Can you become addicted to exercising?

It’s well-established that regular exercise promotes a healthy lifestyle. Whether you’re hitting the gym, the yoga mat, or just taking a stroll in the park, moving your body has tremendous benefits.

Still, it is entirely possible to overdo it. When the need to exercise becomes uncontrollable and disrupts the quality of your life, you may have an exercise addiction. 

Read on to learn how to spot the signs of exercise addiction, how it can be related to other mental health conditions, and what you can do about it. 

What is exercise addiction?

Exercise addiction can be tricky to define because it’s not recognized as an official diagnosis. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the official manual used to diagnose mental health disorders, says there is currently not enough evidence to classify it as a mental health condition. However, the manual does refer to exercise addiction as a type of behavioral addiction, which is a bit different from substance use disorder where one has a dependency on substances such as drugs, alcohol, or caffeine. Those with behavioral addictions are hooked on engaging in certain activities, like gambling, shopping, sex, work—or in this case, exercise—despite the negative consequences. 

While there is no official diagnostic criteria, there are certain symptoms commonly associated with exercise addiction. Those who are addicted to exercising might find themselves unable to stop if they get injured. They may overexert themselves and get hurt. Maybe they miss work, school, or important life events to get another workout in.

Signs of exercise addiction

• Excessive exercising to the point of distress
• Inability to reduce intensity or frequency of workouts
• Rumination: Persistent thoughts about fitness
• Withdrawal: Irritability, anxiety, or mood changes when not able to work out
• Dependency on exercise to manage stress and/or other emotions
• Work, school, social life, finances, and/or self-care routines are often negatively affected due to fitness habits
• Difficulty stopping workouts even after experiencing pain or injuries
• Hiding how much you work out from others
• Trouble managing the urge to work out, even at inappropriate times
• Skipping important events to work out 

Why do people get addicted to working out?

As with all addictions, there’s no sole cause of an exercise addiction. Instead, there are various environmental and social factors that put an individual more at risk for developing a dependency on working out.

Risk factors for exercise addiction

• A previous addiction: People may try to replace one addiction with exercise as a “healthier” alternative
• Prior traumatic experiences
• Personality traits of perfectionism, narcissism, and compulsiveness
• Anxiety disorders
• Eating disorders: A dependency on exercise may be a symptom of an eating disorder, as opposed to a separate condition
• Body dysmorphic disorder: “Maybe they’re exercising because they feel that their arms are too small and everybody notices it,” says Dr. Patrick McGrath, PhD, and Chief Clinical Officer at NOCD. “They do massive quantities of arm exercises as a way to try to get their arms to what they feel is a better proportion of their body.”
• Being an athlete

It’s also important to note that the body releases hormones called endorphins during exercise, which are like natural painkillers that relieve pain and stress. When endorphins attach to the brain’s reward center, it causes a release of another chemical called dopamine, which can be a mood-booster. (If you’ve heard of or experienced a “runner’s high,” you’re already aware of this phenomenon.) 

There’s limited research in this area, but some studies show that people may get addicted to the endorphin rush. “If people can figure out ways to get something like that to happen—they might not consciously know it, but they might feel it—they might continue to do behaviors such as excessive exercise that lead to those feelings,” Dr. McGrath explains.

Does exercise addiction count as an obsession?

Obsessions are a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). So does that mean if someone is “obsessed with working out,” then their addiction is a symptom of OCD? Not exactly.

Although there are links between exercise addiction and OCD (just as there are links between OCD and eating disorders), OCD is a distinct disorder. OCD is a chronic mental health condition that involves obsessions (intrusive, persistent, and unwanted thoughts) and compulsions (repetitive or ritualistic behaviors done in an attempt to escape the distress caused by obsessions). 

When mental health clinicians are trying to determine what’s really at play when someone seems to be exercising compulsively, one thing they’ll assess is what’s motivating the behavior.

Here’s why: Whereas people with exercise addiction may be primarily driven by concerns of physical appearance or chasing a specific feeling that exercise brings, people with OCD use compulsions—including compulsive exercise—to cope with an obsession. For example, someone may have a subtype of OCD known as health concern OCD (sometimes called health anxiety OCD) where their primary obsessive thoughts center around developing a serious medical condition. As a result, they may be compulsively exercising to try to deal with the obsession that their health will be compromised if they don’t. 

“You really have to take a look at what’s the reaction to the experience and what’s the reaction to the behavior,” Dr. McGrath explains. 

Signs your exercise behavior could be linked to OCD 

As McGrath says, if exercise leads to euphoria, it’s like not OCD. On the other hand, if you’re doing 100 squats everyday (or whatever your exercise compulsion) because you fear that if you don’t you’ll develop heart disease and die, it may be OCD.

Another tell-tale sign of OCD is the perfectionism that can show up during exercise, a common characteristic of “just right OCD”, a subtype of OCD where people obsess and compulse about things feeling “just right.” While working out, someone with OCD might feel they have to constantly repeat exercises in order for them to be done “correctly.” This is different from simply trying to improve one’s form or meet certain fitness goals. “You’ve got to go back and do it again—even maybe to the point that it hurts or it damages you—but it has to be done right,” Dr. McGrath says. “Because if you don’t do it right, then something bad might happen.” 

“It could sound weird, but if you don’t do 30 perfect curls, then your fear might be that a bomb could go off in the gym,” adds Dr. McGrath. That’s OCD.

OCD can even affect more everyday fitness routines, too, such as going for a quick walk. “You can’t step on a crack, right? Because OCD tells you that someone might die or you’ll break mom’s back or something like that,” Dr. McGrath says. “Now you’ve got to really watch how you’re walking. If you walk the wrong way, you’ve got to go back and undo the step on the crack, or you have to stop and say a prayer or something of that nature.” 

Can exercise be a healthy coping mechanism?

Of course. Many people work out to let off steam or to deal with the stress in their life, and that’s perfectly okay. But when you’re consistently turning to excessive exercise to avoid problems, that’s a sign of maladaptive coping, a.k.a unhealthy modes of dealing with stressors. Keep in mind that this is different from making a conscious choice to hit the gym when you’re working through something stressful—there’s nothing to pathologize about that. It becomes problematic when you repeatedly choose exercise over handling conflicts, or use fitness as an excuse to avoid your problems altogether. 

How exercise addiction can negatively impact overall health

If you become addicted to exercise, there’s a likely chance that you’ll keep exercising even when your body shows signs of injury or distress. That overexertion can also cause fatigue, especially if you aren’t resting enough. Various physical issues may arise within your body if you aren’t properly tending to it and instead you keep “pushing through” your workouts. A good way to avoid excessively exercising is by working with a trainer who can develop a fitness program specifically for you, “and stick to that—no more, no less,” Dr. McGrath says. “This is something you can do in order to meet your goals, get you where you want to be, and not cause damage.”

Treatment for exercise addiction

If you suspect you’re dealing with an exercise addiction, it’s a good idea to reach out to a mental health professional who can help clarify if it’s a behavioral addiction or something else. The general course of treatment for behavioral addictions is a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as well as motivational interviewing—a counseling approach designed to help people find the motivation to make positive changes regarding their behavior. During a CBT session, you may closely examine your thinking patterns about exercise, and then find tools to move away from any negative patterns.

If you think your obsession with exercise is a sign of OCD, your best bet is a form of therapy called exposure response and prevention (ERP) therapy. ERP was developed specifically to treat OCD, and it’s backed by decades of clinical research. 

ERP works by intentionally exposing you to what’s triggering their fears, and teaching you “response prevention techniques”—which basically means you’ll learn other means of responding to your obsessions that don’t involve compulsive exercise. Over time, your brain learns that the fears prompted by your obsessions are not real threats: In other words, nothing bad will happen if you don’t do yet another set of squats perfectly, or if you don’t attend two yoga classes in one day. 

Bottom line

Maintaining a fitness routine is important for physical and mental health, but that doesn’t mean exercise is always net-positive. It’s possible to spiral into a full-blown exercise addiction that causes more harm than good. If your workout regimen is making the rest of your life feel unmanageable, know that there is help out there to get you back to a better balanced lifestyle.