Do You Spend Hours In The Gym? You Might Be Bigorexic

The name might make you laugh initially, but “bigorexia” could potentially be damaging your health.

While anorexia – the eating disorder characterized by an aversion to food and eating, due to an innate fear of gaining weight, getting fat and disdain of ones body image – is well recognized as a serious mental condition, bigorexia is still widely dismissed.

Perhaps it’s because the consequences and symptoms of bigorexia are less severe, but let’s first take a look at what it is.

Though it’s not a recognized medical condition, those suffering from bigorexia will have a distorted view of their appearance and want to spend as much time improving their bodies as possible. This means foregoing social events and meals out, preferring instead to spend the time training and being meticulous about food intake.

Anorexia is most commonly associated with women, and while some women may be familiar with bigorexia, it generally affects men more. Likewise, anorexia is seen as an obsessive desire to lose weight, while bigorexia, as the name suggests, is based around wanting to gain as much muscle mass as humanly possible.

Whether you believe that this is a serious condition or not, there’s no doubting that many guys (and potentially girls too) take some potentially dangerous steps in their quest for the ultimate bodybuilder physique.

As stated above, these can be fairly minor to begin with. You might get invited out for drinks with colleagues, but decide that you’ve not trained enough this week, so pass on the invite and hit the weights room instead. Or perhaps you’re asked to attend a meal with family at a restaurant that doesn’t meet your usual dietary standards. Rather than taking the supposedly “normal” option of going along, having fun and deciding that you’ll be moderate with your intake, you make up an excuse as to why you can’t go, and stick to your traditional bodybuilding fare instead.

At first this might not seem like a big deal, and at times, we’ve all felt extra dedicated to the cause of getting in shape and sacrificed social events, parties and work outings, deciding to be healthy and head to the gym instead.

Another potential issue involves diet alterations, and the lengths you’ll go to to achieve your dream physique.

The obvious example of this is anabolic steroids. Once the sole domain of professional, non-tested bodybuilders, steroids are now part of everyday gym culture, and whether you’re well educated in steroid use or not, they do pose a health risk.

To another extent, many bodybuilders use drastic dietary tactics, particularly when approaching contest or photo shoot. Dehydration, sodium depletion and loading and the use of diuretics are all commonplace and once again, carry risks.

If any of this sounds familiar, you could be suffering from a case of bigorexia. So is this a big deal, and if so, how do you fix it?

Fixing Bigorexia – One Step at a Time

The first step is to decide whether you really think you’re suffering from an eating disorder, or if you just enjoy working out and seeing your body change.

If it’s the first option, then book an appointment with your doctor, or see a registered dietitian – they’ll have the tools to help you overcome your condition, or will be able to refer you to the right professionals who can help you out.

If, however, you’re just enjoying building bigger muscles and gaining strength, there’s nothing to worry about. You just may want to take a look at how you run your life.

Considering most of the general public avoid the gym 99 percent of the time and have little discipline and drive when it comes to dieting, you should be commended for your efforts. 

Passing up on the opportunity to go out for drinks in favor of getting in your planned workout is fine once in a while, especially if your coworkers tend to hit the bars every night for a three hour drinking session. Missing out on your best friend’s birthday bash or skipping a family birthday or special event just because you need to get your third weekly hamstring workout in, however, is not. It’s all about priorities, so it’s vital to realize that you can train hard and eat right, but still have a social life and not wind people up by always blowing them off.

 While Bulgarian weightlifters may train twice a day, six days per week, and IFBB pro bodybuilders rarely take a day off, often doing double sessions of weights and cardio, as an average Joe, albeit a strong and muscular one, you can get awesome results with just three to four 45 to 60 minute sessions each week.

As for diet, you’ve got to be flexible. A muscle building diet doesn’t have to be 100 percent perfect, and you needn’t only eat egg whites, tuna, broccoli and rice. You can go out for a meal – just pick a steak and veggies over macaroni cheese and one drink isn’t going to rob you of your hard earned progress.

You may still get the odd funny look, or snide comment, when you mention your training regime, or try to discuss the merits of high carb vs low carb with people, but this is just because the concept of being fit, healthy and muscular is completely alien to a lot of guys.

Don’t think that it means you’re bigorexic – be proud of your discipline and desire and of what you’ve achieved, but remember that you can still be a cool, sociable, flexible guy and have big muscles too!