A former professional footballer has said that an addiction to exercise caused his body to ‘shut down for 18 months’. 

After Australian Luke Tyburski retired from soccer, he took up endurance triathlons, which required long sessions cycling, running and swimming. 

To the outside world, it looked like he was taking care of himself. 

“No one really knew I was going through what I was going through from a mental health perspective,” he recalled on Moncrieff. 

“And also, they could see the training I was doing and it looked really good and I was doing these big adventures.

“But they didn't see the extra five, six, seven hours of training I was doing a week hidden behind closed doors late at night.” 

People kept telling Mr Tyburski that what he was doing was “inspirational” - and he was even convinced of this himself. 

“And I was kind of living this double life where on the outside I was projecting, ‘Wow, I'm doing all this great stuff, I'm being really healthy, I'm training really hard.’

“My body stayed the same because when I was doing all these extra sessions, I was like binge eating on foods to make sure that my body wouldn't go up or down in weight.” 

The turning point came after he completed an ultra triathlon in Morocco in 2015. 

At that point, a niggling sense of doubt had already crept into his psyche that something was not right. 

“I was battling with insomnia, my depression was really bad, but I didn't have the strength, the personal internal strength to reach out for help,” he recalled. 

“But it was only really when I completed the ultimate triathlon, my 2,000 kilometre in 12 days ultimate triathlon from Morocco to Monaco. 

“And my body shut down for about the next 18 months.” 

'There's a problem here' 

Afterwards, Mr Tyburski suffered from extreme fatigue, where despite sleeping for as much as 13 hours a day, he woke up feeling exhausted. 

“That's when I knew, ‘Hey, like there's a problem here’,” he said. 

For anyone else who thinks they are suffering from exercise addiction, Mr Tyburski said there is one important symptom people should be aware of. 

“I think one thing that I've seen over the years is people who think they need to exercise every day to be healthy,” he explained. 

“Now, let's exclude the professional athletes; let's just use the everyday person who's just trying to get fit and healthy. 

“It's when people start to think, ‘I need to do this every single day and if I don't and [I'll] get anxious’. 

“If people get a little bit upset, if people get angry because they can't train and it starts to dictate their daily life, that is one of the many, many signs that I've seen that exercise is starting to turn unhealthy.”

Man image: A man exercising. Picture by: Alamy.com.