The Mindset Shift You Need to Exercise Consistently
First of all, apologies for this rambling post. As you will see, I have reasons for being a little less tight and focused this week, but I had some thoughts I wanted to share.
Yesterday and today, I am convalescing. I love the word "convalesce," makes me feel like a fine lady of the Victorian era, and that is more fun than the idea of "bed-rotting." But it amounts to the same thing. I have to lay around, focus energy on healing, and try not to pop any stitches.
I had a minor surgical procedure (removing some very annoying scalp cysts), and was told by the medical staff to avoid lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk for at least a few days, and avoid heavy exercise and bending with my head below my waist for two weeks.
Well, challenge accepted. And it will be a challenge. I love movement. I need movement. And I have stuff to do, darn it! As do all human beings. It will be hard to take a break from my growing streak of lifting three times a week. It will be hard to miss out on my long weekend run (long being relative, usually around 3 miles) and my occasional yoga or bootcamp class. It will be hard to remember not to bend over and pick things up. I'm thinking I might need to wear a tutu or corset just to keep me from forgetting and automatically bending over to pick something up or wipe up a spill.
I did not always feel this way. I felt like exercise was a punishment, something hard I had to suffer through, a pain, an obligation, another task on a long list titled, "Things I SHOULD be doing but won't and so have to feel ashamed about." I've also had injuries, and just not been able to bend over without tremendous pain.
Now it feels like a punishment to be told NOT to do it.
So how did I get here?
I've already written a lot about my tips and tricks for building the habit, making it fun, and planning for meeting the minimum. So check those out. But today I want to discuss the mindset shift that must take place for long-term consistency in healthy habits.
Today I want to talk about focusing on what your body CAN do, and what your body is ALREADY doing.
It is so easy to get discouraged when life takes you down for the count. There are a lot of reasons you might not be able to exercise at a given time. Injury. Caretaking responsibilities. A heavy work schedule. Stress. A minor surgical procedure. Mental health struggles. Illness.
The world will tell us, "No excuses, you have to do this or you are a lazy sack of bile, good only for filling garbage bins. If you are struggling to find time for exercise, it is just because you are not trying hard enough, and therefore you should go take a long jump off a short pier because you are not contributing to the world in any way."
Obviously this is an exaggeration, but in a way, much of the messaging I see in the fitness space does follow these lines. It may be a little gentler, or a little more masked, but it does boil down to, "Try harder. You just aren't trying hard enough."
This is harmful. It saddens me to think people might feel inadequate due to different priorities. If I've ever contributed to this through my words, I hope they let me know so I can apologize, remove the post, and replace it with something more positive and encouraging.
The body needs movement, yes, but it also needs rest. It needs love. It needs fun. It needs good food. It needs a house to live in, and bills paid so that it can stay warm or cool enough to function. It needs other people, and those other peoples' bodies have needs, too, and sometimes your body is the one that gets sacrificed to care for those other people.
It is NOT a machine where you put in food, water, and sunlight, and you get out everything that you want and nothing that you don't.
So if exercise is not your #1 priority right now, take a second to think about what is, and how that priority serves your body. Take a second to appreciate how hard you have worked to take care of others, or to pay your bills, or to heal from illness, either physical or mental.
You are not lazy because you conserved energy for other priorities. There are more important things than exercise in life.
In a way, exercise is a human construct, and sometimes when I really intellectualize, I do think how silly it is that we go to gyms to workout when there is plenty of "real" work to be done in the world, but then I remember how much joy and vibrancy the gym has brought to me and many of my clients, and I tell myself to stop being so neurodivergent and just appreciate that humans worked together to create a space to take care of themselves, and how beautiful that is.
This is a ramble, I know, but at least you know it wasn't written by AI!
The core message is: If exercise isn't a priority, there's likely a valid reason. Blaming yourself won't help identify the true cause, which is essential for building the habit of movement. If life is too demanding for exercise, recognize it's not laziness or poor character, but simply life.
When time and energy permit, exercise will become a joy, privilege, and pleasure.
That is how I got to a place where exercise felt like pleasure, and being deprived of it felt hard and frustrating.
But this week, my challenge to myself is to appreciate the value of rest. To soak up the privilege of convalescence. To be a Victorian lady swooning on the couch, while my family waits on me. To enjoy having others lift the grocery bags, bend to pick things up for me, and appreciate that there are some people in my life willing to do those things for me.
What is your challenge this week? Not some artificial challenge you're imposing on yourself as punishment, or something you feel like you should do because someone else told you to. What is something real happening, and how are you framing your mindset to recognize and overcome it? What are you going to accept and understand about yourself, your life, your body, this week, so you can see a true path to the person you want to be?
I know this is not the hot tips of working out that you probably want, but hey, I'm convalescing.
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