Yes…it’s possible! The word “addiction” give us images of individuals in dark rooms, listening to bad music and sticking needles in their arms, but many addicts can be found in the gym or on the local school track, getting in the same way addictive a fix. In fact, the positive nature of the term “healthy” makes health addiction even more alluring. Despite the positive media, health addicts did as much damage to their families and lives as any other kind of addict. In the following paragraphs, we’ll look under the surface of health addiction and find a path to recovery.

How Can Something SO EXCELLENT Be Bad? Inside our modern Western culture, those willing to pay the purchase price for fitness are to be applauded. There are 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 an even of discipline most only imagine.

Health and fitness addiction isn’t about health or fitness…it’s about a compulsion to utilize healthy activities to fill a void we see in ourselves. Addicts are compelled, not disciplined. The addictive chemicals involved in exercise are much the same as those in sex and porn addiction. This may explain why many people have problems with both sexual addictions and health addictions.

Types Of HEALTH Addiction: They are addictions to the activities of health and fitness, instead of the TV, Internet and shopping addictions which 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 described as severe health and fitness 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 when you feel compelled to accomplish it.

HOW DO YOU Know I’m Addicted? We addicts don’t often recognize addiction just because a common symptom of addiction is denial, that is even simpler to have about health. That is why it’s easier to learn from a friend or loved one if you have an issue in this area. For health addiction involving eating, see Anorexia Nervosa Quiz. Here are several things to look out for concerning fitness exercise addiction:

1. Do you regularly spend more than 8 hours a week exercising and may be the time you spend increasing?

2. Does your exercise schedule hinder normal family activities, home or work responsibilities?

3. Do friends or family complain about the time or money you may spend on fitness?

4. Have you wondered if you’re being too compulsive about your fitness routine?

5. Have you lied to your family, friends, or employers concerning 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 program you hurt yourself?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should think about yourself vulnerable to addiction. If you answered yes to 3 or even more, you’re probably addicted.

How Do I Recover From Health And Fitness Addiction? This is the effect of a negative self-image, like any addiction. Instead of alcohol, you utilize exercise to fill a void you are feeling in yourself. Because the relief produced by exercise is temporary and you become conditioned, you need regular increases in the experience to produce the same relief. Unlike alcohol, some fitness activity is necessary for health, so, you can’t just quit. Instead, we must hold ourselves to only an hour each day, 3-5 days a week.

Spend In Home Hospice of the time you used to exercise likely to AA or other addiction meetings and engaging in self-development activities. You can read, go back to school, join a volunteer group. You could take up a spare time activity, like gardening or building model airplanes. To help in building yourself up, avoid negative mental inputs, just 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 you can find risks that health addiction could develop into full-blown anorexia, if you try and fail to get a handle on your addiction, please see a doctor. Sometimes medical and psychological therapy can prevent a far more serious condition from developing, and invite you the mental energies you have to get control of yourself.

Health and fitness addiction can be just as severe as any other addiction. It can imprison us into destructive, compulsive activities. We can place our families, our careers, even, ironically, our health at risk through addiction to exercise and other fitness activities. The good news is, there is hope for anyone willing to live in and work on recovery.