The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage

by Kelly McGonigal

Considering the similarities between exercise and addiction can help us understand how physical activity changes the brain. It also helps explain why physical activity becomes more rewarding the more you do it. However, there are limits to the exercise-addiction analogy. Most exercise enthusiasts are not suffering from a dependence that interferes with their health or the rest of their lives. What they have, instead, is a relationship with exercise that involves desire, need, and commitment. When it comes to the passion people profess for their favorite physical activity, there may be better comparisons than substance abuse. The fact that people get hooked on exercise is not, in the end, a classic story of addiction. If exercise is a drug, the one it most closely resembles is an antidepressant. And for many of us—myself included—getting hooked on exercise points not to its inherently addictive nature, but to our brain’s capacity to latch onto a relationship that is good for us.