Exercise Addiction

The Exercise Addiction Workbook provides helping professionals with cognitive and behavioral assessments, tools, and exercises that can be utilized to treat the root psychological causes of exercise addiction. It is designed to help people identify and change negative, unhealthy thoughts and behaviors that may have led to exercise addiction. The activities in this workbook assist participants in identifying triggers leading to an exercise addiction and teach them ways to overcome and manage those triggers.

The Exercise Addiction Workbook will help participants to develop these skills:

• Recognize an addiction problem.
• Build self-esteem with positive capabilities other than exercising.
• Become aware of recurring patterns that indicate an exercise addiction.
• Develop greater self-acceptance and the ability to change ineffective behaviors.
• Understand the triggers for preoccupation with various aspects of addictive exercise behavior.
• Reflect and become aware of behaviors that are part of the addiction.
• Learn ways to live a new life without the need to obsess about exercising.

The Exercise Addiction Workbook is a practical and flexible tool for counselors, teachers, and helping professionals working with people with exercise addiction. Depending on the role of the person using this workbook, and the specific group’s or individual’s needs, the modules can be used individually or as part of an integrated curriculum. The facilitator can administer an activity with a group or individual or use multiple assessments in a workshop.

The Exercise Addiction Workbook contains five modules of activity-based handouts that will help participants learn more about themselves and their addiction to exercising and working out. These modules serve as avenues for self-reflection and group experiences revolving around topics of importance in the participants’ lives.

The activities in this workbook are user-friendly and varied, providing a comprehensive way to develop characteristics, skills, and attitudes for overcoming an exercise addiction.

The activities and handouts in this workbook are reproducible. Minor revisions to suit client or group needs are permitted, but the copyright statement must be retained.

Module 1: Excessive Exercise
This module helps participants explore their excessive exercise behavior by examining why they feel the need to overexercise and work out too much, use exercise to escape feelings and stress, and how they can substitute gentler forms of exercise for high-intensity exercise.

Module 2: My Exercise Story
This module helps participants explore the story of their obsession with exercise. It includes examining the form their exercise addiction takes, analyzing their current workout regimen, recognizing why they extend workouts, and identifying other issues that prompt the compulsion to exercise.

Module 3: Coping with Compulsion
This module helps participants examine the results of obsessive thoughts about their exercise behavior by looking at how to make their thinking healthier, how to control impulses to exercise, how to deal with compulsions to train, and warning signs that precede a compulsion to exercise.

Module 4: Problem Behavior
This module helps participants be more mindful of their overexercise problems by exploring missed events, abandoned activities, financial drains, neglected tasks, and the relationship issues that have resulted from excessive exercise.

Module 5: Balanced Lifestyle
This module helps participants discover how to create a balanced lifestyle by examining ways to manage excessive exercise and rest, have a peaceful sleep, journal about their exercise issues, mix up their exercise routine, and create a schedule that includes an appropriate assortment of workout times and times to rest and recuperate.

PDF Worksheets - With the purchase of this workbook, you also get access to a PDF download of the included worksheets.

Exercise Addiction Card Deck

Using the Discussion Starter Card Deck will break the ice, encourage openness, and help introduce a specific subject. Activity handouts included in these workbooks are reflective, easy-to-use exercises, presented in a variety of formats to accommodate multiple intelligences and different learning styles. Each question corresponds to a page in the workbook.