Junkies: Not The Healthiest Addiction
What’s More Dangerous than Skipping leg day?
By CeCe Whyte
In my work environment, it seems that all of my co-workers have caught on to the contagious trend of keeping fit and staying healthy. Most of them go to the gym at least twice a week and are constantly sculling strange potions meant to make them lose more weight and gain more muscle.
I look at all of this with an entirely biased view. Why? Because I’m a lazy shit who happens to have a good metabolism. So spending all that time and attention on their body in front of some weights, a mirror and some hot chicks on ‘Leg Day’ boggles my mind to its wits end.
I walked into the tea room at work to find my workmate drinking a mixture of coffee and Coca-Cola… Bizarre. My eyebrows furrowed and he laughed and said, “I’m off to the gym, this is a good energy hit.” Is it really? I have to admit, this guy is attractive as hell; Egyptian and tan, blue eyes, deep voice, muscles everywhere – pecs that warrant an “I’d rest my head on that chest any day”, but what is he doing to himself? And why?
He once told me that he wants to enter a natural body building competition, but at the same time he’s seriously considering taking steroids to make him bigger. My eyes widened as I considered smacking the stupidity out of him. He said something like, ‘Stop mothering me, I’ll be fine.” But I saw red. My mind couldn’t escape the image of this beautiful man naked, handsome and muscular… with a set of shrivelled testicles and steaming nostrils like a raging bull.
I realised that my opinion was based on my own prejudice against the fitness industry, bodybuilding, and the widely spread Chinese whisper about the effects of steroid use. So I tried my best to understand this sudden rush of excitement caused by the world of fitness and exercise. The simplest explanation has been given by Elle Woods in every girl’s favourite movie, Legally Blonde (admit it, ladies…):
Endorphins make you haaaapppy!
And, as it turns out, their acquisition is addictive. According to many of my friends, people become dependent very quickly.
Another friend responded to my sceptical questioning with, “If I didn’t go to the gym and lift things and do my exercises and reps, I’d just feel useless and tired all the time.”
He also told me that after a gym session he’s the happiest guy in the world, singing Taylor Swift songs on the way home.
Truthfully, he has been more active and bubbly since he started working out. But I’ve also noticed that he keeps sizing himself up against other guys at the gym and his other friends who he got onto gym memberships. “Oh he’s going to get bigger than me for sure”, “Man, I gotta get bigger so I can look more threatening” and “Protein shakes and bars help me gain more muscle. These arms aren’t big enough.”
So what does being a gym junkie really do for someone’s self-esteem?
Last March, ABC Radio National’s ‘Life Matters’ program presented an interesting segment entitled ‘Bigorexia: young men, body image and steroids’.
Gina McKeon states: “The use of steroids and other image enhancing drugs is on the rise, especially amongst teenagers and young men. Some are driven to the drugs by a body image disorder known as muscle dysmorphia, a kind of ‘reverse anorexia’ that sees them unable to measure up to their own inflated expectations.”
While news of this disorder brings an inevitable plate of sensationalism and moral panic to the table of fitness trends, I can’t help but worry about my friends sizing themselves up and seeing enhancing drugs as a viable option to get them to where they want to be.
Is this a problem that’s only affecting men? Or are women just as prone to the Gym Junkie addiction?
I met a 35 year old woman recently who decided to get a gym membership and a personal trainer in order to transform her post-pregnancy body into something she was confident with and proud of. She started with the goal of eating better, exercising and losing her extra weight but excelled. Her trainer convinced her to get into bodybuilding. She told me about the competitions that she started entering, the crazy diets she had to stick to and what competitors were being judged on. At one of her most recent comp’s, she and 250 other oiled-up bodybuilding women in bikinis were judged on muscle definition and separation as well as their BMI’s and their presentation.
She loves it, but feels that people who invest so much time and money in bodybuilding as a form of self-improvement (like herself) are judged by the lay-people of society as unhealthy gym junkies. She looked at me and said, “You’re smoking, so who are you to say to me what is unhealthy and what isn’t?”
“Hmmm, its all subjective isn’t it?” I said, theatrically flicking some ash into the ashtray.
I’m addicted to nicotine, she’s addicted to endorphins. What can I say?
I think we’re both unhealthy. But while I tell myself to quit everyday, she tells herself to get better, to look better, to train better, to be the best. I don’t personally believe that blonde hair extensions, fake tan, Botox-pumped lips and unnaturally large thigh muscles are the definition of ‘best’, but there goes the subjectivity buzzer again, doesn’t it?
With extreme examples of gym junkies aside, I do see merit in the health and fitness industry – I just need some convincing to jump on the bandwagon…
Tell us what going to the gym does for you!
How does it make you feel about your body? Have you got a gym junkie friend you’re concerned about? Can you convince a lazy couch potato like me to join?