“Exercise Addiction” (my school essay)
“Exercise Addiction”
Warren Keller 11/07/2007
Rough Draft Paper
PED 232, Dr. Dreher
Introduction
Exercise addiction research has only finally been looked on to recently. There is not plenty of research or information available on it. However, it is a very hot topic that has just finally surfaced on to the map of fitness. I am going to discuss different factors that has attributed into this blasting nature of exercise addiction along with its positive and negative effects. Supplemented will be different topics such research within nutrition, society, and at last, my opinion on different aspects in this ever controversial topic.
In “Motor Learning” class this semester, when this topic was brought up, I could see the sudden urge in different students’ responses when the word addiction and exercise addiction was presented. I could also see the fire in the eyes in the much acclaimed professor, Dr. Dreher when he presented this topic for discussion only to see a flood of raised hands waving at him begging to say something. Every one of us as a physical education major has to be devoted into exercise in a certain measure. Those measures are different for every individual in this field. There are recreational directors who want to promote exercise in a timely manner to provide non-competitive athletes some activities they could be thrilled in participating. There are teachers who promote their students in a lifelong healthy style of fitness, there are coaches and athletic trainers who strive to see their athletes or customer prosper in the area of fitness to meet their desired outcome. Finally, there are physical education professors who teach the future of this major. The bottom line is we all in this major have to be devoted in exercise in a certain extension to complete our biggest goal with “lifespan”. My biggest question was how do we measure addiction?
Addiction
What is addiction? Dictionary describes it as a condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something. So how much every week should you exercise? “Fitness” magazine in their October 2007 articles seems to focus mainly that you should be able to be fit by exercising twenty minutes a day. Their magazine in ____________________________________________
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this very issue covers confidence at the gym, exercise tips to reach your fitness goals, yoga’s benefits, and how to motivate you to workout. Between the pages, fitness magazine seems to have a lot of advertisements based on programs, stories, and clothing for fitness with charming slim models. Now, your “Muscle and Fitness” October 2007 edition has articles that provides program for maximum weight gain, nutritional supplements guide (there was even a section in the magazine that had a guide to purchase a dozen of supplements and what time to take them everyday), there were also abdominal exercise guides. Between the pages, it seemed like there were more supplemental advertisements than the actual content and articles of the magazine. From reading this magazine and judging their programs, I would say that this magazine promotes two hours of exercise per day. Now you compare your joggers’ magazine of twenty minutes a day to a bodybuilder’s magazine of two hours a day. How do you measure addiction? The answer is as simple as this; exercise dependants have similar withdrawal issues as those who are drug dependants and alcoholics. They do not get very happy or get depressed as if their day was ruined because they did not exercise. Since exercise dependence is not listed as disorder in the “American Psychiatric Association” but instead they identify the Bulimia Nervosa Disorder and the Anorexia Nervosa Disorder. Therefore we cannot classify that exercise addiction is a disorder… yet. All we can do is to determine our own measures on whether one is addicted to exercise ourselves. When you go in the weight room, do you identify the biggest person lifting the most weight as an addict or is it the person running on the treadmill all afternoon and taking all those gym classes an addict?
Why exercise?
Before we are able to measure exercise addiction, there are plenty of reasons that this nation and the rest of the world have the sudden urge of hitting the weight room. Among everything else, the number one reason is that fitness is currently one of the highest demands for an adult individual. Nutrition is both going off the charts with fats and unhealthy habits and also being scrutinized heavily with awareness and regulations eliminating those “fatty empires”. Movies that have exposed the public on nutrition
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recently such as “Fast Food Nation” are just one example. Along with that, the nation’s obesity levels has been at a record high at 59 million within this nation and with 300 thousand people dying every year based on obesity alone as mentioned in “Science World.” It definitely makes sense that if roughly a fifth of Americans are being classified as critically obese that exercise addiction would pop up in everybody’s dictionary. However, we are only getting started. Athletes today are absolutely way more competitive-driven than ever. In recent history, there have been people picked ahead of others in the draft based on some tenths of a second in a forty yard dash as timed at the NFL combine. Yes, there are some players who rarely ever hit the field in college sports but because they run a little bit faster than the next guy, they have a multi-million dollar job in professional sports. Along with that, everybody is getting bigger, faster, and stronger. From steroids and players playing guard in the NBA who are nearing seven foot tall, the desire and competition to get better is definitely at the all-time high. There are also a wider range of sports gaining public interest such as lacrosse and water polo. The choices and the field for people to participate in athletics is definitely blown out of proportion but the biggest success in every sport you could possibly think of is probably practice and overall fitness. Even race car drivers say that it takes a lot to sit in a car for a five hundred mile race with speeds reaching two hundred mile hour. Your steering wheel and shift stick is shaking the entire race and you need good reflexes and concentration to even make it around the first lap. Now, I’m not going to stop on obesity and athletes only who would make sense to being addicted to exercise but the society in general. In this society today, a very high percentage of people want to look good or feel the need to look good. They believe that exercising will put them at or above this level of the criteria to meet the public’s acceptance. Only thing is that they don’t stop and keep on moving the criteria up even higher, that’s one of the first things when you know one has exercise addiction.
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Pros of exercise
Now finally, the debate begins. Is exercise addiction a good thing? My initial reaction as a physical education major, an athlete, and someone who works at the weight room and is devoted to exercising a couple hours a day is that exercise is the best addiction you could have. It is probably that way when you compare exercise addiction to drug addicts, alcoholic individuals, couch potatoes, people addicted to betting, or even spending. Exercise does have its insurmountable benefits. One of the best benefits is being healthy and fit which means a low fat percentage and being free of leading diseases in America which are cardiovascular and obesity. Exercise does help you feel the need to eat right and neglect bad habits such as smoking, drinking alcohol, or eat too much junk because it would just waste off all the hard work you have packed into. Exercise does put make you motivated and in good mood for the rest of the day simply because you are healthier and have something to look forward to everyday. Exercise also put you into a good crowd or allows you to meet people with the same interest. Friends with the same interest in sports or exercise usually are amongst your top friends over the people you work with or share an interest in something else, say partying. That being said, you don’t only satisfy your physical domain in well being but also your affective domain by being social. Feeling better also gives you energy to be social and do better in what you do such as in school or work. More and more factories or business around the country are houses a weight room for their employees to work out during their lunch or break time. Businesses know that healthier and motivated workers lead to a better turnout along with a better overall group dynamics.
Cons of exercise
Exercise addiction can also be negative, once you get started, you will be able to find that there is plenty of negative aspects that can say that being addicted to exercise is unhealthy. First of all, you spend a lot of money maintaining your fitness such as supplements like the ever popular whey protein and creatine. Although those supplements don’t work for muscle gain unless you don’t eat a lot! Food bills, gym club
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bills, personal trainer, yoga/aerobics classes are a ton to begin with. Now a biker wants a top of the line bike, a runner wants those Nike Shox shoes and Nike compression shorts and they can be really pricey. Another negative identification to this addiction is when you spend too much time or money towards exercise that you are actually neglecting your family or your actual life. This parallels with drug use and alcoholics who would put off a good portion of their money to satisfy their needs rather than using that time and money to a better use. This, I think if one of the clearest factors into determining whether one has exercise addiction because the time they put into exercise or how big they are does not fully determine whether they are exercise dependent since everybody has different goals.
Interview & Survey
In an interview with a PE faculty, Andy Brinks, who I view as an active person in the weight room and within his teachings on the emphasis of exercise, I gained valuable information. I asked professor Brinks three questions:
-Does exercise addiction exist? If so, how do you measure exercise addiction? (times per week, muscle size, etc.)
-Do you consider people who use supplements (whey protein, creatine, multivitamins, etc) are dependent to exercise?
-How do you prevent exercise addiction since exercise is a great thing but addiction is not.
Mr. Brinks also shared this with his cybex training class.
Mr. Brinks teaches kinesiology class and is working on his Ph.D. on the field. I was fortunate to engage in a lengthy conversation instead of a brief interview with him while I was working at the weight room. He stated that exercise addiction does exist and is a wonderful thing. One who loves to lift such as myself and does get disappointed should they miss a workout is addicted to working out. However if they allow their
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addiction to affect their personality, their family, school/work, or outside life then that is what makes this so alarming. The sad thing is that it happens. Sure, people do drink but if they allow their drinking to affect their family and loved ones instead of what is supposed to be for occasions or gatherings, then that as well is a problem.
When I asked about taking supplements, Mr. Brinks believed that if one eats right and keeps track of their nutrition, there is no need for supplements and vitamins. I disagree since I believe that supplements serve substantially towards one’s goals. College students like to pack up some stuff in their body to compensate for what is usually a hard time to focus on nutrition. However supplements don’t really work if you are not using it right so it is only attainable to one’s desired goal and has little or nothing to do with exercise addiction. For example, one can be obese and hate working out but they do eat right and take proper supplements along with working out if they are absolutely serious about losing weight and being healthy.
We then conversed about preventing exercise addiction and there was seemingly endless ways where you could ignite it or help stop this kind of thing from deteriorating your life. Starting with muscular fatigue, obsession, and neglect to your own life is the worst thing that could happen. By establishing goals and prioritizing things is one great way to help prevent exercise addiction.
Personal experience
As a baseball athlete who exercises approximately six times a week for about a hour a day year round or three hours a day during competitive training, I can identify different positive and negative aspects of exercise addiction for myself as well as measuring my addiction. Now, I lift weights around three times a week and do cardio or play sports other three times a week. I consider myself pretty fit being able to lift 225 pounds while only weighting 165. However I can determine that I am addicted to exercise in certain extend since I always have the desire to gain pounds both in my overall weight and my bench lift maximum. When the baseball season begins, there is hardly a time when my arm actually does not feel sore so I do not weight lift as
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much but instead do my exercise as a part of practice running and leg workouts. I can see that I am always disappointed by not being able to lift weights and sometimes will cheat to lift before practice a little bit because I would not be able to after practice but then my arm will not perform as well during practices. I also notice that my energy is usually lower in the spring semester without exercising as much so I have the need to depend on energy drinks or caffeine. However the positive aspect would be that I would be satisfied with my results knowing that I put hard work behind it. My freshman year I hit .270 being a skinny 135-pound guy who had just started to hit the weight room and was not able to lift his own weight. My sophomore year, I broke my wrist and played baseball after having my third cast off two weeks before the first game. I played horribly that year batting .169 and was used primarily as a pitcher and defender. My junior year weighting 155 and lifting almost as much, I finally felt satisfied with my performance hitting .286 but I knew I was only as good as I was during a freshman because I had to start over again and compensate for my losses. Of course, batting averages does not reflect on how determined you are in the weight room but it does play a big part just as it does in every other sports.
Conclusion
Exercise addiction is certainly a fun topic to discuss whether you love to exercise or not because it just has too much variables. There is no right or wrong answers because exercise is definitely good for you but too much of it as well as anything can always be bad as well. Here, you received plenty of positive and negative end results of exercise addiction as well as how to measure it. Magazines, physical education instructors, and the general population all have different perspectives on exercise addiction (if there is even such thing) since formal Associations such as American Psychiatric Association does not identify it as a disorder. At best, it is the most important thing to have a goal and to exercise to reach your goal. It is a no brainer that everybody has at a time had a goal of exercising or being healthier that has crossed their mind. Those goals have to be ____________________________________________
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realistic and attainable so that you prevent exercise addiction from reaching cautious measures so that you can be healthy, fit, and satisfied with your goals.
References
Science World
Feb 7, 2005
Mona Chiang
(Obesity at a record high)
Muscle and Fitness
October 2007
Fitness
October 2007
America Psychiatric Association
February 24, 2006
“APA Supports National Eating Disorders Awareness Week”
http://www.psych.org/news_room/press_releases/06-11NEDAW2006.pdf
