Exercise Addiction

Exercise addiction is a pattern of compulsive engagement in physical exercise that continues despite the negative consequences it causes, including exercising to the point of harming physical health, letting exercise crowd out personal and professional obligations, and continuing to train through injury rather than resting to recover. People with the pattern can also show a dependence on regular exercise marked by significant withdrawal-like distress when they are unable to train, and researchers have found the pattern shows a high rate of co-occurrence with eating disorders. Exercise addiction is not currently listed as its own disorder in the DSM-5; instead it is discussed as a form of behavioral addiction, in which a person's behavior becomes obsessive and compulsive enough to cause real dysfunction in their life, and researchers note that distinguishing an unhealthy addictive pattern from simple dedicated healthy exercise is genuinely difficult in practice.