As a society, we are constantly fed messages about exercise always being a health promoting behavior. We receive messages like “No rest days!” “No excuses!” “No pain no gain!” But, just how ‘healthy’ is this? Furthermore, it can be really confusing when you start recovery and you are asked to stop exercising, you might be thinking “But this is healthy for me!”

It’s true that exercise can be a healthy choice- but like any health promoting behavior it is dependent on the person and the context. There is no universal health. What is healthy for you may not be healthy for the next person. If you ate Kale all day every day (another seemingly ‘healthy’ behavior) you would actually get thallium poisoning. If you are malnourished, which can happen at any size, exercise is not the healthy choice for you. If you have rigid and obsessive habits around exercise, taking a break is actually ‘healthier’ for you. Health also encompasses the mind- your mental health. So if the thought of missing a workout floods you with anxiety, you miss out on important social events to exercise or you continue to exercise even though your body has physical ailments (illness, injury), exercise is in fact, hurting you, not helping you.

The other thing that people don’t often realize, is that when you are exercising, your body is releasing the stress hormone cortisol. This means that no matter how stress-relieving your work out feels, it is actually cueing your body to be in a stressful state. Another reason why taking a break and having rest days is actually very good for you. This especially becomes a problem for women who have lost their menstrual periods (and again, this can happen at any size), often what I see is that as someone is waiting for their period to return after disordered eating or an eating disorder, they have to give up intense exercise for some time to allow their period to return. We know that stress (cortisol production) is a major trigger for amenorrhea (loss of your menstrual cycle) and so to get it back, many often have to minimize ALL triggers for stress- including exercise.

So here are some signs your relationship with movement has become disordered and compulsive:

• You feel anxious or guilty at the thought of missing a workout
• You consistently choose exercise over time with family and friends
• You develop rigid rules around time, type and frequency of exercise
• You are hyper focused on numbers (calories burned, time lapsed) instead of how the movement feels to your body
• You continue exercising despite illness, injury or extreme weather
• You feel preoccupied with thoughts about how and when to exercise
• Seem to base self worth off of workouts completed