My journey with exercise has been chaotic for most of my life.
From childhood “mandatory” sports to not being picked for team sports in junior high school because I was “too big”.
And as an adult, being shamed into overdoing exercise by the diet gurus as the way to “burn fat” quick and maintain weight loss.
With every wave of dieting came the sentence of “no pain no gain” excessive exercise patterns to the point of injury.
In fact, dieting really screwed up my relationship to exercise as much as it f*cked up my relationship to food.
Healing our Relationship to Exercise
I couldn’t understand how people could enjoy, let alone love exercising.
From the age of 12, my relationship to exercise has been about managing my body.
Exercise is something I had to do along with food restriction because my body was bad.
Exercise was punishment.
So how can you enjoy something that is designed to hurt you and make you pay for you being “bad” for not having the body you should have?
When I first entered the world of Health At Every Size and Intuitive Eating, the concept of Joyful Movement sent me straight into cognitive dissonance.
And then I quickly realized that as much work I needed to do to change how I perceived food and my food habits, I needed to do the same work with exercise.
Being intentional about healing my relationship to exercise
I had to make a conscious decision to heal my relationship to exercise.
I stopped waiting for prince charming to come and fix it all. If I were going to ever find joy in moving my body, I had to be intentional.
Diet culture might have f*cked how I see exercise but it was up to me to unf*ck it.
My first step was swapping the word Exercise with Movement. Seems too simple, but for me that was a game-changer. The word exercise was recalling very traumatic memories for me. The word movement was neutral.
With neutrality, I was able to accept possibilities. Possibilities that movement could be one that is joyful. That I could see me moving my body because I wanted to not because I had to.
Wanting to move my body versus I have to exercise. That was a thought I practiced for months. With time, it worked. I started to desire to go for a walk for just pure pleasure and how it made me feel.
I practice minimum baseline and then use movement as a way to build a relationship of trust and respect with myself.
Moreover, I use self-coaching to change my thoughts and beliefs about moving my body.
Today, I only move my body if it makes feels good and makes me feel happy. I walk. I practice yoga.
In this episode of the podcast, Kim Hagle, a mom of four and non-diet fitness expert, is going to help us heal our relationship to exercise.
Kim hosts The Joyful Movement Show podcast and through her signature program Right Body for Me, she helps women discover joyful movement and motivation that lasts so they can heal their relationship to exercise and feel confident in their own skin.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- How Kim went from being picked on by other kids to being a fitness professional
- The difference between movement and exercise
- Is the gym police a problem for you?
- The 10 principles of Joyful Movement
- How to find motivation without punishment or “no pain no gain”…
