Date of Award

Summer 2025

Embargo Period

4-24-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Program

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Julia Hormes

Committee Members

Drew Anderson, James Boswell

Keywords

exercise dependence, compulsive exercise, adaptive exercise, eating pathology

Subject Categories

Clinical Psychology

Abstract

Exercise can promote health and well-being, and yet a proportion of individuals who exercise develop a maladaptive relationship with physical activity. Problematic exercise is often associated with significant impairment and psychological distress, yet a consensus has not been reached regarding how problematic exercise should be conceptualized. The literature distinguishes between primary exercise dependence, or excessive exercise driven by its intrinsic reinforcement, and secondary exercise dependence, or excessive exercise driven by compensatory motivations related to weight and shape concerns. However, to date, little is known about the prevalence and nature of exercise dependence in the absence of eating pathology. This incongruity precludes the development of accurate assessment, intervention, and prevention methods for this harmful behavior. Two of the prevailing theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing problematic exercise are (1) exercise dependence derived from research on behavioral addictions and (2) the cognitive-behavioral model of compulsive exercise. Ostensibly, these models are incongruous and often emphasize different features of problematic exercise in their conceptualizations. To address these issues in the literature, the current study sought to integrate and evaluate existing theories of problematic exercise and identify factors associated with adaptive exercise. Participants (N = 608) were women who regularly engaged in physical activity, recruited through the University at Albany Sona research pool and the online platform Prolific. They completed self-report measures and a behavioral task to comprehensively evaluate components of the theoretical models of problematic exercise. Estimated prevalence rates of primary and secondary exercise dependence in the current sample were 4.1% and 5.4% respectively. Contrary to hypotheses, we found few results reflecting meaningful differences between primary and secondary exercise dependence, and a consistent main effect of disordered eating symptoms on the outcomes of interest. These findings highlight the need for future research on problematic exercise to evaluate both primary and secondary exercise dependence in order to determine to what degree the factors are explained by or related to the presence of comorbid eating pathology.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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