Gym Obsession

Is it bad that I think about going to the gym and I want to be in the gym 24 hours a day?? Please help I havent taken a day off from the gym in a month. I feel like if I do I will loose my muscle or get fat again

The guilt is hard, but rest is even better.  If you cannot stop and take that day off, maybe just take a day where you do nothing but walk slowly on the treadmill. It would be an Active Recovery day and completely ok, plus it lessens the guilt of not working out.

I don't know what you do when you're in the gym, but the time between workouts is when muscle grows.  During a strength-training session, you're breaking muscle down.  Adequate rest is essential to making best progress.

If you stopped exercising entirely, and continued eating at a maintenance calorie level, you wouldn't start to lose significant muscle mass for 2 weeks.  Since that's a fact, obsessing over a day off is, as you suspect, "a problem" ;-)

Take a day off but don't eat as much that day.  Then you won't lose muscle or gain fat.  It might even do you real good!  Try it and see.  If you get antsy, go for a walk, or engage in some other low-intensity, low-impact activity.

If you think about it all the time then that's a little obsessive. But I know what it's like not wanting to take a day off, but trust me it won't kill you. I haven't worked out now for a few days and I still see the numbers on the scale going down. And even if you were to take a week or so off and you lost some muscle tone, it will come back so fast once you start again. Try to find something else to think about, so that you aren't thinking about the gym all the time.

Haha I love working out it makes me feel so great. lifting weights feels awesome knowing that a few days ago I couldnt lift a certain weight and now I can.

I think The "High" I get is when I lift and look in the mirroe and I see the results from my weight loss and I actualy see my muscles and veins poping out. It makes me feel good that I am looking like that now and I am scared if I stop I will loose it. I know I should take off. I actualy just went to the gym this morning and rode the bike for 25 min.

After starting to work out and eat better, how long did it take for you to start to see results?  I've been working out now for a couple of weeks and haven't seen any results.  I know if you didn't start to see results, you wouldn't be gym obsessed, right?

I have lost 60 pounds I think that helped. I have always been muscular, I just never really saw the definition and veins on my body. I played football and I was like 280, solid but not cut up. I am 229 now and starting to get cut up. This board helped me realize I need to loose the fat because there is muscle under there. I guess if you work out before you loose the fat you will build it up and when you loose it, the muscle will appear. Keep at it.

nygiantsfan56, yup, getting "cut up" is overwhelmingly about losing fat.  Use a search engine to find photos of Frank Zane, who built one of the best physiques in the world.  He was very light for a pro bodybuilder, about 180 pounds at 5'9" tall -- but he /looks/ 50 pounds heavier, because you can damn near count the muscle fibers through his skin.  That's mostly about having a very low body fat percentage (and that Zane made a science of building his body to near-perfect symmetry).

Do get your body fat percentage measured.  Most guys start to look "cut up" when that falls below about 10%, which is much leaner than average for guys (which is, of course, why the average guy doesn't look cut up at all).  In competition shape, it's often under 5% (hard to achieve, and very few guys can stay that low after a competition ends).  At those levels, about the only fat remaining is essential layers of internal fat cushioning the organs.

I mean I am not that far along but is actualy cool to see your actual muscles in your body and the way they are suppose to look.