Myth: You Must Learn to Love Exercise

Here is a very typical conversation I have with people.

Person: “Ugh I need to exercise.”  or
“I really need to move more.”   or
“My (enter any body part here) has been bothering me, I think I’m sitting too much.”   or
  “I’ve just been eating all day, look at me!” 
Me: “Join my mobility class! Happy to give you the link to try it out anytime.”
Person: ”You must workout everyday!”  or
“I guess you do yoga every day right?”  or my favorite,
“You must love to exercise.”
Me: “The only thing I do everyday is drink a cup of coffee as soon as I wake up.” or
  “I actually don’t practice yoga much anymore.” or
  “No, I don’t love to exercise, and also I feel like you’re calling me a gym rat??”
Person: “Oh . . .So, what do you do?”
Me: “80% of the time I do what I enjoy, with some discipline to do what I don’t enjoy the other 20% of the time.”

Let’s look at this in pieces.  

SELF LOATHING MAKES CORPORATE AMERICA MONEY
The first statement in the conversation is ALWAYS some form of self deprecation, self loathing, or guilt for not doing enough or for not feeling good about our body, inside or out.  At the same time, we may feel that to inhabit a lifestyle where we actually feel good in our bodies regularly, we must be the “exercising type.” And since we’re not the exercising type, never have been and don’t foresee that changing, the opportunity/hope/potential to feel differently has already vanished.  We feel like shit, yet the solution feels unattainable.

I’m here to tell you the solution to feel better doesn’t have to be so extreme. The association with feeling good in our bodies by killing ourselves exercising comes from how we define “feeling good.” The wellness industry has made it clear that to “feel good” means to look a certain way. Feeling good is associated with looking like the wellness industry prototype of a healthy body. If that’s what you’re going for to feel good, if you want to look like the industry’s standard for “health,” then yes, exercise will most likely have to become one of your best friends. Exercise, generally, is seen as a means to an end, and in the case of buying into wellness standards, to be under a certain number on the scale with lines of muscular tone running down your arms and leg and belly.

There’s a better way!! What if feeling good was actually related to what you can do with your body? A friend of mine recently trained and completed a half marathon. During the process of training for it, she did witness some aesthetically pleasing changes in her body. But what she kept coming back to, what really made her happier with her body than ever before was realizing that she could actually run a half marathon. It was more about what she could do than how she looked.

REMOVE THE WORD EXERCISE FROM YOUR LEXICON
Stop thinking in terms of “exercise.”
1. I wrote a whole blog post about this, so I’m not going to re-hash it fully here.  Exercise is ONE TYPE of movement (and “cardio” is even smaller still as one type of exercise).  Walking to the store, cooking, breathing, picking up your kids, gardening—all of those are movements.  Exercise is one small sliver of the movement pie.  The moment we broaden our perspective on what kind of movement is good for the body, the possibilities are endless. It becomes easier to think of doing something we may like and less burdensome to think that the only way to move is on a treadmill at the gym.

3. Exercise is connoted with things like “no pain no gain,” misery, exertion to the point of puking, loud music, actual gym rats, and the inevitable scenario where you’re comparing yourself with others next to you which makes you feel worse.  The immediate images that come to mind are weight loss, muscle tone, cardio, mono-color gyms, loud grunting noises, and dumbbells, etc.  Exercise has become this overbearing chore that rests at the bottom of our to-do list and carries with it a whole host of serious emotional baggage. If we divorce exercise from movement and put our attention into movements we personally like to do, we may find we’re “exercising” without even realizing it—segue to the next point.

YOU HAVE TO LIKE WHAT YOU DO. PERIOD.
So if you don’t want to “exercise”, what should you do? You HAVE to start by doing something you like.  Period.  I love riding my bike around town. It gets me from place to place and I rack mileage throughout the day without even thinking about it. For someone who hates riding bikes, this would absolutely count as exercise. For me, it’s just the way I get around town. Now, eventually, you may have to do some things you don’t like to maintain the things you DO like. Like I mentioned above, about 20% of my physical activity is maintenance work to keep moving the way I want to for a very very long time with reduced risk for injury. For example, if you love ultimate frisbee and want to be able to play it for years to come, you may want to add some strength training in there, some footwork and jumping drills, rolling work, etc. But when you’re starting out to explore your moving body—when you’re just trying to get yourself going—you HAVE TO ENJOY IT.  It will make the mundane maintenance work you have to do later more enjoyable because it’s in service to doing something you already love. What movements do you enjoy doing that someone else may consider “exercise?”

THINK SHORT TERM NOW, LONG TERM LATER
What if the ONLY GOAL you had was to feel a little better in your body in this very moment? I’m talking physical sensations not emotional attachments to your body image.  If you feel weighted, lethargic, experience joint pain, creaky, stiff—what could you do with your body TODAY that would make you feel better TODAY?  Once you do that, you give yourself a chance to start a self fulfilling cycle.  If you take 20 minutes to throw a tennis ball around and take your mind off your joint pain, or do a few stretches you know you really like that feel invigorating and wake your body up, then awesome! Mission accomplished, goal attained.  Not only do you feel better in your body in the moment, but taking the time to acknowledge that you attained that goal, however small it may seem, can create a dopamine response in your brain that feels encouraging and may likely motivate you to try again tomorrow (I write about that briefly in this blog post).

So the long short of it is, find a physical activity you enjoy that makes you feel good about what you can do with your body. Spend some time doing maintenance work to keep up your ability to enjoy that activity. Remember that it doesn’t take an hour of calorie burning HIIT to feel better in your body in the moment. It could just be a forward fold for 2 minutes. Start there.

keep moving.
xoxo