How To Build a Healthy Relationship with Exercise and Commit To It!

Hello wonderful humans, 

It’s that time of year when toxic fitness culture rears its ugly head and starts encouraging you to buy into some sort of fast-track exercise or nutrition routine that will guarantee you a healthier and happier life. I feel like this year is especially bad as the fitness industry seems to now be dressing up toxic messaging with wellness buzzwords - I’m seeing lots of “intuitive dieting” and even fat loss competitions advertised as “body confidence” courses. I honestly didn’t think things could get worse but this is pretty sickening.

A diet by its very nature cannot be intuitive when it relies on restriction in order to work and when someone says they will lead you to body confidence by helping you to lose weight I would seriously encourage you to run far away from that BS. Body confidence relies on a LOT of inner work. In order to feel confident in our bodies we have to learn to love, respect and honour them and whilst losing weight may feel good in the short term - the inner work that is so important around body confidence gives you the tools and skills to be able to still feel confident even when your weight fluctuates as it inevitably will! 

So here I am (hopefully) a beacon of light amongst the sludge - here to let you know that you do not need to live in a thinner body to be happy and healthy! And that you don’t need to buy into some fast track, all bells and whistles boot camp just because it’s January. When I say that I want you to know that I’m not saying you can’t diet or exercise or lose weight- it’s your body and your life - you can do whatever the hell you want with it and that’s exactly what I want to encourage - doing the things that feel right for you and not succumbing to the pressure and guilt from an industry that relies on you having low self-esteem in order to thrive. 

Today I want to share with you some tips on how exactly to build a healthy, lasting relationship with exercise. One that is full of love, respect and commitment and will help you to honour your incredible body. 

1 - Make it a non-negotiable 

This is the most important tool when it comes to building a healthy and lasting relationship with exercise. Making movement a non-negotiable means that no matter what happens in your day you will commit to moving your body in some way. This seems impossible if your current mindset tells you that only certain types of exercise are valid which leads me to my next tip…

2 - Reframe your thoughts 

Toxic fitness culture has us believing that only exercise that is hard and feels like a punishment is valid. This is complete BS- if you go to the gym for an hour and absolutely annihilate your body but then spend the rest of your day sitting down- you’ve still had a pretty sedentary day. If you engage in regular movement like standing up and dancing every hour, getting out for a walk at lunch time,  going to your fave classes and gym sessions or even completing physical chores around your house you’ll have had a much more active day and you won’t feel broken by it. This mindset that all movement counts is super helpful when you are really busy or maybe aren’t feeling up to high-energy movement - instead of sacking it all off and doing nothing you can listen to what your body needs and engage in some gentler movement styles that are supportive of how you are feeling. With this type of practice, you are way more likely to move regularly and ditch the all-or-nothing messaging that leaves us with a toxic relationship to movement! 

3 - Do something you enjoy 

I can’t say this enough- if you don’t enjoy it you will not do it. It’s human nature so when you start out building your relationship with exercise don’t sign up for a marathon if you hate running. Honestly, there’s no amount of willpower in the world that will get you to do it and you’ll end up just feeling like a failure or worse you’ll push yourself to do it and get injured and have an even worse relationship with exercise than when you started. I always find it so weird that we aren’t supposed to enjoy exercise, movement can actually be super joyful and that doesn’t mean it’s easy or invalid- it just means that you are way more likely to commit to it if you actually like it and don’t see it as a chore or a punishment. 

4 - Accountability 

If you aren’t holding yourself accountable you won’t do it. There are loads of ways to have health accountability with exercise and with the epic access to technology we have now there’s something that works for everyone! If always advocate for finding a coach or a small gym that you love as a means of accountability- having to book in or show up for a particular time slot is a brilliant way to stay accountable to that commitment you’ve made to yourself. Other things like booking your daily movement into your diary so that you don’t book anything else in, arranging to meet a friend to exercise, setting alarms on your phone to move at certain points in the day and even pairing up with a buddy and agreeing to check in with each other and encourage each other to move that day can all be brilliant tools for keeping you accountable and ensuring you stick to that non-negotiable until it becomes a natural habit. 

I hope you find these useful friends, I’d love to know if they help you or if you have any tips you’d like to share- pop them in the comments box below and let’s stick a massive collective middle finger to toxic fitness and diet culture! 

Remember you are worthy exactly as you are and that no amount of dieting, exercise or weird cleanses are required in order for you to be loved and accepted. Move your body for you, eat the food that nourishes your and live the hell out of your one precious life ❤️❤️✨✨