Thoughts On Exercise and Listening to My Body

A couple of years ago, I started out my job in consulting and was traveling every week for work to New Orleans of all places, and I put on some weight. It was a really frustrating time, because I was working out like crazy and I couldn’t understand why I was gaining weight while eating “healthy”. I’ve since learned that a) weight loss is 80% nutrition and 20% activity and b) exercise does not “negate” calories. There was a point where I was training for a half marathon and working out twice a day, and I would feel guilty if I missed my “second” workout. I felt very much controlled (in my own head) by my eating habits and workout schedule, and it was kind of exhausting to spend so much mental space thinking about those things!

I really took a turning point maybe two years ago, when I started to learn more about nutrition and overall wellness and just simply observing that all that exercise was not making me stronger or healthier - physically or mentally. My workouts subsided to once a day, 5-6 days a week, and I incorporated a lot of different kinds of workouts. I would spin one day, run another day, do some strength training another day, HIIT another day, and then if I did yoga, I would often do a long walk afterwards. It all sounds really great, but I wasn’t enjoying like half of the workouts. I was just trying to cover all of my fitness bases - which is great - but when you spend 8 hours a day at a desk and you have an hour of time a day to zone in and focus on getting your heart rate up - you should really be doing the exercises that you enjoy! But for some reason I couldn’t pull it out of my head that I “needed” to always be changing it up. I wouldn’t let myself do the same exercise the next day, even if I really wanted to lace up my running shoes and go for another jog.

Half marathon finisher - sweaty and accomplished, but not feeling so strong

Earlier this year, I found myself spending a lot more time at my yoga mat. And sometimes, I found myself taking hot yoga three days in a row. And sometimes I found myself going on runs for several days in a row to explore my new city of San Francisco. And sometimes I just wanted to SPIN so I would go spinning. It was honestly liberating! I have never felt so in shape and strong in my life. Just like listening to what your body craves for food, it’s the same for exercise, it seems to me. When something hurts or your stomach grumbles - you listen to your body - no question. We should all do the same when it comes to exercise. There is no reason to turn exercise into a “chore” or a “checklist” but something to enjoy and look forward to. It’s taken me a while to get there, but treating exercise as giving my body what it wants has been therapeutic and almost like treating it to a dessert. I know that sounds crazy, but for so long I deprived myself of the workouts that I wanted on any given day to stick to a schedule, that mentally I was on a “diet”!

Anyways, the point of this story is that we receive so much info on what exercise we should be doing - mix of lifting, cardio, stretching, endurance, intervals, body weight strength - that sometimes it can feel like you’re not “meeting expectations” if you don’t hit all of those. I encourage you to spend a week doing EXACTLY the workouts that you want to do that week, and see how you feel. Who knows - maybe we’ll run into each other at Spinning three days in a row? Or maybe we’ll just call up our moms for long walks at night? Or maybe we’ll consider puttering around the DCC kitchen for an afternoon a “workout”?

I’d love for you to tell me how you feel about this subject - what works for you and your body? What is your fitness “style”?

It's only fair to share...