I could not write this book without talking about this.
If you and exercise are BFFs, feel free to skip this chapter, but if you’re like most people on this planet, you’re not a big fan of exercise and wish you were.
There are physiological reasons you may not like exercise that for the sake of this chapter I won’t get into (i.e., bor-ing). But, for the love of God, please don’t feel that exercise has to be punishment. It’s no surprise many people hate exercise because it’s probably been used as a means of punishment either from yourself, coaches, phys ed teachers, doctors, or parents. And please, please, don’t punish yourself with exercise for not following through with your diet. You don’t need to be punished for anything, especially not that.
The bottom line is human bodies are meant to be in motion. Physically and biologically, we haven’t evolved that much from thousands of years ago (except for being overly hairy … which is good, right?) when humans used to exercise just to survive. And it wasn’t even exercise. It was just moving. So what if we started there? Instead of thinking of it as exercise, or calling it that, what if you just looked at it from the perspective of movement. Don’t worry about calories burned, or time, or which workout outfit makes you look skinnier.
The big, gigantic point here is to do what feels good to you. And I have to call bullshit if you say nothing does. If you can get your ass out of bed in the morning and walk to the coffee maker, you can muster up the energy to move and play.
And maybe there’s something you want to do that’s different. Maybe you’re a guy who wants to do Zumba, or a girl who wants to box. Or try trapeze. Are you the kind of person who can’t hear an upbeat ringtone on a phone without shaking your booty? Then just dance in your house, in your car, while getting dressed, anywhere. Whatever you do to move your body doesn’t have to look like exercise. Some people loathe the gym. That’s fine, just find another way.
When I was buying roller skates several months ago for roller derby a woman came into the store who looked like she was in her mid to late sixties. She was also buying roller skates. We started talking and she told me she loves to exercise, but was tired of walking. She’s always loved roller-skating as a young girl and feels in her heart that she wants to skate again. She said she’s been having dreams about skating, so she came in to buy herself some skates for her birthday.
What a badass lady.
After we’d been talking for a few minutes, I told her I thought she was awesome for skating again, for doing something she felt in her heart. She looked relieved and said, “I really thought I would come in here and be laughed at for being a grandma who wanted to skate for exercise.”
It got me thinking … how many people out there are doing exercises they don’t want to do because they think they “should,” or because the thing they really want to do, they’re afraid to. I can’t tell you how many people I meet that start running for exercise and tell me they hate it. If you hate running, don’t do it. If you think yoga is the most boring thing ever, stop. Find something else. If necessary, try twenty different ways to exercise until you find the one you love. Or at least like better than the one you hate. It’s like dating. Not the right one? Look for another.
I’ll ask again — at the end of your life, are you going to look back and like the fact that you spent hundreds of hours doing an activity that you didn’t like?
Sign up for unhappy activities and you’ll get that: unhappy activities. Which will equal unhappiness, self-sabotage, resentment, panties in a wad … you get the picture.
In addition to committing to not punishing yourself with exercise, renaming it to “movement,” and stepping out of the box and trying what you want, here are some more tips:
P.S. Kegels do count as exercise, but don’t make it your only one.