Unhealthy Exercise: Do You Have a Healthy Relationship with Movement?

Just like there is a point where healthy eating becomes unhealthy, there is a point when exercise becomes unhealthy. Over-exercise, compulsive/obsessive exercise, and exercise bulimia occur when exercise stops being a choice and becomes an obligation. Read this post to learn if you are engaging in unhealthy exercise.

Pretty much everyone agrees that exercise is a good thing. There may be disagreements over how much, how often, what kinds, and so on, but as with eating fruits and vegetables, getting enough sleep, and managing stress, getting regular exercise is a pretty uncontroversial recommendation to support health and wellbeing. We have the science to back it up too! As opposed to dieting and weight loss, there is lots of research that shows engaging in physical activity and improving cardiorespiratory fitness reduces risk of heart disease and is associated with greater longevity.

However, just as there is a point where healthy eating becomes unhealthy, there is a point where exercise becomes unhealthy too. Over-exercise, compulsive/obsessive exercise, and exercise bulimia occur when exercise stops being a choice and becomes an obligation or when one is engaging in exercise to the point of injury or harm to health. When exercise is taking a toll on your physical or mental health, then you are engaging in unhealthy exercise.

Sometimes the line between healthy and unhealthy exercise can be blurry, because what is healthy for one person may be unhealthy for someone else. Everyone has their own unique relationship with exercise, and their own goals. For example, if someone is a college athlete, waking up when it’s still dark out and following a rigid, daily training schedule would very different than someone who is doing the same with weight loss or management as a goal. Crossfit might be fun, positive way to compete and have a social outlet for one person, and for another the competition in the studio might push them to the point of injury. Some people enjoy fitness classes, while others are so distracted by body checking that they spend the entire class lost in their mind, body bashing their appearance. And of course, different bodies have different abilities - pushing one’s body past its current abilities to the point of injury is harmful. Because every human is different, drawing rigid lines to say an exercise is healthy or unhealthy exercise is pretty impossible.

Are You Engaging in Unhealthy Exercise?

Not sure if your exercise habits are health promoting or harming? Here’s some questions you can ask yourself:

Does an exercise “not count” unless it’s a certain number of miles or length of time?
Is your primary motivator for exercise burning calories or compensating for food you ate?
Do you exercise even when you're sick or have a fever?
If you can't exercise, are you afraid of gaining weight?
Do you workout in inclement weather?
Do you miss planned events with family/friends to exercise?
Do you feel guilty for missing a day of exercise or taking a rest day?
Do you exercise through an injury you've been advised to rest from?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, that doesn’t necessarily mean what you are doing is wrong or bad or that you need to stop immediately. However, it is something to get curious about, and perhaps bring up with your therapist or dietitian if you work with one.

Do you have a healthy relationship with exercise?

One of my favorite questions to ask a client to get an idea if an exercise is healthy or unhealthy for them is if they would be exercising in the same way, or with the same frequency/intensity, if they felt comfortable with their body. This helps get to the core of whether they are exercising for self care, or for self harm.

The Impact of Unhealthy Exercise

Because exercise is viewed as universally good, the risks of overexercise are rarely discussed. Furthermore, because our culture glorifies militant, vigorous exercise routines, with a “no pain, no gain” mindset, overexercise is often viewed as discipline.

One thing I often remind clients is that exercise is a stressor. Despite the fact that exercise is often discussed as a stress reliever (and don’t get me wrong, exercise can be a fantastic tool for that), exercise biologically acts as a stressor on the body. Exercise, especially vigorous exercise, temporarily increases cortisol levels. It's a bit complicated (if you really feel like digging into it, this post does a good job breaking it down), but essentially these short term bursts of cortisol (aka stress) are beneficial and help build resilience when your body has enough rest and nutrition to recover. When cortisol levels are chronically high from psychological stress, lack of sleep, not eating enough/poor nutrition, chronic illness, etc, you don’t get the same effect from exercise.

Undereating paired with overexercising is particularly harmful, because food is our body’s source of fuel (we don’t photosynthesize!). Here's some physical signs you might experience from unhealthy exercise paired with undereating.

It's physically harder to do exercises that used to be easy
Low mood - more depression, anxious, angry and irritable.
You feel sore for multiple days after workouts.
Fatigue. No matter how much you sleep, you're always feeling tired.
Difficulty sleeping at night, or sleeping excessively and still feeling tired.
You're constantly catching colds and getting sick. Excessive exercise can weaken the immune system.
Low sex drive
Poor appetite
Changes to weight, either weight loss or weight gain
Loss of period or irregular periods
Stress fractures
Dry hair and skin

Having an unhealthy relationship with exercise can take a mental toll, as well as a physical one. Sometimes the effects of unhealthy exercise aren’t physical, but rather the emotional burden of engaging with an activity that’s stressful, triggers trauma reactions, or brings up intense negative feelings.

If you notice a few or more of these signs, I'd encourage you to reach out to a dietitian or therapist experienced in disordered eating, or call the National Eating Disorders Association hotline. That said, you don't have to experience physical symptoms of overexercise for exercise to be a problem in your life. If you feel like your relationship with exercise is causing stress in your life, you deserve support.

What is Healthy Exercise?

Healthy exercise, or movement as I like to call it, looks different for everyone - kinda like healthy eating! There are many factors that influence what healthy exercise could be for someone, including physical abilities or disabilities, time, finances, personal preferences, age, environment, goals and so on. As I mentioned earlier, everyone has their own unique relationship with exercise, so there are not cut and dry rules here.

Healthy exercise can be structured or unstructured, or a combination of both. Healthy exercise might involve getting your heart rate up on occasion, as there are benefits to building cardiorespiratory fitness, but also doing slower, more restorative movement, like yoga or walking. Healthy exercise might involve doing some weight-bearing exercises, as it helps protect bone health as you get older, but that doesn't necessarily mean going to a gym to lift weights with all the gym bros. Healthy exercise also varies based on seasons of life, and that's OK.

When we work with clients on building a healthier relationship with movement, we focus on building a more intuitive relationship with it. That involves listening to both your body and brain to decide what, if any, exercise sounds good to you.

Do you have an unhealthy relationship with exercise? — A healthy relationship with movement can involve formal, structured exercise, like going to a gym or fitness class, or not! Unstructured movement as part of life activities can be some, or all the ways you engage with exercise.

We also work with clients on integrating joyful movement - discovering ways of moving their body that are actually fun! Of course, that’s not to say healthy exercise always has to be fun. Sometimes we might need to approach movement from a more “take your vitamins” kind of approach, for example, if someone needed to do some boring PT exercises to deal with an injury. That said, connecting to some joy while moving can be extremely healing.

The Bottom Line

When it comes to exercise, you get to decide what (if any!) exercise you want to engage with and why. As a healthcare provider who believes in the power of movement for physical and mental health, I believe it’s a tool that everyone deserves access to. When you engage with movement in an unhealthy way, it robs you of those benefits.

If you need support in figuring out what a healthy relationship with movement looks like for you, we work with clients virtually and in our Columbia, SC office. Read more about our practice philosophy here, and reach out if you’d like to see if we’re a good fit to work together.

This blog post on unhealthy exercise was originally published February 2018. It has been updated to give you the best possible content.