By Sian Ferguson, Rodale's Organic Life
If you told sixteen-year-old me that I’d eventually learn to enjoy exercise, I would have definitely laughed in your face.
[post_ads]As with most women, I grew up facing a lot of pressure to look a
certain way. At the age of ten, I became very aware that people around
me thought I was chubby. My family encouraged me to pull my stomach in
when I walked around, or they told me to wear more flattering clothes.
Exercise was presented to me as a ‘solution’ for my weight, and so, I
was sent to karate classes and dance lessons despite the fact that I
really didn’t enjoy either of those things. I was told, ‘no pain, no
gain’, and what I was meant to gain was a thinner body. Unsurprisingly,
being forced into exercise made me hate it more. (Here are 8 more well-meaning things that you say to your daughter that you shouldn’t and what to say instead.)
Looking
back, my weight wasn’t a problem. I gained weight suddenly because I
was a prepubescent girl. It didn’t mean that I was inactive and, more
importantly, it didn’t mean I was unhealthy.\
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When I grew older and became familiar with feminism, I learned a lot from the fat acceptance movement.
Firstly, I became more critical of the way society treats fatness. We
think of ‘fat’ as an insult and a bad word because thinness is seen as
desirable, which is why the fat acceptance movement tries to reclaim the
word ‘fat’.
Secondly, I realized being fat doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy. Society
often equates thinness with health. We often assume fat people are
unhealthy and thin people are healthy. This isn’t true. There’s actually
a whole body of research that shows us that one’s weight doesn’t
necessarily determine one’s health, which is summarized nicely in this article.
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Think about it: we probably all know at least one really skinny person who eats a lot of junk food
and never exercises. We also probably all know at least one fat person
who has a super healthy lifestyle. (Check out, for example, this yoga teacher who’s blowing up stereotypes.)
Those fat people are probably assumed to be unhealthier than the thin
people. We judge people’s health based on their appearance when,
truthfully, neither their health nor their appearance is our business.
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If someone’s weight isn’t a problem, what is the value of exercise?
I thought. When exercise has always been presented as a way to change
your body, it’s hard to remember that people exercise for any other
reason.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the end goal of exercise shouldn’t be weight loss.
It seems like a simple mantra, but when you’ve been pushed into doing
something because you’re told your body is undesirable, it’s a
difficult realization to have.
And when I had that realization, I decided to try the theory out in practice. I told myself:
I’m not trying to change how my body looks. I just want to take care of
it. I’m not obliged to lose weight to be valuable, and I’m not obliged
to exercise to be valuable, either. I’m exercising because I like it. I
won’t do exercises I hate in order to lose weight or maintain a certain
aesthetic—I’ll only do it because it’s fun.
I’m sure that
some people motivate themselves into exercising by thinking about the
pounds they’re shedding. To me, though, that would mean that I’d be
exercising out of a need to change my body. What I wanted to do was
exercise from a place of self-love.
When I exercised out of self-love, a few things happened. I started actually
enjoying exercise and finding it fun. I took a while to get into it,
but eventually the rhythm of mountain climbers and squats became super
comforting and I enjoyed doing reps of certain exercises. It was almost
like spinning in a circle and not wanting to stop: your body gets used
to it and your mind enjoys it.
[post_ads]It also helped me with some symptoms of my mental illnesses. I have PTSD, depression, and anxiety. The anxiety means that I often have persistent, painful muscle aches when I’m tense or stressed. PTSD means that I seldom sleep well.
As I exercised, gently but persistently, my muscle aches eased
slightly. My muscles started feeling like I stretched them out instead
of cramping incessantly. The cardio also meant that I felt sleepier at bedtime, so I slept better. And of course, the dopamine rush lifted my spirits.After
exercising for a few weeks, I realized that it made me love my body
more. The most important thing about my body, I realized, was not how
strong it was or what I could do with it. The important thing is that it
contains my soul, and that’s a really special job. Exercising was
something my body loved, and by dedicating time to it, I was dedicating
time to taking care of my body.
I’m not saying that you have to exercise to be body-positive, and I’m
not saying that exercise will necessarily help you practice self-love.
Plenty of people develop obsessions with over-exercising, and they end
up hurting themselves. What I’m saying is that, after a long journey and
a crucial change in mindset, I eventually learned to love exercise.
I’d be lying if I said there is no part of me that wants to lose
weight – on a subconscious level, I want to be thin because I’m told
that’s what’s desirable. Everyone internalizes the messages the media
sends us, and my gut reaction to my body is to think it’s too fat. But
striving towards body acceptance has helped me develop a better attitude
towards exercise.
In a world where exercise is often viewed as punishment for not being
thin, it’s kind of radical—and sorta beautiful—to use it instead as a
tool for self-love and self-acceptance.
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