Exercise Dependency vs. Exercise Compulsion ft. Matt Stranberg

time did you and die out? Welcome back to that way, Lisa here again, and today we're bringing back Matt Stranberg, who you probably remember from our last episode where we learned all about how to figure out if our relationship to food is healthy versus dysfunctional. We explored the differences between men and women in eating disorders, and what I really loved about that episode, which was how we can

support men in getting the help that they need. So if you didn't listen to that episode, head on back to listen to it. Matt is phenomenal. So welcome back. Matt. Your registered dietitian, but you're also an exercise science specialist and you help athletes and individuals improve their relationship to not just food and exercise. So today I'd love if we could talk about how to approach fitness from a healthy place. Starting out the door with what is exercise addiction? Yeah, totally.

And this is a great topic as well. And actually it very much relates to the previous conversation that we just had, So I would strongly encourage you to actually go back and listen to that because that will help kind of get chap to speed with some of these thought processes. That being said, you know, something that is really important to this topic is is understanding these categories because they can be helpful in some respects and at

the same time, they might not capture your experience. And so and that is actually something that's really important because a lot of times people will say, you know, I think it's time for a change, or I'm thinking about something. They'll google something and they're like, oh, I don't fit that correct here, I'm all good, and they'll move on.

And so, for instance, with you know, the concept of extra size addiction, exercise addiction UH is a term that is commonplace in our society because the word addiction is something that's very much talked about and at the same time, from my experience, doesn't necessarily kind of flesh out, you know,

what is going on for an individual. So you know, when I talk about these topics, um, it's really important to first understand, you know, what is exercise versus physical activity, because that, you know, it can help people further understand, you know, what's going on. Because I will talk to a lot of people and if in my assessments or when I talk to someone, if I say, you know, tell me about you know, what you do on a weekly basis for exercise, and they're like, oh, you know,

I don't exercise that much. Maybe I'll go to the jam, like you know, three times for an hour or whatever. And so like when you're listening to this, you go, Okay, you know this person exercise for three hours per a week. But if you said, can you tell me about your physical activity, they go, well, you know, I only exercise like three times a week, but my physical activity, you know, I'm hiking all the time, I'm walking, you know, you know,

I take my bike everywhere, etcetera. And they're racking like hours on hours of physical activity every single day. That wouldn't have been captured if you would just asked about exercise. Because people define exercise in a very particular way, and for some people is something is not considered exercise unless they're sweating and their you know, their hearts pumping and

their muscles are burning. So I talked to a lot of people who do like hours of intensive yoga and like go for these hikes, and they're like, oh, that's not exercise, that that's easy. Exercise is when I kill myself and CrossFit. So you know, first, if you back up for a moment, it's really important to kind of think about you know, physical activity exercise, and physical activity is just any movement in general that's using your skeletal muscle.

It's not necessarily planned or like intended to try to improve a fitness quality per se, while exercise, conversely, is planned out, it's intended, it's it's designed, you know, in many respects to change a particular fitness quality. And so that's yeah, yeah, often, so it seems that for people to qualify their exercise it needs to be within a fitness facility, on a piece of equipment as a part of their day that is very different from the rest

of their day. So they're not going to count things like gardening or walking to the park with their grandchild or daughter or son, you know, So that's super interesting to just kind of think about the two and why people think of them as so differently. Yeah, I mean, with all these definitions that we've been talking about, unfortunately, because of the explosion of information as well as like you know, overall distrust and authorities, it's been really fragmented.

So nowadays people really have their own definition and their own symbolic and emotional meaning attached to words. So you can talk to like ten different people about exercise and they might have ten different definitions of exercise. You can talk to ten different people about a carbohydrate or starch or health and they'll have ten different definitions. So in many instances, people are talking past each other and they're essentially talking different languages, which make it really difficult to

understand kind of what the overall experience might be. And so, you know, going back to this concept of exercise, addiction, you know, addiction summons this this very wrong effective term that really generates a lot of feelings and emotions and immediately people are kind of like a repulse by it, or they don't feel that way that they're like, I'm addicted, you know. And so for instance, if someone said, oh, are you struggling with exercise addiction, and the person might say, oh, no, no,

it's just a lifestyle. I just love being a high activity lifestyle. So in that respect, you know, it can really miss the mark in a way that we can flush this out to help maybe people explore this a little bit more. Is once again revisiting that original concept that I talked about that the map is not the territory. So just because these categories are describing particular patterns or experiences doesn't mean necessarily it captures everything or it's indicative

of reality. They're more so describing patterns that might give you ideas about what's going on. But it's really key to talk to individuals on a personal basis. Now before we go into the individual basis and exploring that, going back to the categories of archetypical patterns that you might observe, you know, in the literature, there are some patterns that have been described, such as exercise dependence or compulsive exercise, or obligatory exercise or excessive exercise, and each one of

these has some kind of understanding of what's going on. So, for instance, dependence is usually describing this cluster of cognitive, behavioral and like physical symptoms um similar to like substance use disorders or dependence. So an example might be kind of similar how we talk about substances in relation to you. One takes a dose or you know, engages in a certain dose of exercise and they establish a tolerance and then they need more and more to obtain the same effect.

When they try to do less exercise, they start to experience withdrawal, so they start to feel irritable or off, and in many respects, this causes them to up the dose again and exercise more. Oftentimes, there can be moments

where they feel like they have challenges with intentions. So for instance, like I'm gonna go, you know, go for a run for thirty instant, it's like an hour and a half later, they're going longer that's intended, and you know, maybe there's feelings of like lack of control, like I can't stop myself, I just need to run more, salience like it's it's it's taking up a large part of their life. And you know, we can look at like how this relate to other activities. Are they're reducing other

activities so they can exercise more. And then one of the key features in terms of like exercise dependence would entail that there's continuance and people persist in these behaviors even when there's negative side effects. So, for instance, the person breaks their ankle and they're still going on runs. You know, they're not feeling well and they're sick, and they're still going out for runs. They feel like they can't miss the gym, and you know, they're feeling dizzy,

but they still going out on runs. And so as with other forms of dependence, that really depends on the context in the person's life because you know, these varying levels might not capture their relationship. And so really a good question is like, what would happen if you couldn't exercise, and that will start to you know, flesh out what's going on. Yeah, and I know from from sinal experience to just humanize kind of what we're talking about here.

For me, exercise addiction. When I think back on that part of my life, I certainly wouldn't have called it that then. So looking back, I can tell you that it was an addiction for me because I only deserved to eat if I worked out, or you know, it was a compensatory relationship I had with exercise. And food. It was also the only way that I could create serotonin in my brain, meaning when I felt high and good on life naturally, the only way I could derive

that was from exercise. And while that felt really good at the time, I now know stepping back, that I should get joy from micro moments of my life, such as sharing a meal with somebody, going for a walk that isn't quote unquote exercise, or making my heart pump or sweating and all these little things during the day. And I could not miss a day. And during that stage of my life, Matt, you know, I was studying to be a nutritionist and my masters was an exercise physiology.

If you told me that I had an exercise addiction, that would have felt incredibly confusing, just like many of our listeners might feel confused, like my doctor told me to get this much in a day, and I'm doing that. How can what we were told to be good moving our bodies, lifting weights, walking, whatever it is, How can that become negative the same way healthy eating can be?

And so how can we know if we're flirting that line in the moment rather than being reflective like I am now on the past, Yeah, totally and and we can certainly explore that because one thing that I think that would be important is actually what you just described is sounds more along the lines of another kind of archetypal kind that I described, such as compulsive exercise, so for instance, using exercise persistently and maybe excessively as a

way to relieve anxiety or distress with perceived negative consequences from abstaining from the behavior. So for instance, maybe you have avoidance or rule trip and behavior or exercise is being used as a weaken role mechanism or like you have mentioned, a primary means of mood improvement. And then maybe there's even elements where even though you don't feel good and the exercise is not enjoyable, you still find yourself doing it and you're you know, exhibiting this rigidity.

And so you know, as I had mentioned, with the dependence, like this is one cluster of maybe a relationship, there's lots of relationships exercise that are much more compulsive, and and they fly into the radar because when someone says, oh, I'm not feeling good, I need to go out for a run, people like nice work. That's a really healthy way of doing that. But the question would be like, can you actually feel your emotions and can you process

them without going for a run. And when the person starts to feel like they're having these compulsions to go for a run no matter what and they can't feel good, it's like, you know, something's beginning to evolve there. And I mean, I see this all the time and I've been there, and I also kind of have this two prong approach to it where I do feel better when I moved my body. It's great for my mental wellness

and my mental health. However, we also hear be will say I need to move my body every day to feel good, and we clap for both, but there's a distinguishing factor of do you take rest days, you know, if life gets in the way because of family commitments or school commitments, or you're just feeling tired, can you take a break and find another way to be okay

that day. And we have to stop applauding, like you said, yeah, that's a healthy behavior, you know, and instead allow people to find more ways, more tools in their toolbox to get that joy to feel good, to not just be out running themselves. And I don't know if this is similar for you or not. But for me, exercise was exactly what you said away to run away from my

emotions and my body. And it's interesting because I'm still exercising moving my body, but oftentimes when I'm coming to that place of I'm going to move my body, even though I'm in a kind of crappy place mentally, I don't feel like I'm running. I feel like I'm coming even more in my body. I don't know if that makes sense. And so, for instance, of activity is is something that is potentially very therapeutic and potentially very transformative

and and and potentially very life enhancing. You know, when we think about, you know, that differentiation between physical activity and exercise. The reason why I said that, or another reason why I said that, is because people can realize the benefits of movement and not necessarily have to fall into the societal conception of you know, why is legitimate versus what's not? What is exercise versus what's not? And in many respects, like you had mentioned, it's overtly seen

as a good thing. But similar to other things in our life, you know, it can throw us out a balance if that's the only tool in our tool kits. So for instance, like emotional eating, Like this is a term that's often thrown around is like something negative. But you know, in most cultures and throughout time and a lot of other areas, like people eat with emotion and that's actually part of the experience. So eating with emotion or soothing your emotions with food is not necessarily a

bad thing. Um, same thing with doothing your emotions at times with physical activity and moving your body in particular ways. The analogy that I often make, you know, to help kind of clarify this is so for instance, like let's say you had a really long, tough week and you're like, oh,

you know, that was just a really stressful week. I feel like, you know what some retail therapy, and you go on to Amazon and you just buy those new shoes that you've been uh, you know, iron for a while and it comes to your door, and like, hell, yeah, treat yourself. That was awesome. You know, that feels great. Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. Same

thing with all the things that we talked about. The question is is every time you get stressed or feel off, do you find yourself loading up your Amazon cart and starting to deliver stuff to your door, or reaching for that ball of wine, or going for a run, or eating as your only ways of coping. If that's you know, something that you're observing, the question would be am I becoming increasingly dependent on this? Or is it becoming compulsive?

You know, this is something that we ask ourselves and say, you know, how does this relate to the other aspects of my life? How do I self soothe in ways that go beyond on maybe just food and just exercise. Maybe food and exercise and these things that we're talking about can be one thing of many instead of just

you know, alternating between food and exercise. And unfortunately, in our society, many people reward these unidimensional relationships with certain things, and in many respects it flies into the radar because what is often seen as dedication and passion um is really compulsion or you know, a feeling of obligation where someone has an obligatory exercise pattern where they feel like they can't take a day off. They're rigid and you know they otherwise they're starting to feel anxious or guilty

if they missed that day um. Similarly, in excessive exercise, you know, this is once again very much dependent on perspective, and you know, what is excessive for one person might actually be very much in line with, you know, what helps them live their best life. So for instance, like if you're an Olympic athlete, yeah, you're gonna be exercising all the time because that's your job and that's what

you do. And at the same time, you know, maybe you also have another a visual who goes to cross fit five times a week and everything else is pretty well balanced, and this is just kind of, you know, how they want to live life, and there's nothing wrong. The question of excessive is are they consistently going over

their body's capacity to recover mentally and physically. And so for instance, if you do that temporarily, that can be beneficial, but if you're chronically doing that, it's going to have negative effects. So the question be why are you consistent going over your capacity to recover? Why are you consistently doing more and more and more and and these kind of things often fun to the radar because people often look at it as a sign of delay, gratification and control.

It's something like that aligns with like maybe Tom Brady, no days off, um, no pain, no gain when it all costs, like, you're doing what it takes to get to the next level. This is part of your fitness lifestyle. And so I think something that we can talk about a little bit more is like, well, how do you explore this relationship to kind of understand, you know, what's

working for you versus what's not working for you. Yeah, And I can tell you as a practitioner, when I started my business six years ago and I wanted to get my clients who didn't exercise or have much physical activity in their life, i'd prescribe them to walk ten k steps a day. That was like, you know, just get out there and walk tank steps a day. And then they'd come back and I started to see how

unhelpful that advice was because they'd spend a day. I'll say it was a Saturday, and it was a male client who went golfing for two hours, walked the entire green, then went kayaking, and when he was done kayaking, he would, you know, instead of just resting or spending time with his family, he had to get those tank steps in

and he felt the pressure to get them in. And we talked about it, and I really, you know, learned from that experience as to there's not just one way to move, and there's not just one way to get that exercise in. So, especially as we head into the warmer months, I encourage everybody to just kind of recognize what feels good today, And it doesn't have to be you know, running two miles or six miles or even walking in that linear plane that you know we're taught

is exercise. So explore what feels good. Is it gardening, Is it going for a swim, Is it you know, just even parking a little bit further and getting to going into the grocery store, and that's your quote unquote exercise for the day. Allow these things to count without

counting them, I think could be helpful. So I worked with a woman in New York City who I adore dearly, a client of mine, and she came to me because she was working with a trainer who put her on a macro counting diet, and although she was hitting her goals quote unquote at the gym, she started to notice that this restrictive diet was not very different than calorie counting, something she had already conquered. And I hear this a

lot when it comes to trainers. Specifically. And that's not to say all trainers are bad or or that all trainers can't help us be healthy as well as help us form a healthy relationship to food an exercise. But this is a theme that we can't really ignore. How can trainers play a role in keeping us mentally well?

What are some things that they can do and say not do and say that can motivate us but not steal from our internal knowledge of knowing exactly what we need to do when it comes to both food and exercise. I think, in order the best answer this question, we can actually generalize it to most practitioners as well in

terms of you know, what we've been talking about. So before we delt in, I think it's important to note that although physical activity or exercise can be beneficial, it's not a moral imperative, and it's actually okay if people decide to not engage in activity or exercise. And every choice that we make has its pros and cons gifts and take in, and the same thing with quality of life, quantity of life, etcetera. Some people want to live a certain lifestyle that they find works best for them, and

that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If if they decide to not exercise at all, sometimes they might invest all that time and reading and writing in the arts and so at the same time, you know, people might find and explore that, like we have been talking about, varying

degrees of movement might actually enhance their life. So I think, you know, going back to the practitioner standpoint, a lot of practitioners, especially personal trainers, but also doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists often look at the patient as a collection of problems to be solved and therefore extend you know, the life experience as a collection of problems to be solved, when in actuality, you know, although it is nice to maybe change certain things in our lives or quote unquote

overcome a certain problem, life as core, you know, one

might argue, is a reality to be experienced. And if we're always focusing on having versus have not and always focusing on solving problems, um at the core in many respects, we're not allowing ourselves to experience our day to day moments, in our day to day being and in had are perpetually in the state of lack and trying to view ourselves as lacking and as a project to be completed and as you know, a problem to be solved, and when you begin to view yourself in that manner um,

it can really rob us of the other dimensions of

life that you know, can often make movement really enjoyable. So, for instance, if we approach movement and physical activity has simply you know, stimulus response, question, answer, problem solution, I'm feeling this way and I want to feel differently, it really robs us of the ability to open up the experience of simply being in the world and being you know, like for instance, like going for a run and feeling the sun on your face and feeling your feet touched

the pavement. And this is something that is totally removed from the experiences offered by most practitioners, and so something that you know, practitioners and trainers alike can probably benefit from is it's moving beyond what I had mentioned in

the last episode. Is this procedural kind of approach where everything is viewed as a collection of boxes and objects and problems that need to be checked and manipulated and tweaked like a car mechanic opening up the hood of our brain and saying I gotta tweak this and got to tweak that and by the end of that, you know you'll look better and you'll feel better. Instead, I would sit down and encourage the trainer and the client to have an open conversation and say, hey, let me

get to know you. You know, what's important to you. How do you feel? How would you like to approach this? I have some ideas. Would you be open to this? How does that make you feel? Would you be open

to experimenting with this? And now you have a mutual collaboration of therapeutic alliance where people are able to collaborate together and explore together various frameworks, various perceptions, various ways of looking at things, various patterns of behaviors as well as thought patterns, and all these various aspects that we can use to navigate our day to day and figure out over time what works in relation to the day to day experience, but also in relation to the overall goal,

but also creating space for simply experiencing each other and experiencing the moment. So I think it's really critical for practitioners, trainers included, to sit down and really enquire about, you know, those subjective experiences and how things are being experienced and then from there begin to tailor the approach in a way that is not split in that dualistic thinking that I was talking about as subject and client or subject and object, but more so as a unified intersubjective kind

of like experience where they're joined together, exploring things together and developing things together. That helps people really develop the relationship that they're looking for and that really can only truly evolve through a mutual interaction as opposed to expert

and um subject. So that means there's two different responsibilities that need to change, both of the practitioner therapist, trainer, dietitian da dada, and let's call it client person paying for services whether it's covered by insurance or not, which means the you know, the practitioner cannot feel like it's their job to find the problem and then just provide a solution based on the problem that they see, and the client cannot walk in because they're paying or because

it's a service, or because they're working with an expert and say I have this problem and I want it fixed. The relationship, the trust needs to be established, a conversation needs to be happening, and other things outside of the obvious quote unquote problem being overweight or wanting to hit a specific goal at the gym, whatever. You know, you can't just look at that in isolation. You need to look at what else is going to be affected by pursuing that goal, maybe not even reaching that goal, but

by pursuing it in that method. And I think that's a brilliant framework to take beyond even working with a professional or not. Is. We have problems, period it. We don't need to fix every single one of them. You're not lazy for not being quote unquote proactive about all of those things. And by doing so, we're surrendering to

life again. And like you said, going for a run and feeling your foot on the earth is very different than going for a run and I need to hit those two miles at this speed and blah blah blah. So what you really did today, Matt is you gave us an invitation to actually be part of reality rather than craft or reality that may or may not ever exist. Yeah,

that's super passionate. That hits home for me totally. A lot of times I meet people who actually, I mean, I would say most people I meet are in a perpetual managerial mode where they spend eight to ten hours of work per day or in school. And the way that the approach that is question answer, stimulus response problem, you know, solver. And this can be really effective in the work environment. At the same time, if it's generalized to all other aspects of our life, it actually becomes

incredibly dehumanizing and mechanical and dysfunctional in manty of respects. So, for instance, I always joke about it with my clients because I meet with a lot of clients who very much espoused this perpetual productivity managerial mode. And so the joke is like, Okay, I'm going to schedule and some relaxation and then I'm gonna prep myself. I'm gonna read a book about how to relax, and then I'm gonna

go in there. I'm gonna try to relax as hard as possible, and you know, I'm they are really concentrating relaxing And we laugh about it because that's the antithesis of relaxation. And so, you know, if we approach everything from that fix our mindset, we actually lose out on a lot of the experiences that actually bring us are probably the best moments of our life. So, for instance, our friends and you know, maybe you know a romantic partner.

You don't go into a situation saying we need to have the best time together, and we need to advance our friendship and we need to be best friends. By the end of this, you know, we're on track to being good friends and we're gonna fall in love at

this time here. No, what happens is that you create space without intention of how you're going to feel at the end of your hanging out with a friend, and then you sit with that person and you explore being in the moment together and it flows and you know when it happens, whether it's a date or whether it's your friends or whether with your partner, you begin to feel woa, time is just flowing by and we are simply being in the moment. And people know what this

experience is like, they strive for it. And actually most of the people who are quote unquote struggle with exercise feel themselves compulsed to go back to exercise because this is maybe the only moment in the day when they're actually maybe present or actually maybe they're tuned out from constantly being a manager and so creating more space in

your day to day life. To simply experience reality and not approach it as a problem allows us to actually experience a lot of the things that make us humans, such as love and friendship and connection and and so I think there's some hints there in maybe you know, if you look at the things that really help you be present in the moment when you're with your partner, with your friends, your family, or whoever. Might be lost in a good book not for the sake of completing it,

but rather just reading it. I mean, this is something that we can start to explore in other areas as opposed to look at everything as another work problem. Well, I mean, like I said, I expected to really talk about exercise addiction in a different way, and I think this conversation took such a beautiful turn and has allowed us to really think about life in such a multidimensional way. So thank you, Matt. Thank you for being on the show twice, and we hope to have you as a

third time later on. So thanks for being you doing the work that you do, and we'll see you soon. So that's great. Thanks for having me, Lisa