Episode 203 takes a look at how we define a healthy relationship with the gym. I ask the question, is being addicted to the gym healthy? You might not realize that not all “healthy” people are healthy. Although the outside package might look the part of being healthy, it’s how you define health on the inside that matters more.
For many gym goers, it’s a place they go to feel good, manage stress and anxiety and get a great sweat on. Often those who are religious about their training, it becomes a part of their identity and starts to define how they think and feel about themselves. The problem becomes that often this healthy way of being can take a turn to the excessive that includes no days off and the world falling apart if they become sick or injured. They feel better when they’re exercising regularly, but don’t know how to feel good if they can’t exercise. Not to mention, taking a day off of exercise creates anxiety and stress.
Exercise is meant to release feel good endorphins, however do you know how to feel good if you can’t exercise for whatever reason?
In today’s episode, Lisa shares about her recent injury and how she’s navigating her time off today vs how she would have reacted to being off in the past.
Here are a few things to be on the lookout for to determine if you’re addicted to the gym in an unhealthy way
1. You aren’t recovering well
2. Your resting heart rate becomes elevated
3. You get sick more often
4. You’re always tired and don’t sleep well
5. You’re having mood swings and often find yourself depressed outside the gym
6. You feel like you can’t take a break
7. You don’t know how to cope with life without your daily exercise
8. Your strength is decreasing
9. You’re getting injured or experience over use aches and pains
10. You obsess about getting your workout in at the expense of everything else in your life.
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TRANSCRIPT
When is working out, not good for you not healthy, and actually can become a destructive behavior. Tune into today’s episode on the forefront of living podcast and find out.
Welcome to the full frontal living Podcast. I’m Lisa carpenter master life coach to driven ambitious humans who want more out of life without having to sacrifice themselves to achieve it all share how it’s possible to slow down, take better care of yourself, find more peace and ease, create sustainable energy, stop procrastination and overwhelm and fall in love with your life, your business and your body. This podcast is for you. If you’re ready to learn what it takes to thrive as a high performer, do less, but achieve more make you and your well being a top priority and create your extraordinary life. I’m so glad you’re here.
Hey, thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Full Frontal living podcast. And today I’m talking about being addicted to the gym. And is that actually healthy. And you know, I’m pulling this from my own experience. As you know, if you’ve been listening for some time, I am a really big believer in using stories as a way to teach. And often they’re my own stories from my own experience, sometimes their stories from clients. But today, I really wanted to dive into something that’s happened to me recently, that has caused me to take more time off the gym than I anticipated. So after my recent trip to Sedona had 10 days off, went into the gym, after I got back was excited to start to train again, had one training session. And by that evening, I was in so much pain. I’m not sure if I loaded the bar incorrectly on me I was doing hip thrusts, you can go Google that if you want to see what it is. But for whatever reason, I did the lifting correctly. And I definitely threw something on my hips and I was in a tremendous amount of pain. And I have an incredibly high pain threshold. So that is saying a lot. Needless to say, I got into see the people who support me whenever I get injured, which I try and keep to a minimum. But you know, as an athlete, these things happen, right? If you’re going to take a car and you’re going to drive it off road, you have to be prepared to do the maintenance on the car. And our bodies are no different. I get regular maintenance on my body to make sure everything is in alignment and it’s running smoothly. And I’m very, very quick to get into see somebody when I’ve injured myself, I don’t simply wait for things to clear up on their own. I’m not 20 anymore. And even as a 20 year old, I think oh my goodness, if I had just gotten things taken care of how much better I would be off today. But here we are. So when I injured myself, I don’t just sit around waiting for things to get better. I went in, had everything looked up, they were able to get things moving again. And it became very evident that I was going to have to take more time off the gym. And honestly, even as I’m recording this, I don’t know what that looks like.
This is a lower body injury, which means no squats, no deadlifts, no leg presses nothing. Because I’ve hurt a muscle in my back, I’ve strained something really badly, which got me thinking, you know, the old version of me would have lost her mind, she would have lost her mind. Because so much of my identity was tied up in being that person that is so committed to going to the gym, I don’t miss anything. My identity was tied up and pushing through making things work. And nowadays, that is not the case. That’s just not the case. So it’s not that I’m not, you know, disappointed that I can’t train I love to train. But the gym plays a very different role in my life now than it used to. So getting regular exercise is very, very important in staying healthy and you know, moving your bodies is a big part of what I support my clients around, I want them to be active, it creates a an overall package of wellness in your life. You can’t just be sitting on your butt all the time. You have to get out and move your body it’s designed to move. But oftentimes, many a type personalities can get into this place of almost feeling compelled to exercise and they struggle to stop even after they’ve injured themselves or in a lot of pain. And this is where things this is where exercise takes this turn into becoming an addiction.
So let’s talk about that a little bit more. I remember way back in the day the first time I had a trainer at the time telling me I needed take a week off from the gym. And I was literally like, you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t need a week off. And he said, No, at least I want you to take a week off. And it was so hard, I felt anxious the whole time I was off, it took a long time for my nervous system to calm down. But I had gotten myself into such a state of overtraining. So my heart rate was elevated all the time, I wasn’t sleeping well, I wasn’t recovering well. So these are kind of symptoms you can look for, of overtraining, if you’re tracking any data. And I needed that break, my nervous system needed the break from training, because again, we don’t make gains. When we’re in the middle of doing things we make the gains when we’re resting. Okay, rest is such an important success strategy, you’ve heard me say that time and time again. So that was the first lesson I got this was like, way back in the day about the gym. But I did not understand at that time, how I was using the gym as a way to numb out what was going on in my life. So you’ve probably also heard me talk about the fact that I went through pretty massive burnout, you know, quite a number of years ago now. And it was because I was constantly doing all the things doing, doing, doing, chasing, chasing my worthiness, you know, trying to prove that I was good enough to everybody, but not even recognizing that, you know, I couldn’t see that this was what I was doing, it couldn’t see that I was chasing my self worth, I didn’t recognize that I was operating from a place of low self worth and low self esteem.
So my whole life was about doing more. And, you know, trying to find my value in this identity that I created for myself around being this person that could you know, juggle all the balls and look good doing it. So I didn’t recognize that it was a very, like going to the gym, that was a very unhealthy behavior. And this is something that, you know, has come up over the past couple of years. You know, during the pandemic, we did have, you know, some healthy people were struck down. And this was the argument like, oh my god, that healthy people, like if Healthy People are dying, and my response was always, just because somebody looks like they’re taking care of themselves and going to the gym and going out for jobs. And, you know, eating their vegetables does not make them a healthy person. Because we’re not looking at the emotional wellness and what is driving the behaviors. So many a type personalities, we get into overworking, overdoing over performing over perfecting, spending too much time in the gym spending too much time on social media, right that all the overdoing. But we can look at these as like things that we get rewarded with in society, right, like taking care of yourself going to the gym all the time. That’s I mean, we’re giving ourselves high fives for doing that. Look at me, I’m not that lazy person sitting on my couch, not taking care of myself, I’m in the gym all the time. And look at all the stuff that I’m producing in my work. You know, we often get high fives for that, especially as women we have this belief that we have to do more just to be equal to our male counterparts. So when something like an injury happens if you’re using the gym as a coping mechanism, right, you’re using the gym in a way that’s no different than drugs, alcohol, overshooting, smoking overeating. It’s you’re using it as an as a way to not be present to what it is you’re feeling. So I am here for healthy exercise. I’m here for working hard in the gym. That’s what I do as an athlete. But it’s not no longer coming from a place of I’m not good enough. So I’m gonna go into the gym to prove my worth. It’s no longer coming from a place of me trying to outrun my anxiety, which I live with for most of my life and was completely unaware of because, you know, ironically, here I spent my whole life you know, working on my body and being in the world of fitness and nutrition. Yet I was completely disconnected from my physical body and live from the neck up. So I no longer use the gym to kind of mood alter. So I’m not saying it doesn’t make me feel good. It does. It’s a great way to start my day. But I’m not using it as a coping mechanism.
So this is where things are different for me if I get injured, it sucks to be injured. It sucks that I can’t train. But I don’t need the gym to feel good. Because I know how to feel good without the gym. I’m also not in this state of like, oh my god, this is gonna ruin everything because you know, I’ve plans to go on stage next August for my first pro show. nothing bad happens. Nothing bad will happen. Been, my body will bounce back, I’m not gonna go to hell in a handbasket, if I have to take another week off. It’s okay. There is no stress or anxiety for me over not being able to train.
In fact, I’m looking at it as a gift. I’ve gotten to sleep in more, I’m still training upper body. So I get to go into the gym a few times a week. But I have so many other things that I love to do with my time outside of the gym. The gym isn’t the only way that I manage my emotions. I know what I need to give myself to feel good, whether I’m going to the gym, or not. So this is why even taking D load weeks where I take an entire week off of training, I don’t just dial it back, I like take rest. So good for my soul, it allows me to come back and train with super high intensity all year round. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re a woman, or a man who couldn’t imagine taking time off from the gym, and you don’t know how to manage your anxiety, you don’t know how you would be able to cope with your life, not yell at your kids not lose your shit at work. If you don’t get your workouts in, it might be time for you to step back. And just be curious about why that is. If you didn’t have the gym, if you couldn’t train anymore, how would you feel good enough? What would make you happy? How would you fill your time? Who are you without the gym? And these are questions that I had to ask way back in the day when I went through burnout because I couldn’t train for a very, very long time. And I still remember, I had scaled things back so much. So much of my identity was wrapped up in being the strong one in the gym, right? I was older than everybody but I was I was going to be the strongest I was going to keep up with the guys I was going to push the hardest. And I still remember my therapist saying to me, you know, Lisa, you need to dial it back even more. And I was like, How can I possibly dial it back more I’m barely training now. And she said to me, you know, I think maybe maybe you want to consider swimming. And I burst into tears because I thought that’s not exercise. Right? So you see all the stories that I was telling myself about what I needed my weight training for, and how much of my identity was wrapped up into it. So now because it’s a part of my life, but it isn’t my life. It’s a part of my identity, but it doesn’t make up my entire identity. I don’t use it as a way to cope with my life. Because I’ve done the work to love my life. I live a life that I don’t need to cope, to be in, right like, I know a lot of you are living lives and you’re just like coping your way through life, like life is living you in essence, My life isn’t that way anymore. I’ve done the work to really enjoy all the elements of my life.
So the gym is just another element that I get to enjoy competing is another element that I get to enjoy. And I can choose to do it or cannot choose to do it. And nothing bad happens if I can’t. So this is what will actually propel me forward as an athlete, because I’m able to give myself my body the time it needs to fully recover. So I don’t go back in and reinjure it and this is what happens to people all the time. They get back into training before they’re fully recovered because they can’t stand the anxiety of not going to the gym and they’re afraid they’re gonna gain all the weight and all the bad things are going to happen. And they get back into the gym too soon, they re injure themselves and they end up they end up being off for longer. So as with all things in my life, whether it’s at the gym, or in my business, I’m playing the long game. I’m here for longevity, I want to be lifting into my 60s 70s 80s Hey, maybe even 90s Maybe I’ll be that person in her 90s which means I have to take divine care of my body. My body is my tool. It’s the vehicle that I get to go through life in and punishing it at the gym when it’s injured is not the answer. That’s actually not the most loving thing I can give it. So exercise is a very loving way to treat your body but it’s not a loving way to treat your body if you’re punishing your body because you’re trying to avoid your anxiety or the things in your life that you just can’t be with.
So I hope that if you are a regular person or not a regular person, a person who regularly goes to the gym that this episode gives you some food for thought around training around taking rest around injuries. and the role that it is actually playing in your life. So use it to support your mental health to feel good. But don’t use it to avoid the things that you might be trying to avoid, because you can have great physical health. But if your emotional health is poor underneath at all, you are still subject to more injury and more illness than somebody who is working from a very grounded, loving place within themselves.
So on that note, wish me luck on my road to recovery. I’m sure I’ll be back in the gym in no time. But in the meantime, I’m going to just enjoy a lot more longer walks outside time with my family time in front of the podcast mic, and doing all the other things that bring me a lot of joy in my life. And I’m sure that when I hit the stage in August of next year, I will still be in the best shape of my life. So until next week, take very, very good care of you. It’s your responsibility to make you a priority. And if you need support in making yourself a priority if you need support in managing how to navigate your anxiety, how to slow down how to do less how to be more present with yourself and present in your life so that you can have more peace and ease and joy, fulfillment. Then make sure you head over to Lisa carpenter.ca/wwm and book your single coaching call and let’s get started. I will see you on the next episode.
