The Truth About Exercise Addiction


Book Description

Designed for individuals concerned about their workout habits, personal trainers, family and friends of folks with a problem, as well as working mental health professionals treating exercise addicts, The Truth About Exercise Addiction provides an easy-to-read, illuminating glimpse into the rising trend of over-exercise. Delving into the history of exercise addiction and the growing influence of “thinspiration,” Katherine Schreiber and Heather A. Hausenblasillustrate the symptoms and dangers of obsessive exercise with true stories from sufferers, all while exploring why and how such a seemingly healthy behavior morphs into a dangerous means of self-destruction. Analyzing the causes and consequences of excessive physical activity alongside the influence of genetics, culture, and personality, this book allows readers to gain a greater understanding of what exercise addiction looks and feels like. The Truth About Exercise Addiction also provides an unprecedented list of resources to address exercise addiction, a snapshot of treatments currently available for sufferers, and to top it off: guidelines on how to confront and care for someone who may have a problem.




Diary of an Exercise Addict


Book Description

In 2000, Peach Friedman, a college senior freshly broken up from her boyfriend, set out to beat the blues by beating herself into shape. Running ten miles a day and taking in as little as 800 calories, she fell from 146 pounds to 100 in three months and was at serious risk of cardiac arrest. What Friedman suffered from was exercise bulimia—a newly diagnosed and rapidly spreading eating disorder that affects some 400,000 American women, and which gyms and colleges across America are beginning to take seriously. In Diary of an Exercise Addict Friedman recounts her descent into a life-threatening illness, her remarkable recovery, and the setbacks along the way. With refreshing candor she lays bare her relationships with family, friends, and lovers and the repressed desire that finally surfaced as she found her own way back to health.




Exercise Addiction


Book Description

Focuses on exercise addiction and its relationship to eating disorders; explains how compulsive exercise can be harmful and how one can get help to deal with it.




Addiction to Exercise


Book Description

This book evaluates the psychological concept of exercise addiction from a scholastically multidisciplinary perspective. The most recent developments in the area of investigation are evaluated with reference to theory and critical analysis of extant research. The book summarises the current knowledge about the psycho-physiological nature of exercise addiction. Further, it presents the conceptual hegemony in addressing the problem of exercise addiction within the scientific community. The characteristic and most prevalent symptoms of the disorder are discussed alongside the modes of risk-assessment. Subsequently, the underlying motives and several theoretical models of exercise addiction are reviewed. Finally, the research on exercise addiction is evaluated and directions for future research are suggested. Difference is made between primary exercise addiction in which the exercise behaviour is the problem and secondary exercise addiction in which exercise is used as a means in achieving another objective, like weight loss. This book concludes with two brief sections summarising plainly what we know today and what we still need to know about exercise addiction.




The Exercise Cure


Book Description

What if there were a drug to treat every illness, across all body systems, proven potent against heart disease, depression, arthritis, PMS and erectile dysfunction—even in chronic diseases such as asthma, dementia, and certain types of cancer? What if it had no side effects, was completely free, readily available, and worked for everyone? Every single person who took it decreased her risk of premature death and raised his quality of life. Would you want it? In a healthcare system that spends 17% of GDP, roughly $2.7 trillion, mostly on disease treatment, how do we save money and prevent illness? By increasing the use of the world's most effective preventive medicine: exercise. Jordan D. Metzl, MD, explains how everyone can maximize their daily dose in his groundbreaking new book, The Exercise Cure. In The Exercise Cure, Dr. Metzl—nationally renowned sports medicine physician—offers malady-specific and well-researched exercise prescriptions to help readers stay healthy, heal disease, drop pounds, increase longevity, and transform their lives. Today's medical system is largely focused on fixing rather than preventing problems, and many treatments carry significant side effects. Cholesterol-lowering drugs are linked to frequent muscle and joint problems, anti-hypertensive drugs like Beta-blockers cause headaches and diminished energy, and Prozac and other popular anti-depressant medications carry multiple consequences including sexual dysfunction. Dr. Metzl knows that exercise is inexpensive, powerful medicine that has benefits in prevention and treatment of disease without disturbing side effects. Even in older adults, daily exercise has been found to prevent dementia by generating neuron development in the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. Combining the latest data and his proven motivational skills, Dr. Metzl addresses the common maladies troubling millions. He discusses our cardiovascular, pulmonary, metabolic, musculoskeletal, neurologic, reproductive, and endocrinologic body systems, with special sections on sleep problems and cancer prevention, presenting the science behind the role of exercise as medicine. Then, he details fun, fat-torching, life-prolonging workouts that can be tailored easily to any fitness level, beginner to advanced, and provides nutritional information, including meal plans for healthy eating and disease prevention, as well.




The 12-Minute Athlete


Book Description

Unlock your athletic potential and get into the best shape of your life with Krista Stryker’s HIIT and bodyweight workouts—all of which can be done in just minutes a day! If you’ve ever thought you couldn’t get results without spending hours in the gym, that you’d never be able to do a pull-up, or that it’s too late to get in your best shape ever, The 12-Minute Athlete will change your mind, your body, and your life. Get serious results with high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts that can be done in just minutes a day. Give up the excuses and learn to use your own bodyweight and a few basic pieces of portable equipment for short, incredibly effective workouts. Reset your mindset, bust through mental blocks, and set meaningful goals you’ll actually accomplish. You can finally ditch the dieting and enjoy food as fuel with simple eating guidelines to the 80/20 rule. In The 12-Minute Athlete you’ll also find: –A guide to basic calisthenics and bodyweight exercises for any fitness level –Progressive exercises to achieve seemingly “impossible” feats like pistol squats, one-arm push-ups, pull-ups, and handstands –More than a dozen simple and healthy recipes that will fuel your workouts –Two 8-week workout plans for getting fitter, faster, and stronger –Bonus Tabata workouts –And so much more! The 12-Minute Athlete is for men and women, ex-athletes and new athletes, experienced athletes and “non-athletes”—for anyone who has a body and wants to get stronger and start living their healthiest life.




Beyond Addiction


Book Description

The most innovative leaders in progressive addiction treatment in the US offer a groundbreaking, science-based guide to helping loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors. The most innovative leaders in progressive addiction treatment in the US offer a groundbreaking, science-based guide to helping loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors. Beyond Addiction eschews the theatrics of interventions and tough love to show family and friends how they can use kindness, positive reinforcement, and motivational and behavioral strategies to help their loved ones change. Drawing on forty collective years of research and decades of clinical experience, the authors present the best practical advice science has to offer. Delivered with warmth, optimism, and humor, Beyond Addiction defines a new, empowered role for friends and family and a paradigm shift for the field. Learn how to tap the transformative power of relationships for positive change, guided by exercises and examples. Practice what really works in therapy and in everyday life, and discover many different treatment options along with tips for navigating the system. And have hope: this guide is designed not only to help someone change, but to help someone want to change.




The Joy of Movement


Book Description

Now in paperback. The bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct introduces a surprising science-based book that doesn't tell us why we should exercise but instead shows us how to fall in love with movement. Exercise is health-enhancing and life-extending, yet many of us feel it's a chore. But, as Kelly McGonigal reveals, it doesn't have to be. Movement can and should be a source of joy. Through her trademark blend of science and storytelling, McGonigal draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, as well as memoirs, ethnographies, and philosophers. She shows how movement is intertwined with some of the most basic human joys, including self-expression, social connection, and mastery--and why it is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. McGonigal tells the stories of people who have found fulfillment and belonging through running, walking, dancing, swimming, weightlifting, and more, with examples that span the globe, from Tanzania, where one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes on the planet live, to a dance class at Juilliard for people with Parkinson's disease, to the streets of London, where volunteers combine fitness and community service, to races in the remote wilderness, where athletes push the limits of what a human can endure. Along the way, McGonigal paints a portrait of human nature that highlights our capacity for hope, cooperation, and self-transcendence. The result is a revolutionary narrative that goes beyond familiar arguments in favor of exercise, to illustrate why movement is integral to both our happiness and our humanity. Readers will learn what they can do in their own lives and communities to harness the power of movement to create happiness, meaning, and connection.




Addiction


Book Description

In a book sure to inspire controversy, Gene Heyman argues that conventional wisdom about addiction—that it is a disease, a compulsion beyond conscious control—is wrong. Drawing on psychiatric epidemiology, addicts’ autobiographies, treatment studies, and advances in behavioral economics, Heyman makes a powerful case that addiction is voluntary. He shows that drug use, like all choices, is influenced by preferences and goals. But just as there are successful dieters, there are successful ex-addicts. In fact, addiction is the psychiatric disorder with the highest rate of recovery. But what ends an addiction? At the heart of Heyman’s analysis is a startling view of choice and motivation that applies to all choices, not just the choice to use drugs. The conditions that promote quitting a drug addiction include new information, cultural values, and, of course, the costs and benefits of further drug use. Most of us avoid becoming drug dependent, not because we are especially rational, but because we loathe the idea of being an addict. Heyman’s analysis of well-established but frequently ignored research leads to unexpected insights into how we make choices—from obesity to McMansionization—all rooted in our deep-seated tendency to consume too much of whatever we like best. As wealth increases and technology advances, the dilemma posed by addictive drugs spreads to new products. However, this remarkable and radical book points to a solution. If drug addicts typically beat addiction, then non-addicts can learn to control their natural tendency to take too much.




Irresistible


Book Description

“Irresistible is a fascinating and much needed exploration of one of the most troubling phenomena of modern times.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times bestsellers David and Goliath and Outliers “One of the most mesmerizing and important books I’ve read in quite some time. Alter brilliantly illuminates the new obsessions that are controlling our lives and offers the tools we need to rescue our businesses, our families, and our sanity.” —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction—an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans. In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist. By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children. Adam Alter's previous book, Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave is available in paperback from Penguin.