If your early experiences with exercise were something between being forced to run the mile in high school and making yourself do workouts you hate because you “should,” same. For a lot of us, movement has been framed as something to dread, which means it’s the first thing to leave our routine once life gets overwhelming.
This is why so many people make New Years Resolutions to exercise more; and why so many of these resolutions fail. Because we are taught that exercise is a form of punishment. We’re taught it’s something you do to make up for what you ate, how you look, or a measure of how “disciplined” you’ve been. It becomes moralized, something you’re either good or bad at, instead of a tool that’s supposed to make your life feel better.
And when movement feels like punishment, it’s never going to be sustainable. But exercise doesn’t have to be miserable to work. When you stop treating it like a chore and start treating it like something that can actually be enjoyable, it becomes a lot easier to make it part of your everyday life. This is a lesson which took me years of trial and error to learn, but here’s some tips so hopefully you don’t need to take that long to find movement that’s right for you.
- Redefine What “Counts” As Exercise
-
Something I’ve noticed in the plethora of health misinformation available online is that exercise is treated like something that “doesn’t count” if it’s not insanely difficult; and that’s simply not true.
Walking to class, dancing in your room, stretching while watching Netflix, doing yoga with a friend, or even going on a casual hike all count. Once you stop limiting exercise to what you think you’re “supposed” to do, everything opens up. The goal isn’t to suffer; it’s to move in ways that feel good.
Photo by Macall Polay / Warner Bros - Try New Types of Movement
-
Trying new types of movement can completely change your relationship with exercise. Maybe lifting weights feels intimidating, but Pilates makes you feel strong. Maybe running is your nightmare, but walking while listening to a podcast feels relaxing.
Give yourself permission to experiment without committing forever. You’re allowed to try something once, decide it’s not for you, and move on. Think of it less like a fitness plan and more like a trial-and-error process until you find movement that actually fits your personality and energy.
- Stop Tying Exercise to Guilt
-
If your motivation to work out is “I ate too much” or “I skipped yesterday,” you’re quickly going to find yourself feeling burnt out and resenting your workouts.
Try reframing exercise as something you get to do, not something you owe your body. Movement can be a way to release stress, clear your head, or feel more grounded. Especially during busy weeks when everything feels overwhelming.
- Focus On The Process, Not The Results.
-
We’ve been brainwashed by extreme body transformations so ever-present in online health spaces to think that we need to have some insane physical results to immediately prove that what we have been doing is “worth it.” Unfortunately, only doing exercise in hopes to see physical changes will inevitably make it seem unnecessary once more important problems come up in life.
Falling in love with movement itself, the routines you build, and how a type of exercise makes you feel, rather than how it makes you look is essential to actually enjoying a workout.
Enjoying exercise isn’t going to come from forcing yourself into doing the same thing you’ve always hated; it’s from letting go of your past perception of what exercise is or should be. How you choose to incorporate movement in your life doesn’t have to be perfect or make sense to anyone but yourself.
Whether you find joy in walking to class, dancing in your room, or lifting weights in a gym, movement should add something to your life, not take away from it. Once you stop chasing impossible standards and start focusing on how exercise makes you feel, you’ll find that staying active becomes less fueled by short-lived motivation and more by enjoyment.