that their bodies do on a regular basis.

How can too much exercise be a bad thing?

On the face of it, it looks like a good thing. The benefits of fitness and regular activities like walking, running, weight-training, swimming and participating in sports are well known and well publicized. It all seems like just the antidote the health organizations are looking for, and you're not alone if you feel pretty virtuous when you go down to the gym.

And you are.

But most people are not sports health scientists. And even sports trainers, who might know all the latest techniques for body-building, shaping, toning and endurance training, may not always fully appreciate what can happen if you work those muscles for too long, too hard, too frequently. Not just in a single session (they know that's a bad thing), but in session after session after session.

Exercise plus rest = fitness

The missing understanding concerns the role of rest. Rest is just as important as activity. "But I sleep really well every night!" Excellent. Keep it up. But if you are engaged in regular high-intensity fitness activity, and you want to avoid long term damage to your bones and muscles and other body tissues, you need more than just a good nightly sleep.

You need carefully balanced periods of low-intensity activity and even total inactivity to off-set the high-intensity stuff and give your body the time it needs for muscle and tissue repair. If you keep working it again, at the same high levels, before tissue repair is complete, deterioration will inevitably eventually set in. And your health will suffer.

Why it feels like you can't stop exercising

The trouble is, even when you do appreciate the importance of not exercising quite so much, it can be hard to take your foot off the gas (so to speak). Because somehow compulsion has crept onto the scene. That endorphin 'high' is really nice. It feels like you've got to have it. Your life has started to run (there's that word again) around getting it. Even at the expense of other things that are important to you.

What can you do?

Hypnosis can help you beat exercise addiction

Overcome exercise addiction is an audio hypnosis session developed by sports psychologist with a deep understanding of addictive patterns and how to break them.

When you take time out to repeatedly relax and listen to your download, you will

enjoy a regular half hour of deep relaxation as part of your 'rest' program
unconsciously absorb powerful transformative hypnotic suggestions that will break the grip of compulsion
be able to tune in and respond more effectively to what your own body is telling you
develop a more suitable and balanced training program
feel much healthier and happier

Download Overcome exercise addiction and live well in your own body.