By Angie Best-Boss, Contributing Writer
To maintain cardiovascular health, 2,000-3,500 calories should be burned each week through aerobic exercise, such as running, dancing, cycling and the like. Thirty to 45 minutes a day, five or six days a week is sufficient to acquire these health benefits. As the Mirasol Eating Disorder Treatment Center explains, exercise beyond 3,500 calories per week, however, leads to decreased physical benefits and increased risk of injury.
According to the National Women’s Health Center, eating disorders and over exercising go hand-in-hand — they both can be a result of an unhealthy obsession with your body. The most dangerous aspect of over exercising is the ease with which it can go unrecognized. The condition can be easily hidden by an emphasis on fitness or a desire to be healthy. Over-exercising is placed in the same class as eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia where individuals deny themselves of adequate nutrition by restrictive eating behaviors.
Remember, fitness should be done within limits and integrated into your lifestyle, done in moderation like everything else in life. If exercising is getting in the way of your daily activities or relationships, you may need to slow down.
These red flags that you may be exercising for the wrong reasons are from Disordered Eating, Food Obsessions and Compulsive Exercise by Nancy Clark.
- preoccupation with exercise routine or intrusive thoughts about exercise that interfere with your ability to concentrate or focus
- finding time at any cost to exercise, like cutting school or taking time off from work
- exercise is your social life — you turn down social activities so as not to miss your scheduled workout
- feeling overly anxious, guilty or angry if unable to exercise and you can't tolerate changes or interruptions of your exercise routine
- exercising alone to avoid having your routine disturbed
- exercising is driven primarily by a desire to control your weight, shape and/or body composition
- food choices are based solely on exercise (you exercise as punishment for eating "bad" foods, to purge calories or you overly restrict what you eat if you can't exercise)
- lying about exercise or you always exercise alone
- you can't take rest days or time off from exercise — even if you're injured or ill.
- persistent desire and/or unsuccessful attempts to control or reduce exercise (e.g., can't take a day off during the week or time off periodically throughout the year)
- engaging in non-purposeful or excessive exercise beyond a sensible fitness or training program
- how you feel about yourself on a daily basis is based on how much exercise you perform or how hard you work out
- exercise isn't fun or pleasurable or you're never satisfied with your physical achievements
- amenorrhea (loss of three consecutive menses or failure to begin menstruating by age sixteen) and/or stress fractures
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