When Ethan*, a 32-year-old in LA, was in high school, he took up running. What started as an attempt to lose weight and get some exercise dictated his schedule for the next three years. “I think I was obsessed with the number six because I’d wake up every day at six in the morning, read 60 pages of a book (to the page) and run 60 miles a week,” he says. “It was a way to control my body image but also a way to feel in control of my own life.” Only his life at the time was pretty dismal – his obsession with running caused him to skip house parties and turn down dinner hangouts that didn’t match his “healthy” lifestyle. Then, one day in college, he looked at his running shoes and threw them in a dumpster. “I realised I wouldn’t find love if I lived like that,” Ethan says. “I started dating, and my life got on a super fun and creative track.” Once he stopped over-exercising, he picked up photography and his social life flourished. 

Ethan was over-exercising before today’s social media fitness challenges, like 75 Hard, existed. Still, he exhibited a similarly regimented discipline: working out multiple times a day, sticking to a restrictive diet and swapping social events for “self-improvement” activities. While the broad consensus is that 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week (or half as much if it is intense) – which can equate to about 8,000 steps a day – is enough to lower the risk of premature death and many diseases, this is rarely the message we see plastered across gym inspiration posts online. As fitness influencers proudly proclaim their gym “addiction” causes them to work out twice a day every day and high schoolers gloat about skipping prom for a workout, getting sucked into extreme gym culture can pull your goals and aspirations away from being well-rounded, interesting and socially connected. So, is over-exercise culture making us sad and boring?

First off, it’s worth noting that exercising obviously has many benefits, including strengthening your bones and muscles, boosting your mood and even improving your memory and thinking skills. “Exercise is hugely beneficial and most people don’t exercise enough,” says Dr Melissa M. Ertl, a licensed psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. “There is a small subset of the population who actually exercise too much, and that’s bad for their health, too.” The population of over-exercisers may be a small percentage, but due to the nature of social media algorithms, where extreme and consistent content is often prioritised and rewarded with engagement, it’s easy to become over-exposed to over-exercise culture online. “I think there are these subpopulations, especially online, where this is far more common than we can even consider,” adds Dr Ertl. 

It makes sense that a content category focused on “pushing you further” means the bar for how much exercise you “should” be getting is constantly being raised across social media. For years, everyone posted about getting 10,000 steps a day, but now many are swearing 20,000 is the key. Dr Ertl says she speaks about exercise addiction and exercise dependence interchangeably, although she says neither is currently defined as a mental disorder, because the research is still very emerging. The framework she uses to understand over-exercise is similar to diagnosing behavioural addictions: withdrawal, consequences in your social relationships and having mental health problems as a result. “Over-exercising can look different for different people, but a key criterion for me is if exercise has become the most important thing in someone’s life,” she says. “It can look like somebody who is exercising despite medical advice or who needs more and more exercise in order to feel satisfied.” 

Over-exercising can look different for different people, but a key criterion for me is if exercise has become the most important thing in someone’s life

Over-exercising can also look like using the gym for mood modification, or even emotional avoidance. We see this when people talk about post-breakup “glow-ups” or post about fighting off “sad girl” season by going to the gym twice a day. “I live such a lonely and boring life that I just spend hours at the gym and go twice a day because I have nothing else better to do and no one to go home to. The gym is one of the only things that can distract me from this void,” exercise influencer @liftwithspooky wrote on TikTok. In the comments, there are hundreds of people who share the same routines, and perhaps even go to the same gyms, but never speak to each other. A large part of this has to do with many treating exercise as a means to an end, instead of a potentially enjoyable and connecting experience itself, downplaying rest days and the importance of rest and leisure. 

The mainstream aesthetic-driven approach to going to the gym is, unfortunately, inextricably tied to wellness and diet culture. We often talk about what exercise can do for our bodies, before how it’s enriching our lives and energising us for other things. For this reason, over-exercising tendencies can easily slip through the cracks. “When you talk to a doctor, nobody complains to you about exercising, even though you’re overexercising,” says Ethan. “You can hide the brutal reality of it in a self-serving way so that you get to have the aesthetic appeal that you want to develop.” In the midst of a beauty backslide, where we’re seeing a broader return to conservative, skinny ideals, there’s currently a hyper-focus on gaining and maintaining muscle. “This can lead people to make exercise have this really giant role in their life,” says Dr Ertl. “Poor body image continues to be a factor that’s linked with exercise addiction and disordered eating generally.”

Brooke Elle Buettner, a 22-year-old personal trainer and content creator in LA, says when she first started going to the gym in college, she became “obsessed with it” almost immediately. “It took over my life; I was spending two hours at the gym for every lift and would only have energy for my workouts,” she says. “For the rest of the day, I felt like a zombie.” At the peak of over-exercising, Buettner says she was avoiding vacations without a gym nearby and social situations with food, letting go of anything in her life that would require her to cut her workout short. “I would be so terrified to skip the gym that most of the time I’d end up cancelling on the social plan,” she says. “I realised that exercise is supposed to make me enjoy my life more, so why was I treating myself like I’m a little rat in a cage?” Now, Buettner has a routine that focuses on balance and variety. She lifts three times a week and does lower-impact movement, like running, yoga or pilates, on other days. She also listens to her body and takes rest days. 

Exercise may be good for you, but it’s not the only thing that is. Even socialising is linked to longevity. Having hobbies and interests has also been tied to increased happiness and even overall life satisfaction. The act of placing exercise above all also means it can no longer be categorised as a hobby. “I have always thought about hobbies as ‘self-selected leisure activities’, which means it’s something you choose: you may be exersicing for your health, but you also have a sense that it makes you feel good in the moment and connects you to other people,” says Matthew Zawadzki, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the University of California, Merced. “In over-exercising, the exercise itself becomes the goal: it is a convulsion where you feel you have to do it, otherwise there’s anxiety or stress around it.” By that point, it no longer feels like a choice, and even those who aren’t athletes can begin to feel an unnecessary and professional amount of pressure to perform. 

It’s become a strange flex to skip the social function for the sake of your workout. The message is this: lock in and then show off your new enviable build to the masses that didn’t have the dedication to commit to your strict schedule. What’s lesser considered, however, is whether unwavering dedication for aesthetic sake is actually beneficial or even admirable – especially when it comes at the cost of investing in other equally important factors that contribute to well-rounded health, like socialising. “Anytime we’re doing the same thing over and over again, we’re gonna be limited in how we think,” says Zawadzki. “If all you do is exercise, all the experiences that you have to share with others are about being at the gym.” The spice of life is variety, and over-exercise culture is not only isolating, but it may also be making us bored (or even boring). As Zawadzki puts it: “Posting your body is something very static, like a trophy, but trophies just sit on a shelf. Once you have one, it’s like ‘I won’ and now what?”

* Name has been changed for the sake of anonymity.