Hello Wellness Warriors! Today I want to tackle a topic that I think it is time we in the fitness/exercise world talk about. Our friends in nutrition world are having this conversation, with great success. And while hints of this topic are abundant in specific exercise realms, like yoga, we need to take it elsewhere. I am talking about how we talk to ourselves about exercise.
Awhile back, I wrote about the difference between training and exercise. In short, training is movement done with a very specific, short term end goal in mind. Exercise is movement done with the idea of accomplishing a broader goal over a longer time. Both are equally valuable, but the chatter around exercise needs to change.
And the world of nutrition is giving us an amazing blueprint to start from if we are willing to go there. There is a huge movement (hah!) to destigmatize both how we describe actual food and how we talk about our own feelings in relation to food. In other words, there are no “good” and “bad” foods or “cheat” meals. (And I am fully here for that.) You are not bad because you ate a doughnut. You do not need to atone for said doughnut with a salad.
The idea is to use your own self talk to silence decades worth of diet culture and brainwashing. To view food as fuel and nourishment. Some foods contain more vitamins and minerals to nourish our physical bodies. Some foods contain things we are seeking to nourish our mental or emotional needs. The more important factor is how we feel during and after a meal, noting those feelings, and adjusting from there.
For those of us living in exercise world, this is needed! Again, decades of exercise culture have taught us that workouts should be hard to be worthwhile. The super cliché adage of no pain, no gain. Decades of diet culture have taught us that exercise is punishment for that pizza/doughnut/alcohol/whatever we consumed.
We are taught that the only way to love our body is to use exercise (and diet) to mold it into a preconceived “ideal” shape or size. This is especially true for those living in larger bodies and friends in the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.
Is it, therefore, any wonder why we view exercise and movement as something loathsome? Something to tolerate in order to conform to some arbitrary standard? Something that we must force ourselves to do in order to accept that our bodies have value?
What if, instead, we viewed movement, of any type, as natural? As the way our body is supposed to exist. What if we viewed movement as fun, restorative, enjoyable, and relaxing? What if we viewed movement as a way to support many Dimensions of Wellness and not just our Physical Health? What if instead of labeling strength training via traditional weights as something for strong people and yoga as something for flexible people, we just labelled movement practices as something for anyone?
What if we actually used the term practices to describe these activities? Because (taking performance enhancing drugs out of the equation) you aren’t mastering any of these movements and then stopping. You keep practicing. Ask Michael Jordan.
The idea should be that exercise and movement isn’t something you do JUST for benefit X. Although those are nice, and there are plenty of them I could list. The idea should be that movement allows you to feel your physical body. You should be able to feel how you are making progress without worrying about an end goal.
So, how do we actually do that? This year on MMW, I want to tackle this topic. I am going to use the Intuitive Eating Principles that our aforementioned friends in nutrition world are embracing as a blueprint. If you aren’t sure what I am talking about, pick up the book or Google it. And you’ll have hopefully noticed that my first two posts of the year were purposefully aimed at redirecting our collective exercise focus.
Diet culture and exercise culture are two sides of the same coin. And we should be talking about changing both sides. So in this series, let’s discuss how the principles of intuitive eating can be applied to exercise culture as well.
In the meantime, tell us in the comments, what is your favorite way to move your body?
