Whilst I am a big fan of exercise and all the health benefits it offers if you are someone who has an unhealthy obsession with exercise and use it in an obsessive way to control your body size, then I would recommend dropping it until you have found some balance with your relationship with food and your weight.

We will never find long term peace if we remain a slave to anything, this includes healthy pass times like exercise. If we feel excessively guilty or fearful because we haven’t been able to get the exercise we had planned to get done on a particular day and beat ourselves up about it, it fuels the irritability and discontent that makes us want to overeat.

When I start someone on a plan of eating I recommend gentle exercise, such as walking for no more than 20 – 30 minutes in a day. Once they get established on their plan, and more conscious of what behaviours pull them off-center, then by all means exercise more. The goal is, that by then, they will see that they do not need to do excessive amounts of exercise to remain at a healthy body size, and they will exercise for pleasure rather than pain.