Addicted to Exercise? How to Tell When Healthy Habits go too Far

Addicted to Exercise? How to Tell When Healthy Habits go too Far

Anyone who’s felt the full-body buzz and calm mind that comes after a real soaker of a workout knows that the feeling is comparable to a great glass of wine in the way it will keep you coming back time and again. And research bears it out—exercise has an undeniable effect on feel-good hormones. In other words, those happy feeling are real, and some would even propose that those feelings are as addictive as a drug like heroin.
As a distance runner and professional advocate of the feel-good power of exercise, I consciously avoid using the word “addiction” to describe most people’s relationship with exercise and combat it whenever the word is thrown around casually.

A person with a healthy but passionate relationship with exercise might make sacrifices of time, money, sweat, sleep, tears… and even the occasional bloodletting… that others find hard to understand, but that are firmly on the spectrum of “normal” and “healthy.”

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