Fitness

The Workout Habit That Can Become Harm

Published

4 weeks ago

March 2, 2026

If your day begins with a HIIT class and ends with the saintly glow of “I’ve been good,” you’re not alone. Regular movement can lighten stress, settle anxiety, and generally make the world feel a little less like a group chat on deadline. But for a small group of gym-goers, exercise addiction isn’t a punchline or a humblebrag — it’s a real behavioural pattern that can quietly bulldoze daily life.

Researchers in Budapest have suggested that for around 0.3 to 0.5% of gym-goers, working out and the quest for ultimate wellness can tip into unhealthy obsession. And a separate study from Anglia Ruskin University found the risk rises sharply for people with a history of eating disorders — with researchers reporting you’re nearly four times more likely to experience exercise addiction if you’ve previously had anorexia or bulimia.

It’s an uncomfortable twist, because exercise is supposed to be the good bit. The socially approved coping mechanism. The one that gets likes, not concerned phone calls.

Why “Healthy” Can Be a Convenient Disguise

Wellness culture has a curious magic trick: it can make rigid rules look like discipline. Eight hours’ sleep becomes a badge of honour. “Clean eating” becomes a personality. And a workout missed can feel, for some, less like a rest day and more like a moral failure.
That’s what makes compulsive exercise hard to spot — especially during or after recovery from disordered eating. To friends and family, it can look like someone has “sorted themselves out.” Under the surface, the engine can be the same: fear, control, anxiety — just with different gym kit.
As Eating Disorders Awareness Week begins (March 2–8), we spoke to experts about wellness, disordered exercise, and the additional risks for those with a history of eating disorders.
Advertisement

Can Eating Disorders Be Replaced by Exercise Addiction?

Kerrie Jones, a psychotherapist specialising in eating disorders and clinical director of treatment centre Orri, says eating disorders and exercise addiction often share the same roots — and the same function.
“Eating disorders, like exercise addiction, arise when we have lived through an experience – or lots of different experiences – that have taught us that we’re not safe in our day-to-day lives,” she says.
“Obsessing about food, weight or exercise is a behavioural mechanism that has developed as a means of keeping us feeling safe and in control when otherwise we’d feel overwhelmed with fear and anxiety.”
Jones explains that these behaviours can narrow a person’s focus to what feels measurable and manageable — calories, reps, weight, shape — while masking the deeper fear underneath.
“We call these ‘maladaptive’ coping mechanisms, as they develop through seemingly good intentions, but to the detriment of our longer-term physical and mental health.
Advertisement

“Sometimes, when people reach a point in their recovery where they are stable and functioning, they may move from an obsessive relationship to food, to an obsessive relationship to exercise.”
And because exercise is widely applauded — and often actively encouraged — the behaviour can stick around far longer than people realise.
“It’s a much more socially accepted and idolised means of maintaining obsessive behavioural patterns,” says Jones, which means it can linger for years before someone seeks help.
What Drives Exercise Addiction Psychologically?

There’s rarely one neat cause. It’s more often an overlap of biology, social pressure, past experiences, and psychology — with a particular role for trauma and learned patterns of control.
“There’s no one reason or cause why someone might develop an eating disorder or exercise addiction, however, it’s often a combination of social, genetic and psychological factors,” says Jones. “Commonly, we find a negative life experience or traumatic experience at the root.”
Chartered psychologist and Healthspan ambassador Dr Meg Aroll says more research is needed specifically on exercise addiction, but we already know a lot about how behavioural addictions operate — particularly the loop of compulsive thoughts and repeated behaviours.
Advertisement

“We know that it’s important to change patterns of ruminative and compulsive thoughts in people with behavioural addictions, which is why treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy are likely to be of help.”
In plain terms: it’s not about willpower. It’s about patterns — and treating what’s driving them.
Signs to Watch For: When Training Turns Compulsive

There’s no single template for exercise addiction. People don’t present in one uniform way, and “looking fit” tells you precisely nothing about what’s happening mentally.
But there are common warning signs, especially when exercise becomes less about wellbeing and more about relief, guilt, or control.
Jones says a person might:

Feel guilt and shame about missing exercise routines

Keep secrecy around how much they’re exercising

Continue to workout when ill, exhausted or injured

Prioritise exercise repeatedly over family, friends, work, and recovery

That last point matters. Training that regularly trumps relationships, rest, or basic health isn’t “dedication.” It’s a red flag waving in fluorescent gym lighting.
Does Social Media Make It Worse?

Social media can be supportive — community can be a lifeline — but it can also validate compulsive habits. A life organised entirely around workouts can look, online, like “motivation,” when the reality might be anxiety management dressed up as routine.
“For people who are predisposed to eating disorders or behavioural addictions, wellness culture can appear to support and condone this type of maladaptive behaviour,” says Aroll.
Advertisement

“However, on its own, wellness and social media culture is not to blame – someone with such conditions will have a complex combination of factors in their life leading to their symptoms, which should be investigated fully and treated professionally.”
Jones adds that if you know you have an addictive personality, it’s worth curating your feed with intent — and unfollowing content that escalates guilt, restriction, body obsession, or punishment narratives.
What To Do If You’re Worried About Someone

The hardest part is saying something — and the most important part is saying it well. Jones recommends addressing it directly, but with care around timing, tone, and what you focus on.
“It’s important to broach the topic with them directly as their physical and mental health may be severely at risk,” says Jones. “Pick a time to talk when emotions aren’t running high, and where possible, try and avoid talking about exercise specifically or the more symptomatic aspects of exercise addiction or their eating disorder.
“Instead, focus your questions and concerns on how they’re feeling, underneath their day-to-day activities.
Advertisement

“Keep in mind that there are specialists out there who can help and the charity Beat has numerous resources on how to have a difficult conversation with someone.”
In other words: aim beneath the behaviour, toward the emotion.
Do We Need a Broader Conversation About “Healthy”?

Here’s the tricky bit. Health professionals rightly champion exercise for physical and mental health. But for people recovering from eating disorders — or with a vulnerability to compulsive behaviours — messaging can land differently. “More is better” can become a permission slip for harm.
“I think there needs to be a broader conversation about what it means to be ‘healthy’ and to live a ‘healthy lifestyle’,” says Jones. “What works for some, may not work for others, particularly if they’ve suffered with an eating disorder in the past and would have trouble maintaining a normal relationship to exercise and food.”
Jones says clinicians assessing physical health need to consider personal history and the intention behind the behaviour.
Advertisement

“If possible, we need to investigate the intention associated with exercise and unpick the feelings that arise before, during and after exercising.”
That’s the real measuring stick. Not calories burned, not streaks kept alive, not the smug serenity of a kale smoothie. If movement helps you live more freely, it’s doing its job. If it’s tightening the cage — especially in recovery — it’s time to call it what it may be: exercise addiction, and something that deserves proper support, not applause.

Related Topics:eating disorder fitness news mental health

Click to comment

Fitness

I Have a Master’s in Exercise Science. These Are the Only 6 Strength Moves You Need To Build Muscle

Published

7 hours ago

March 26, 2026

Press Room

I Have a Master’s in Exercise Science. These Are the Only 6 Strength Moves You Need To Build Muscle

Strength training doesn’t have to be complicated. Fitness content on social media may leave you thinking that you should only work out at specific times, use certain weights and incorporate an ever-rotating assortment of moves — but to reap the full benefits of building muscle, you can actually keep things surprisingly simple.

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends at least two days of resistance training, aka strength training, for adults each week as part of their workout routines. And those two days need only include six moves, Adrian Chavez, Ph.D., nutrition and health coach, tells TODAY.com.

It’s often the most advanced fitness routines that generate the most buzz online. And while having lots of different strength moves in your arsenal can stave off boredom at the gym, it’s not usually necessary, Chavez explains. Sticking to the basics and staying consistent will give you the most bang for your buck, he adds.

The Most Efficient Strength-Training Moves

The six moves Chavez says are most efficient for improving health and body composition are:

“Those movements cover all of the (major) muscle groups of the body,” Chavez says. “I wouldn’t necessarily say these are the only six movements that you need, but those are the ones that are going to work the largest amount of muscle in each movement.”

Building muscle through strength training can boost longevity, a mood, bone density and more.

It’s also a key factor to improving metabolic health, Chavez points out. Muscle burns calories, even while you’re at rest. So, the more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn.

If you’re after efficient results, focusing on these six movements that target the body’s largest muscle groups will get you there since these muscles require the most energy to function.

Which Muscles Does Each Move Target?

The overhead press primarily targets the shoulders, says Chavez. It also works the triceps, the trapezius muscles in your upper back and the core.

Perform a chest press when you’re looking to strengthen your pectoralis muscles, the two largest in the chest. These muscles are responsible for lifting, rotating and pushing.

By including a back row in your strength training routine, you’ll be working your upper back and biceps, says Chavez.

The overhead pull-down or pull-up will strengthen your latissimus dorsi muscles (lats), which extend from the lower back to the armpit. Chavez says you’ll be engaging your biceps, too.

Squats work the quadricep muscles (quads) in the thighs, hamstrings and glutes, says Chavez. They’ll also engage your core, since squats require stability.

Include deadlifts in your routine to challenge your quad muscles in the thigh, hamstrings, glutes and lower back, says Chavez. You can choose between the regular deadlift and the Romanian deadlift, or incorporate both into your workout.

Benefits of a Consistent Strength Training Routine

Studies show that consistency when strength training, rather than the complexity of your workout plan, is what makes the biggest difference for health. Any kind of resistance training compared to none at all improve sstrength, muscle function and endurance regardless of intensity, equipment type and variation, research shows.

These six moves are not the only effective workouts for improving strength and altering body composition, but if you were to stick only to these six, you’d be in great shape, he explains.

Regular strength training will not only improve your physique but also your quality of life. “When you do a deadlift, that’s like picking up your kid,” Chavez says, comparing pull-ups to playing with them on the monkey bars.

“Carrying groceries, moving furniture, all of those things become a lot easier when you build some strength. And … these six movements cover all of the major muscle groups, so that will translate into really changing the way that you experience life,” he adds.

How to Add Variation

Once you’ve committed to a training plan you’ll use again and again, you may also want to mix things up, Chavez says.

To avoid boredom or to add an additional challenge, most of the six moves have variations.

For example, narrow-stance squats isolate the quads. Or you can change the grip during bicep curls to also target the forearms. “Learning slight variations to these primary movements is how you really build out a good routine,” he says.

An ideal workout program includes strength training at least two times a week and additional sessions with a type of cardio you enjoy. Chavez plays basketball, runs and rides his bike in between strength training sessions. He also suggests walking, swimming or rowing.

Fitness

What Happens to Your Body When You Take Ozempic Without Exercising

Published

19 hours ago

March 25, 2026

Press Room

What Happens to Your Body When You Take Ozempic Without Exercising

(Photo: Oleg Breslavtsev / Getty)

Published March 25, 2026 12:36PM

Is exercise obsolete in the age of Ozempic? Now that the initial hype has settled down, nobody makes that claim with a straight face. In fact, one of the big fears among people taking GLP-1 agonists (the class of drug to which Ozempic belongs) is that they’ll lose too much muscle along with all the fat, leaving them weaker and less healthy. But at this point, there’s very little data on what happens when you combine these drugs with an exercise routine (or lack thereof).

A newly published study in the journal Sports Medicine steps into this gap. It’s a secondary analysis of data from a previously published study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, funded in part by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Novo Nordisk is the company that makes Ozempic). The study follows volunteers taking another Novo Nordisk GLP-1 agonist called liraglutide (sold under the brand names Victoza and Saxenda) for an entire year, with or without the addition of a regular exercise program. The results show that without exercise, both health and physical function suffer—and it’s not just about muscle.

What the GLP-1 Study Found

The study involved 193 adults between the ages of 18 and 65. It’s a little unusual in that they started by following an eight-week very-low-calorie diet before starting either exercise or the GLP-1 drug. That’s because the original study was designed to look at ways of maintaining weight loss. Everyone included in the study lost at least 5 percent of their starting weight, which resulted in an average weight loss of 29 pounds. Then, for the following year, they either exercised, took the GLP-1 drug, did both, or did neither. (Those who didn’t get the drug got a placebo.)

The exercise program involved two group exercise classes per week, including 30 minutes of intervals on an exercise bike, then 15 minutes of circuit training (step-ups, boxing, squats, kettlebells, and so on). The subjects were also asked to do two additional workouts on their own; the details were up to them, but most chose running, cycling, brisk walking, or circuits. Adherence was decent: they averaged 2.65 workouts a week and met standard public health guidelines for physical activity.

The first outcome of interest (as reported in the original analysis) is weight. Here’s the trajectory of the four groups:

Graphing showing that the combination of exercise and a GLP-1 drug was most effective for maintaining weight loss. — The combination of exercise and a GLP-1 drug was most effective for maintaining weight loss. (Photo: Sports Medicine)

Doing nothing was the worst option. Exercising and taking a GLP-1 drug was the best option. If you had to choose one or the other, the drug looks marginally better, though the difference wasn’t statistically significant.

Does Fitness or Fatness Matter More?

There’s a longstanding debate about the relative health effects of being overweight versus being aerobically unfit. The two often go together, so they get conflated—but they’re not the same thing. The general trend of evidence, according to the Danish research team, is that it’s better for health and longevity to be fit and overweight than unfit and normal weight. This distinction is important in the context of GLP-1 drugs, because if they help you lose weight without gaining fitness, then the health benefits may be less than you’d expect.

Figuring out how to measure fitness in this context isn’t straightforward. When you lose weight, you’ll generally lose some muscle mass in addition to fat loss. Both strength and aerobic fitness (as measured by VO2 max) are roughly proportional to muscle mass, so your absolute fitness might appear to decline when you lose a lot of weight. But if you lose less strength or fitness in proportion to your overall weight loss, you’ll still end up with greater functional fitness: you’ll have an easier time getting up from a chair, be able to walk for longer, and so on.

One of the simple functional tests the Danish study included was a stair-climb test: climb up and down an 11-step stairway twice, as fast as possible. Here’s what those results looked like:

Graphing showing that the key to climbing stairs more quickly was exercise, with or without a GLP-1 drug. — The key to climbing stairs more quickly was exercise, with or without a GLP-1 drug. (Photo: Sports Medicine)

It’s clear here that the exercise program helped people speed up and down the stairs more quickly, whether or not they were taking the GLP-1 drug. Just taking the drug without exercising didn’t have any benefit.

There are a whole bunch of other fitness measures in the paper: VO2 max tests, leg strength tests, body composition tests to measure muscle mass in the arms and legs. The fitness outcomes can be expressed in absolute terms, or relative to total body weight, or relative to muscle mass. No matter how you express it, the overall pattern, with a few minor exceptions, is the same as the graph above: exercise makes you fitter, simply taking the drug doesn’t.

(An example of a minor exception: the drug alone was enough to improve relative leg strength, i.e. leg strength divided by total body weight, because weight decreased more than strength. But adding exercise worked even better.)

This conclusion—that the best way to get fitter is to exercise—is not exactly surprising. But I think it has been overlooked in discussions about GLP-1 drugs. I’ve certainly seen lots of chatter about the dangers of muscle loss with Ozempic, and the need to pound protein and lift weights. That’s a legitimate concern, but aerobic fitness is an even better predictor of longevity and marker of general health. GLP-1 drugs have remarkable properties, but they haven’t made exercise obsolete.

For more Sweat Science, sign up for the email newsletter and check out my new book The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map.

Fitness

Stay on Top of Your Workouts and Health With the Best Fitness Trackers of 2026

Published

1 day ago

March 25, 2026

Press Room

Stay on Top of Your Workouts and Health With the Best Fitness Trackers of 2026

Format: Would you prefer wearing a ring or a wrist-based device? If you want something understated that you can wear all the time and don’t mind not having a screen to glance at, then a ring would be ideal. If having a watch on your wrist is comfortable, then a smartwatch or wrist-based tracker may be the right choice.

Compatibility: If you’re an Apple user, ensure your fitness tracker is compatible with iOS. The same goes if you’re an Android user.

Storage capacity: For those who don’t want their fitness tracker to be dependent on their phone, look at a device with its own storage capacity.

Special features: Before purchasing a fitness tracker, consider the health metrics that are important to you for your favorite workouts. If you’d like your tracker to do more than monitor your fitness, you’ll be better off with a smartwatch like the Pixel Watch 4 or Apple Watch SE 3.

Wi-Fi or Bluetooth: If you’re the type of person who likes to leave their phone behind when working out but still needs internet access, ensure your fitness tracker has Wi-Fi.

GPS? For those who run, hike or walk and want to keep track of metrics like distance and pace without their phone, choose a fitness tracker that has built-in GPS.

Screen size: Once you decide you want a fitness tracker with a screen, make sure it fits your personal preferences. A smaller screen may be better if you prefer for it to be less obvious that you’re wearing a fitness tracker on your wrist.

Battery life: How often do you want to be charging your fitness tracker? If frequently charging your devices is a pet peeve, ensure your fitness tracker of choice has a long battery life, especially for your preferred workouts.

Water resistance: Individuals who work out by swimming or those who enjoy taking a dip in the pool after exercising will want a fitness tracker that is water-resistant. Confirm your device is rated for the depth you plan to swim at.

Subscription cost: It’s common for fitness trackers to come with the added cost of a subscription, particularly if you want to access all available features or require extra features for your workout or fitness goals. To guarantee that a fitness tracker is in your budget, check not only the price of the device, but also how much your subscription of choice will run you over the course of a year.