In-person therapy in Midtown Manhattan. Virtual therapy throughout New York and New Jersey.
Compulsive Exercise Therapy in Midtown Manhattan
SOUND LIKE YOU?
You want to take a day off. But you can’t stop thinking about the workout you’re missing.
You’re tired. Your schedule is full. Maybe something hurts. But skipping your workout feels harder than making yourself do it.
If you miss a class, you spend the day feeling guilty. If dinner runs late, you’re thinking about how you’ll still get your steps in. You might exercise more after eating something you feel you shouldn’t have, or feel like you need to work out before you can let yourself eat.
Other people may see you as disciplined or dedicated. They don’t see how anxious you feel when your plans change, or how much of your day goes into making sure you’ve done enough.
Maybe you used to enjoy exercise. Now, even when you don’t want to do it, resting doesn’t feel like an option.
Does This Sound Familiar?
You're constantly thinking about food
You feel out of control around eating
You use food to cope with stress, anxiety, loneliness, or difficult emotions
You find yourself stuck in a binge/restrict cycle
You feel guilt or shame after eating
You hide parts of your eating from others
You feel disconnected from your body's cues
You're successful in most areas of your life, but food feels different
You might:
Feel guilty, anxious, or restless when you miss a workout.
Exercise to “earn” a meal or make up for something you ate.
Keep going when you’re exhausted, sick, or injured.
Feel like a workout doesn’t count unless you meet a certain goal.
Struggle to change your routine, even when you know you need a break.
Signs Exercise May Be Taking Over More of Your Life Than You Want
You don’t have to spend every day in the gym for your relationship with exercise to feel difficult. We’ll look at what drives you to move, how flexible your routine feels, and what happens when you try to rest.
You might:
Feel out of control around food
Think about food constantly
Eat to cope with stress, anxiety, loneliness, or difficult emotions
Feel intense guilt or shame after eating
Swing between restriction and bingeing
Hide food or eat in secret
Feel disconnected from your hunger and fullness cues
Struggle with all-or-nothing thinking around food and eating
You might also:
Sacrifice sleep or cancel plans to fit in exercise.
Keep checking your steps and feel unable to stop until you reach your number.
Spend time at work thinking about when you’ll exercise next.
Rely on movement as the only way to handle a difficult feeling.
Tell yourself you’re just being healthy, while privately feeling trapped by the routine.
You can care about movement and still want relief from the pressure you feel around it.
How Does Exercise Start to Feel Like an Obligation?
Exercise may have become a way to manage anxiety, deal with stress, or feel in control when other parts of life felt uncertain. Maybe it gave your day structure or helped you feel better about yourself.
For some people, it also becomes tied to food and body image. You start making rules about how much you need to move before you can eat, or what you need to do after a meal to feel okay.
When exercise brings relief, it makes sense that you would keep turning to it. But over time, the rules can get harder to step away from. The thing you were using to feel in control starts to feel like it’s controlling you.
It can be hard to recognize when everyone calls it dedication.
In NYC, exercise can be woven into your friendships, commute, and social plans. There are boutique fitness classes before work, running clubs on the weekends, and conversations about who’s training for what.
You might enjoy being part of that. You might also feel pressure to keep up, even when you need something different.
Walking can become part of the same pattern. You may take a longer route because you feel you need to make up for lunch, or keep walking after you’re tired because you haven’t reached your step goal.
We can talk about the parts you enjoy and the parts that have started to feel difficult.
How Therapy Can Help with Compulsive Exercise
I start by helping my clients understand what is driving the urge to exercise. We’ll explore what you feel before a workout, what you hope it will help with, and what comes up when you don’t do it.
We’ll also talk about what you want your relationship with movement to look like. You may want to enjoy it again, feel more comfortable resting, or stop organizing so much of your life around it.
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We’ll look at the expectations you have for yourself around exercise, food, and your body. That might include needing to hit a particular number, feeling like rest is lazy, or believing you haven’t done enough to deserve a meal.
Together, we’ll explore where those rules came from and how they affect your choices now.
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Knowing you need a break doesn’t necessarily make taking one feel easy.
Using DBT skills, we’ll work on managing the anxiety, guilt, and restlessness that can show up when you change your routine. We’ll build other ways to handle difficult feelings so exercise doesn’t have to carry all of that for you.
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We’ll make room for the thoughts and feelings underneath the behavior. Maybe missing a workout changes how you feel about your body, or a less productive day leaves you questioning your worth.
I draw from CBT, psychodynamic and relational work, and Intuitive Eating to help us understand these patterns. If exercise has become a way to compensate for eating, we can address your relationship with food alongside your relationship with movement.
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We’ll work toward being able to change plans, respond to what your body needs, and spend time on things that matter to you without exercise deciding the whole day.
My approach is warm and collaborative, and I’ll also help you notice patterns that may be keeping you stuck. We’ll work at a pace that takes your lived experience and your health seriously.
What Would You Like to Feel Different?
Maybe you want to sleep in without spending the rest of the day feeling guilty. You want to go to brunch without calculating how you’ll make up for it. Or you want to recover from an injury without feeling like you’re failing.
You may simply miss enjoying movement.
Together, we can work toward:
Taking a rest day without feeling like you’ve done something wrong.
Changing your plans without needing to make up a missed workout.
Eating without feeling that you have to earn or compensate for food.
Managing stress and anxiety in ways that don’t always involve exercise.
Giving sleep, relationships, and other interests more room in your life.
Feeling better about yourself without depending on what you accomplished that day.
Having more choice about when and how you move.
FAQs
Have Questions? We’ve got answers…
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Enjoying exercise or having a routine doesn’t, by itself, mean something is wrong. What we’ll explore is how much choice you feel you have.
Can you rest when you need to? Can you change a plan without feeling distressed? Are you continuing even when you’re hurt or exhausted? Those experiences can tell us more than how your routine looks to someone else.
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Yes. The pressure can show up around walking, step counts, or activity goals as well as workouts.
If you feel you have to keep walking despite being tired, or use steps to compensate for eating, we can explore that together.
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You don’t need an eating disorder diagnosis before talking about exercise in therapy.
We’ll look at your experience, including whether movement has become connected to food rules, body image, or feeling that you need to earn what you eat. You can also read more about Kendall B Therapy’s disordered eating therapy.
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We’ll talk about your routine, your health, and what needs to change. Our therapists won’t assume that the same plan is right for everyone.
If you’re injured or there are concerns about whether exercise is medically safe, we may need to involve a physician and other members of your care team. That may include taking a break from exercise. Therapy can help you work through the feelings that come with that.
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That’s something we can work on together. We’ll look at what exercise helps you manage and build other ways to respond when those feelings come up.
If anxiety and perfectionism are a big part of your experience, we can address those alongside your exercise patterns. Learn more about my anxiety therapy.
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I work with young adults and professionals who may hold themselves to high standards and feel pressure to be productive, disciplined, or in control.
You might be struggling with body image, using exercise to cope with stress, or feeling overwhelmed by the need to fit workouts into an already demanding life. You don’t have to look a certain way or follow a particular type of exercise routine to reach out.
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I offer in-person therapy in Midtown Manhattan and virtual therapy throughout New York and New Jersey.
Work with Kendall
It can be hard to explain that something other people praise you for has started to feel exhausting.
You may like parts of your routine and still wish you could take a break from thinking about it. You may be afraid that changing anything means losing the thing that helps you feel okay.
We can talk about all of that.
My goal is to help you understand what’s driving the behavior, feel more comfortable with rest, and build a relationship with movement that supports your life. You don’t have to wait until you’re injured or missing out on more of your life to ask for support.