We don’t do enough sports. I hear about it all my life. My parents also reproached me for not being athletic enough – I did not attend sports sections at school, preferring a biological circle, English classes and walking the dog.
Now I have grown up, I live in Europe, and I am surrounded by people for whom sport is an obligatory part of life. Today is cardio, tomorrow is an hour-long workout at the gym, for which they pay as much as they pay for groceries in the supermarket for a week. On other days – sports classes and group classes.
You probably know many people who do the same. The only possible reaction to this is: “Well done!”, “Keep it up!”, “I would like your willpower!” However, most people who train quite intensively have not lost weight since they started doing it.
During periods when I start to train intensively, I do not lose weight either. There are a huge number of overweight physically active people in nature, and they have the hardest time: they hear all the time that if they don’t lose weight as a result of free weights, then they don’t do it enough. Or wrong. Or not enough and wrong.
Let’s turn to statistics. Her testimony is paradoxical. We are becoming more physically active every year: in the 80s, only 47% of the population regularly went in for sports, now these figures have increased to 57%. At the same time, obesity rates have also increased. What’s the matter here? Could physical activity, so popularized and beneficial in the fight against certain diseases, prevent weight loss?
According to Eric Ravoussin, director of the diabetes and metabolism laboratory at Louisiana State University, “sports in the weight loss business is completely useless.” The reason is that by burning calories, exercise stimulates hunger. When we exercise, we eat more. Thus, sports can not only not help, but also prevent us from losing weight.
The result of training is not only an increase in the feeling of hunger, but also a feeling of “permissibility” of the forbidden
In 2009, a remarkable study was conducted by Tim Church, a colleague of Eric Ravoussin at Louisiana State University. A group of 464 women who were significantly overweight was divided into four subgroups. Three subgroups were assigned a personal trainer who worked out with them, respectively, 72 minutes, 136 minutes and 194 minutes per week for six months. In the fourth group, women continued to lead their normal lives. The nutrition of all four groups did not change.
As a result, all women from all subgroups lost some amount of weight. Those who worked out at the gym several times a week under the guidance of an experienced trainer lost no more weight than women in the control group. Some women from each group gained weight.
Tim Church described this as a compensation effect: the result of training is not only an increase in hunger, but also a feeling of “permissibility” of the forbidden, the opportunity now, having worked in the gym, to enjoy your favorite food in full. Simultaneously with the increase in the duration of training in the gym, the usual physical activity also decreases – you walk less, move less around the house, because you have already worked out “your own”.
I know what can be said to this: “We didn’t lose weight, because there’s nothing to eat everything in a row!”, “If you didn’t lose weight, it means you didn’t train enough!” But my experience shows that there is no greater threat to health than an attempt to limit oneself in food, this leads to both physical and mental health disorders, primarily the development of eating disorders, for example, bouts of overeating, in which dieters so love to blame everyone else.
But now it’s not about that. If you need to train enough to lose weight, then the question arises: “How much is enough?” We see that people leading a so-called “healthy lifestyle” go to the gym 3-4 times a week or more. On the days when they are not working with a trainer, they run, attend group classes.
The motto of bodyrockers – popular among people who are passionate about interval strength fitness – is not a day without a workout. “Breaks” in training are only possible if you do cardio on that day – run, ride a bike.
A few years ago, psychologists started talking about the formation of a new mental disorder – overtraining syndrome. It was originally found in young anorexic and bulimic women who felt the need to compensate for any calorie intake through movement. This syndrome is described in terms of other disorders of the compulsive spectrum – for example, compulsive handwashing, compulsive counting of objects.
The problem is that a person who washes their hands 25 times a day is clearly identified by us as having psychological problems, a person who exercises compulsively receives huge public approval and support.
“I would like your willpower,” comments on Facebook photos in the gym: wet sportswear, tousled hair, a contented and proud face. “Yes, nothing complicated, you just need to want,” the “hero of the day” condescendingly replies. Or, even more so, with hidden pride, he tells how he almost lost consciousness in the hall and how a “colleague” urgently shoved caramel into his mouth.
All of this is a sign of overtraining syndrome, a disorder that, like other obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, is largely genetically predetermined.
It seems that we started training to improve our health, but we get sick more and more often
The biological theory of the development of anorexia says that anorexics appeared in ancient cave times and their appearance was evolutionarily determined: they adapted to many days of hunger, were able to maintain and even increase physical activity in conditions of exhaustion in order to lead a weakened tribe in search of food. People with compulsive training syndrome are just descendants of the ancient saviors of the tribe.
I was once told in an online discussion that “it’s better to be compulsively involved in sports than drinking or using drugs.” Is it better? Research shows that overtraining is detrimental to health, especially when you’re underweight. Bone density decreases, overworked muscles cannot absorb the shock of exertion, and the bone becomes covered with small cracks, becoming vulnerable to injury. The heart muscle is depleted – arrhythmias, tachycardia, and pulse disorders develop. Reduced immunity.
It seems that we started to train to improve our health, but we get sick more and more often. Increased production of cortisol and adrenaline hormones – stress hormones. The body of a person who is overloaded feels the same as the body of a man or woman at the stage of a difficult divorce process with scandals and tears.
The production of estrogen and testosterone, the female and male sex hormones, decreases. Women become less feminine, and men less masculine – and the point here is not in the amount of muscle mass, but in the hormonal profile. A large number of intensively exercising women of childbearing age develop amenorrhea. The body goes into standby mode – protecting itself from the danger of becoming pregnant, because the body is simply afraid not to cope with bearing a child.
How much is too much, too much? Redundancy criteria have not yet been fully developed, researchers are looking for precise definitions, but something is already clear. If you train for an hour or more a day, if you have less than two days of rest per week, if you train 4-5 times a week for three months or more, there is a high probability that you are training in a regime that damages your health.
If the need to interrupt or skip a workout causes you anxiety and spoils your mood, if you train without fully recovering from an illness and despite injuries, you are in danger. I know now many readers will grab their heads – so I’m a victim of excessive training? Do not hurry.
Sports can be a great way to distract yourself from problems – and if you remember how every day for an hour and a half ran through the park after breaking up with your boyfriend, then you don’t have any overtraining syndrome, you just experienced a breakup.
Once the cultural standards of beauty demanded from us exclusively thinness, now the requirements have increased – thinness should be “muscular”, and the only justification for existence is high physical activity of a given format – yoga does not count, running is for freaks, you need to work out in the gym, with a trainer, to sweat…
Violence against the body is not just part of the modern cultural code, it is also a kind of modern magic, rituals that, it seems to us, provide us with salvation from old age, illness and death. However, in fact, excessive immersion in these rituals, accompanied by mass approval and support for a “healthy lifestyle”, can lead to a frightening result much faster.
What to do if you suspect you have overtraining syndrome? Psychotherapists do not yet give an answer to this question – the problem is too new, young. So far, there is only one recommendation: abstinence from sports for a long time has a positive effect on the psyche.