Do You Over-Exercise?

While exercise in moderation is healthy, you can overdo it. Individuals can cross the line from healthy to compulsive exercise, characterized by an inability to give up a workout despite sickness, injury or exhaustion, and planning one’s entire social life around scheduled and repeated workouts.

Researchers at Remuda Ranch, a treatment center in Wickenburg, AZ, say that overexercise can be a part of bulimia and a component of other eating disorders. In fact, women with bulimia can and often do cut down or cut out their vomiting as they grow older. But as they reach middle age, many start ratcheting up their exercise regimens as a substitute.

If you wonder whether you’ve crossed the line, take the following quiz.

Test yourself for Signs of Compulsive Exercise

1. Do you feel guilty if you miss your workout?
2. Do you still exercise if you are sick or hurt?
3. Would you miss going out with friends or spending time
with family just to ensure you got your workout in?
4. Do you become emotionally upset if you miss a workout?
5. Do you calculate how much to exercise based on how
much you eat?
6. Do you have trouble sitting still because you're not
burning calories?
7. If you are unable to exercise one day, do you feel
compelled to cut back on what you eat that day?


If you answer yes to one or more of these questions, you may be damaging your health, especially if you are older. You’re putting too much stress on your body; the body needs time to repair itself between workouts. The immune system needs rest to rejuvenate.

Aging also stresses the body – it’s an inescapable biological fact of life. Adding additional stress from exercise to a body already worn and torn by injury, illness or aging can lead to more illness. Beyond the rips and pulls of sports injuries, there are other problems like osteoporosis to consider. Another consequence is eating disorders.

The “high” you feel and the weight you lose can be self-reinforcing. And the addiction to the exercise can be a gateway to the addiction of the eating disorder. Take a good look at your motives for fitness and is you think you have a problem, seek help from a therapist skilled in food and body addictions