#intuitive exercise

I find exercise generally very enjoyable, and it helps me improve my life in a plethora of ways. It makes me stronger, more flexible, gives me more stamina, lowers my stress levels, helps me sleep better, helps me write more creatively. But... That being said, many people cannot afford to join a gym, or have a limited living situation that prevents them from exercising. Some people have physical limitations due to disabilities that might prevent them from exercising. Or maybe you just flat out hate exercise. That is valid. You own your body. What you do with it is YOUR BUSINESS. But... if you would like some advice on exercising/Joyful Movement using a body positive/intuitive model, then please read on. 

My preferred forms of exercise (or Joyful Movement) are workout videos in my  room, or long walks around town while listening to a podcast. As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, you can move your body in any number of ways to get exercise or increase Joyful Movement in your day. Cleaning house, playing sports, walking the dog, dancing, yoga, doing laundry, interactive video games, all of these will get you moving. 

Diet culture tells us we must suffer to exercise and this is a lie.

Diet Culture tells us that we must push our bodies to their limits, because it is selling rapid weight loss, and so it behooves people with this agenda to promote intense, high energy, painful forms of exercise. I exercised this way for probably twenty years off and on before I quit. Now I just can’t do it anymore. And you don’t have to push yourself until you are a gasping, sweaty mess to add movement to your day. 

You are in charge of your own limits. You get to decide how many reps to do, how many minutes to exercise. You decide how long your walk should be. YOU decide when to quit. You don’t actually have to do every set of squats or every set of bicep curls. You can stop when you feel tired, or when you sense that your muscles are being pushed too far. 

Make sure that if you ARE doing a workout video that it is body positive. What does this mean? It means no talk about “burning calories” or “burning fat”. No talk about “slimming down” or “sculpting” your body. No talk about “lets get you swimsuit ready!” If you have a body, it is already a beach body. You don’t need to lose weight to go to the beach. Fuck that. 

It’s best if you choose workouts with alternate moves for lower impact if possible, as I’ve found those very helpful. I am old and have bad knees. You will not catch me jumping around. If jump-squats are horrifyingly difficult and painful, then just don’t do the jump part. If you can handle the steps and leg work of a workout, but the arms are too complicated or too intense, just don’t do the arm movements. Again, you are in charge. Not the instructor. 

Sustainability is very important. Many people who begin intense exercise regimes (almost always designed to get them to lose weight as quickly as possible) can only stick with them for a few weeks or months. Once the novelty wears off, and (like most human beings) we get lazy and don’t want to go for a miles long run at 6am like we did in the beginning, we start to slack off. Then beat ourselves up for slacking off. This is just painful and unnecessary. If you can’t see yourself doing this particular form of exercise indefinitely, for the rest of your life, then it’s highly likely that you’ll tank out within a year. I have been walking my entire life, and I enjoy it. It’s easy enough to not be prohibitive, but challenging enough to give me a bit of a workout. Walking is sustainable. Boot camp workouts? Less sustainable. 

Boot camp/blaster/high intensity workouts are geared toward the ever present diet culture goal of weight loss and the changing of the shape and size of one’s body. There is always a sense of urgency and intensity surrounding these types of work out videos because they are largely based in fear and self criticism. Intuitive Eating, HAES and body positivity are anti-diet, anti-purposeful weight loss, and therefore the intensity and push for perfection disappear when you take diet culture out of the equation. 

I no longer work out to change the size and shape of my body. And I fully believe that this should never be a goal of exercise. Exercise brings with it many benefits, if it is practiced for the sake of health and for feeling good, and not for the purposes of weight loss. Once you remove the relentless diet culture drive that surrounds exercise, you can free yourself up to see it as a means to improve your health and your life outside of your appearance. 

here is a more comprehensive list of things exercise does for us that isn’t related to being thinner or changing our appearance:

Increased cardio vascular health

Better sleep

Improved mood and improved self esteem

Increased physical strength

Increased flexibility

Increased mobility - ability to spend time with friends, go on hikes, play sports, run around at conventions or festivals etc.

Today is the international day against transphobia, homophobia, and biphobia and as a trans guy myself I have to honor that day and celebrate it so to speak.

Which for me, not only meant an appointment with a new genderhealthcare clinic in the hopes of getting a referral for a hysterectomy.

But it also means celebrating some of the small victories i've made in this journey to improve my relationship with food and exercise.

I've noticed that for the first time in years, running no longer tires me out and that I'm faster than I ever expected to be. I notice that I don't need to recover from a walk anymore. I'm no longer out of breath. I notice that I'm stronger and have more energy.

That's not to say that all of my health problems have dissappeared. I still have chronic pelvic pain. I'm still depressed, I still can't feel anything. My house is still a mess, I can't find the spoons to do anything about that.

Memories of the past are still plagueing me.

And the numbers on the scale have not moved one bit in a week.

I kinda still have to come to peace with that last one. That I need to measure my health in these successes, not by numbers, but breaking through years of programming is hard and I'm trying.

Small steps are worth celebrating is a thing I'm learning every day.

It's a lot.

But over the past two months I've been doing better. I've been regularly moving and feeding my body in ways that I enjoy and feel good to me. And I've been keeping track of what I eat. Which I personally do just to make sure I eat three times a day. I do eventually want to let that habit go. But for now it's a crutch. And hopefully with professional help I can slowly let that crutch go.

Am I losing weight while doing it? Sure, and while I do focus on it, I'm noticing that the last few days I'm more concerned with whether or not I'm moving or eating, not as much; what's it gonna do on the scale.

In that sense I think reading up on gentle nutrition is really helping me.

Some people have also asked me; how do you do that? How do you move this much, how do you consistently stay on track?

The answer to that is time (I am on disability and I can't work, and I don't force myself to do anything. Which is working splendidly for me.

I don't tell myself you must walk 6km today. I ask; how about we take a walk and see how far we get? If it feels bad we'll turn around and take a nap.

And I go out, I try, and I walk what I can.

Up until a month ago I also did weight and circuit training but since chronic pelvic pain has kicked in, it doesn't feel good anymore. So I stopped doing it.

Maybe one day I will too pick that back up.

But we'll see.

For now, my goal is to regularly walk my round and eat plenty of protein every day.

Because honestly, this high protein diet works really well for me, personally.

We'll see if I can keep it up.

Walk with me?

Feeling really good about my eating and exercising patterns. Regardless of what happens this week, I'm not going hungry and I'm not overexercising myself. And I think that's a major win.

No binges this week.

Still undereating for a man of my age but not as badly as I used to.

So here's a try:

I walk 30 min to 1hr every day now. Depending on how I feel.

I stopped tracking my food and calories

I eat 2 portions of fruit and 300 gram of veggies every day.

I eat fish 3x a week, the rest vegetarian.

I lift weights 2x a week.

I enjoy exercise again.