By Armand Tecco, M.Ed.

Right about now, people are thinking about how it is time to shed that holiday weight gain and get in shape again.

Ideally, of course, you have been keeping in shape all year long. You do not use bad weather as an excuse to eat more and exercise less. If you are committed to fitness, you eat and exercise moderately on a consistent basis.

Doing too much or too little of either is detrimental to your health. Before you get overzealous about reaching some lofty fitness goal, consider the pitfalls of overdosing on exercise. Three indications of overtraining are a sudden weight loss, an increase of more than five beats per minute in your morning pulse rate (before you get out of bed), and the feeling you have toward your next training session. If you are constantly tired and have little desire to train, you may be at risk of overtraining and should cut back.

The most common injury associated with exercising too much is a strained muscle, which can sideline you for days, even weeks, while you recuperate. Other potential injuries are overuse shoulder, runner's knee and tennis elbow. To help avoid these injuries, do not perform the same activity on consecutive days so you do not stress the same muscles and joints excessively. Also, make sure you alternate your workouts using the hard-easy principle. If you have a hard (intense) workout one day, perform an easy to moderate workout the next day. And avoid increasing the time or intensity of your workout too much at one time.

Warming up your muscles, ligaments and tendons before exercise also will reduce your risk of injury. Start your activity slowly and then end gradually with a cool-down followed by a stretching routine.

If you do sustain an injury, follow the RICE principle: rest, ice, compression and elevation. When you are ready to resume exercising, consider if you need to alter anything about your workout. Perhaps a certain movement is aggravating the injured area, and you need to change your technique. Intense training may increase your chances of catching a cold or flu due to overexertion. In a study of marathon runners, those who trained more than 60 miles a week caught nearly twice as many colds as those who trained less than 20 miles a week. This suggests that after a stressful marathon run, the body's immune system is more susceptible to being attacked by bacteria or viruses. Moderate exercise, on the other hand, may raise the immune system.

Compulsive exercise occurs in people who feel they need to work out several hours every day. To them, exercise is an addiction, and they feel guilty for missing a single day of exercise. Ask yourself, why you are exercising so much? Are you trying to escape your problems? Are you trying to punish yourself? When intense exercise is mixed with eating disorders or injuries, or when it becomes the most important thing in life, it is dangerous. Instead of leaping blindly into exercise, look first at what you want to achieve and how you can accomplish it in a reasonable amount of time. The gains can be tremendous if you follow a sensible program.