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When you eat, you consume calories. When playing sports, spend it. This means that if you cannot resist high-calorie foods, you need to exercise more.
This conclusion seems logical, but can lead to sad consequences: the emergence of an addiction to exercise or, conversely, the development of an aversion to sports, injury and worsening of an eating disorder.
Below we’ll tell you why you shouldn’t go for a run to work off that extra slice of pizza.
This distracts from the main problem – eating disorders
Sports and fitness may increase your energy expenditure slightly, but the main contribution Eating behavior contributes to weight loss and weight maintenance.
First of all, you need to deal with what makes you consume more calories than you need. “Working out” prevents us from taking a closer look at this issue and establishing nutrition.
A person overeats, then circles around the stadium and believes that he has atoned for his sin and everything is fine. Until the next breakdown.
Moreover, the desire to cover up what you eat with training is also ineffective. At our body There is ceiling of physical activity, which helps to expend more energy per day. Going beyond this level, the body begins to save.
In other words, if you burn more calories during a workout, your body will begin to reduce costs for other tasks – for example, basal metabolism. And this is the main “expense item” that should be be guided two thirds of all energy.
Instead of burning off excess pieces during an additional workout, work on eliminating them. Try mindful eating or see a therapist to combat your eating disorder.
And turns sport into punishment
Sports and fitness without taking into account nutrition will not lead to significant weight loss. But losing weight is not the only reason to move more in everyday life.
Physical activity protects for high blood pressure and heart disease, diabetes and some types of cancer, helps improve mental health and well-being and even prolongs life.
But all this concerns regular activity – that which has become a habit. To create one, you need to love the activities, and not drive yourself out of the feeling of guilt for the extra calories.
Subsequently, even if you improve your eating behavior and lose extra pounds, negative past experiences can keep you from playing sports, take away a lot of pleasure and several years of your life.
It also increases the risk of injury
Our body is designed to move. But he has his own limits on physical activity.
If the body does not have time to adapt to the load, it breaks down. Therefore, professional sports always include periodization – a training plan in which serious loads alternate with light activity for recovery.
“Working out” does not imply any periodization. When they had eaten too much, they ran.
For example, for one week a person hardly exercises because his appetite is normal. Then comes a series of stressful days, the person losing weight breaks down, attacks forbidden foods and, as compensation, runs 50 kilometers in a week.
This load may seem insignificant or at least tolerable. Perhaps it will even bring pleasure: a person will feel good, atone for guilt and muffle the fear of getting better.
Only the joints and muscles don’t care about moral torment. If they receive more load than they can withstand, they become damaged.
Chronic overload can lead to fatigue injuries and overtraining. As a result, a person will either lose the opportunity to exercise, or will continue to do so despite pain and fatigue, which will cause even more harm to his body.
To avoid falling into this trap, create a training program and stick to it. Whether it’s strength training at the gym or at home, jogging or other cardio, your weekly volume of exercise should be determined by your plan, not your mood or how much you eat.
If you use exercise as a way to suppress your appetite, go for a walk on rest days – this will for sure will not harm joints and muscles.
And can develop into compulsive training.
This addiction, in which a person literally cannot live without training, exercises too often and in large quantities. According to researchsuch an unhealthy love of sports is observed in 39–48% of people with eating disorders.
This problem occurs more often in adolescents and young adults, especially females. Combined with low self-esteem, anxiety and rejection of one’s own body.
People susceptible to this dependencies:
- increase the amount of exercise to feel euphoria or celebrate a new achievement;
- if it is impossible to exercise, they feel anxiety, irritability, and problems sleeping;
- cannot reduce the amount of exercise or give it up for any period of time;
- cannot adhere to the planned plan, constantly exceed the number of movements;
- spend a lot of time on training – studying, preparing for it or recovering from stress;
- engage in activities to the detriment of work, study, communication with friends and family, and other activities;
- continue to exercise even when they understand that it is harmful to their health, psychological state and interpersonal relationships.
If you are at risk and have already noticed signs of this disorder, stop consoling yourself that it is at least healthier than drinking alcohol. Exercise addicts also wreak havoc on their bodies, lose friends and family over time, and suffer from depression and anxiety.
Stop in time before the problem becomes global. If something hurts, go to the doctor and follow his recommendations; if not yet, review your schedule and determine a place in it for training without compromising other areas of life. Then find a good plan and stick with it.
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