It’s common to hear that we need to exercise regularly to remain fit and healthy. That’s why exorexia can go unnoticed, and become a serious cause for concern.
Exorexia has similar effects to anorexia, where the sufferer can become extremely thin, tired and ill tempered. However, instead of not ingesting food, the sufferer monitors their calories extremely carefully and exercises excessively.
Exorexics don’t actually ingest that much but when they do, they feel guilty and feel the need to burn off the calories gained. However, they exercise more than they need to causing drastic weight loss. This symptom often leads to the wrong diagnosis of anorexia, which can worsen the condition and not treat it at all. This is because they will eat the food as instructed pleasing the doctors but they will also go for long exercise sessions, which go unnoticed as a problem.

It’s never healthy to over do anything, and this even applies to exercising.

If you know anyone who you think may be suffering from exorexia or another kind of eating disorder which could be covering exorexia, please refer them to a doctor, as excessive exercising and calorie counting is not healthy and can be fatal.

For more information and help please visit http://www.nhs.uk

(Please note the term ‘exorexia’ is not a widely used or scientific term for this disorder as exorexia isn’t recognised a disorder itself. This is because it often coincides with eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa.)