Episode 18: How do I reincorporate exercise into my life?

In this week’s episode, Jessica is discussing the question, “How do I reincorporate exercise into my life?” We will be chatting about healthy exercise and joyful movement. So often exercise can be tied to weight loss, and we will be discussing how we can break that cycle.

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Intro 

Welcome to the art and science of eating. I’m Jessica Begg, registered dietician and clinical counsellor. I worked for fifteen years in programs for the treatment of eating disorders. I now help those that struggle with emotional eating and their relationship with their body. This podcast is where I answer questions to help people along this bumpy journey to creating peace with both food and their body. 

Podcast

Do you hear that on that side? Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting. Well okay, I am ready. Okay, I am ready too. Actually, I should lead you in first. I’m the worst podcaster -- I love the conversations but I hate the act of recording and putting it on and all that kind of stuff. Welcome Nicole, thanks for coming onto the podcast. Thank you. I heard you had a question. I do, I do. I guess my question is really around exercise and when I sought treatment for my eating disorder last fall, one of the things that I was realizing when I was educating myself about health at every size and intuitive eating is just the way in which diet culture really sort of dictated my beliefs around exercise and it kind of really intertwines exercise and weight loss and I started to kind of realize that like I had this expectation that if I was working out I would be losing weight. So, the cycle of what happened is I would start working out and quote on quote eating healthy and I wouldn’t see results either way by not losing weight and I would become discouraged and one of them would fall off -- either I would stop exercising or I would stop eating healthy so there was this expectation that I have put on myself that not only am I exercising, I am eating perfectly and I’m losing weight and when I was not able to deliver on all fronts it would be really discouraging and really disappointing. So, over the last few months I’ve kind of made the decision that like or when I had initially sought treatment I had made the decision I’m gonna stop all formal forms of exercise in a jam or anything like that because I had seen that I was setting up these expectations for myself and I really kinda just been doing more of a light movement like walking my dog and doing some jump to yoga, but in the recent months I’ve really been like craving just like exercise like in a more formal setting, getting like a good sweat going, building up some strength and really kinda like diving into that world, but I’m a little bit nervous I might fall back into the old ways. So I guess my question is how do you separate the belief that like when you exercise you lose weight. How do you separate those two things: exercise and weight loss. Yeah, because you’re right like it’s so tightly linked. People will do these things where they’re like ok I’m going to do this whole thing “Hurrahh!” Focus on my food and my exercise and so when one goes off, the other one falls off with it also. That makes sense. I like how you made that break from exercise so that you can really re-evaluate your relationship with activity because it has been a part of the self-harm cycle of I’m doing this as some sort of, even though it has this guise of being healthy, often it is employed in these self-harm ways. I’m going to work out this prescribed amount, like no pain no gain and all these things that are really not nice. So often people will even sever themselves from activity entirely because they’re just like just even the thought is just so harmful that I don’t want to do it anymore so I like how you’re considering going back into it and you’re right like how do we do it? First things first, I always question the gym and it may be toxic gym culture of how I’ve found it really difficult to create a happy relationship with your body in that space. People are going to come at me probably who are religious about going to the gym but I just find it that there’s lots of mirrors, machines with numbers. It really focuses on changing the body that I am doing it for weight loss. So I think that is the first thing to evaluate is am I thinking about going into spaces that may not be safe to be safe with just your body. The second thing I would think about is how to then also separate the connection between diet and exercise. This idea of calories in, calories out or that exercise is to change your body because I think that when you put in those layers of expectations, you’re not doing it for things that will be motivating in the long run. For instance, if you’re going to the gym and you’re thinking ok well I’m going to do this to lose x amount of pounds. We know that just plays into this weight cycling cycle. There’s all sorts of disappointment, basically setting yourself up for disappointment so it’s not going to be a sustainable practice of going to the gym cause yeah going there you’re trying to lose weight, doesn’t happen or doesn’t happen the way that you want to or your weight remains the same. It’s using outcomes that are not really fulfilling, let’s say? However, if you can separate it from that and separate it from food too. So, and I’ll get to that too around sports nutrition but separating so that it is a separate spoke on this wheel of self care and health that we exercise not to change our body but just the way like we can use another analogy of brushing your teeth. We brush our teeth to maintain our oral health connected to heart issues and all sorts of stuff like that. You brush your teeth, not calories in calories out. And to me, exercise is that separate, is that exercise should be for things like keeping your legs strong, keeping your arms strong so that you can do the activities. For me, keeping my body strong so I can sit here for long periods of time doing my job ya’know like I need to stretch and that kind of stuff to maintain our bodies to be able to do the things that we do or bring us to the activities that we want to do. There’s some maintenance in that regard that we do just like brushing our teeth so if we can keep it in that realm then it makes more sense and that is something that we can keep maintaining cause if I’m sitting here at my desk, if I’m not stretching forever then there’s pains and other signals I can cue into just like the way that we eat in terms of hunger, fullness cues. If we’re not doing it for weight loss then we want to cue into hunger, fullness cues. Activity has that same kind of things like “Oh my back is kind of tight and sore!” So maybe going for some walks or stretching those kinds of things make more intuitive sense of why we do it and it makes us forget that disheartening activity. Yeah, yeah. I find even just my motivation for wanting to get back into some sort formal exercise is way different than it used to be and I mean I still have the little voice in the back of my head that’s saying like Nicole look this way. But, I think the vast majority of my majority is coming from my wanting to feel strong and wanting to like be more in tuned with my body so like it’s difficult and I think that’s just where the hesitation is coming from in actually going back and going to the gym. Is this going to be a really triggering experience for me and one of the things that I’ve been sort of looking into is are there any body-positive gyms in the Vancouver area and unfortunately, there’s not that much and the ones that there are they’re really expensive so like there’s such a space for that but it’s just not really attainable unfortunately. Yeah and it might even be looking at things that are really, ya’know that kind of focus too like that focused activity and I think that that’s too reframing your idea of what activity could be and I think that that’s also part of when people are doing those big pushes like I’m going to do this new exercise regimen and it’s going to come with this meal plan. Is that that’s what you think what you need to do in order to be active because that’s what you’ve done in the past? Yeah. Have to be, could be just making play-dates basically like meeting up with your friends and going out for hikes, going swimming. Like it doesn’t have to be signing up for something necessarily but again flowing just like with our connection with food is that we don’t eat the same way from week to week too is that our exercise can ebb and flow with seasons so it’s summer time right now we can be outside more and doing that kind of stuff and maybe in the winter time there’s other winter activities you might do. There’s also other little ways you can find strength in terms of moving. I have a client that she was so active in her regular day to day but was feeling that because she wasn’t doing that what we would describe as being activity she didn’t feel like she was an active being but she really was. She was doing all sorts of gardening and she was stretching in between meetings as well and going out for walks. there was all sorts of tons of stuff that she was doing that she was undervaluing as activity. Yeah, I think it’s tough to like get your mind set into acknowledging that some things you do on a day to day basis is actually like physical movement because we’re trained to think that you have be going like a 100% in order to be like getting any sort of results so that is true. Yeah cause that’s the shift too right? Because it’s not getting results and when you say results immediately my brain goes to oh like weight loss, right and so what’s the point if I’m not losing weight. What’s the even point of doing activity? And I think that’s where you get that black and white thinking well yeah cause there is no point, if you’re working out for weight loss but when you start opening it up to yeah and maintaining and keeping my strength and agility and all sorts of other things, flexibility, and it’s like oh actually that opens my mind to a whole bunch of other stuff of how do I maintain my body and it could be as simple as, I don’t want to say it simple but gardening is a really heavy duty thing depending on how big your yard is I guess but it’s small. For us, in Vancouver it’s usually a couple of pots but you can be active without having to do those things pushes that you may have done in the past. Yeah, I think it’s just about finding something that is going to work for me so I think I need to try a few different options but I think at least my mindset has shifted way more than it was back in the fall. Yeah, yeah great. Ya’know what I would also as you’re approaching this idea and because you’ve taken a nice long break from it is thinking about how to do it in really comfortable ways. This is the other cautionary thing to note is because sometimes when people have left their past activity and have taken a break, their idea of I’ve gotta get back to the way I was before and I was doing that big push, so rethinking about again and with this idea of you can get activity in all sorts of ways but also how do I do it in a real self-care nurturing way of reintroducing it into my life so it could be for some people of let’s just get my shoes on and allow myself to go for a walk for as long as I feel like. Not doing a prescribed thing of ok get your shoes on and you’ve gotta walk for 20 minutes and you’ve gotta do it in rigid ways. It should be my thought to it would be just get it just like you would do it with any other thing of trying to get some warmed up to the idea we would do it in really gentle ways of like “You should come outside and take a look! Bring your shoes and just see,” and we’ll just be here for as long as you like and then you come back so you can keep recreating positive experiences with it again. As soon as you don’t like it, as soon as it’s uncomfortable, go back so that you’re like ok I only have to do as much as I like and then we have fun and we’re out there more. Yeah. Great place to start, fun for sure. Good, good. I look forward to hearing how it goes. Thank you. Thanks Nicole, anything else that you wanted to ask? I don’t think so. Okay good, thanks for coming on. No problem, thank you. Take care.

Disclaimer

This podcast is for education and information purposes only. Please consult your own healthcare team to discuss what is right for you and your care.