The Body Issues: Exercise for Extra fries?

Trigger warning: heavy content related to eating disorders, anxiety, etc.

Diet culture has seriously f***ed me up.

(Plus capitalism.)

I can’t seem to get over the constant feeling of how I’m never doing enough. In many aspects, but today let’s focus on ”health”. Working out, eating healthy, getting enough sleep, you name it. Heck, diet culture has even infiltrated the wellness environment of ‘self-care’ and mental health with claims of “if you’re not doing steps 1, 2, 3 every night you’re somehow failing to take care of yourself”. Shouldn’t you be able to choose what to do with your body? How to move freely and with joy? How to feed not only your body but your soul? Not according to the health industry.

One of the main things I’ve been struggling with lately as I’ve been transitioning into a new job for the summer ( in a new state, in an entirely new living situation, by myself ) is my relationship with exercise. I have ..... a complicated relationship with running. I’ve talked about it in a past article but the semi-brief version begins with me absolutely hating running during the early days of cross-country and track in middle and high school to beginning to like running sophomore year with the help of a friend. Cut to junior year of high school where I was falling off the deep end into an eating disorder and discovered running was a great way to burn calories and loose weight fast while severely cutting calories. Skip to a few years of going back and forth of using running and exercise to burn calories and using working out as an “excuse” or “justification“ to eat—sweets or “unhealthy” food, larger portions, basically anything above the bare minimum.

Then there was the recovery stage of my eating disorder where I was told to cut running and working out down to hardly anything (max 3 miles dayX4 week, 2+ rest days, etc) while eating more than I had in years...yeah that was a rough time for my mental health, body image, sense of worth, etc. After a few months of following that system, my body’s weight fluctuations had begun to stabilize and I started increasing exercise and the amount of food to match what I was burning. In February of this year I injured my ankle so badly I was hardly able to walk and was out of running for almost two months, which was a whole other arc of battling my brain on what qualified as enough movement and food to feel “worthy” or “enough” or equivalent to what I wanted/needed to eat.

Yeah I get it, my brains f***ed up and most people don’t think about food/calories/exercise as much as I do. Even though I’m aware of this and pretty far into my eating disorder recovery, unfortunately thought patterns linger and it’s really frickin’ hard to unlearn years of bad habits.

Now the main thing I’m struggling with is finding satisfaction in workouts and dealing with lifestyle changes. For example, my walking versus driving times have dramatically shifted as I have a longer commute to get to work and can’t just walk or bike to places like I was able to in Vermont. I have ten hour plus work days which changes when and how long I can work out. I’m trying to be gentle with myself and reminding myself that the best thing to do right now is to adapt to my circumstances the best I can and be kind to myself. I can be hard to work long hours and you can’t really plan around the weather, espeically in the midwest. I mean, if I really wanted to I could try to run before work, but I don’t really want to get up before 5 am, especially since I never really know how much hiking I’ll be doing on the job and how exhausted I’ll be by the end of the day. On days when we‘re out in the field we could be hiking for a few miles or ten, in heat or in rain, with or without our 40 lbs of gear....Then there’s the issues of finding trails or places to run, as I’m still exploring and don’t really know which places in town are safe for a single female to workout solo, which areas may have bears or other predators, plus adapting to elevation changes, and more...it’s a whole new place. I also find myself struggling with performance trauma (which I’ll talk more about it in a later article) and the mindset that running is number one, four miles is the base, and anything less than 8 min/miles is slow. And another (less important) issue is I have no running water at camp so if I want a shower I need to be near town/the office, which is almost 30 minutes away from where I’m camping. Let’s just say huggie wipes are my new best friend.

I guess throughout all the rambling this article has become, what I’m really trying to say is I’m trying to be flexible and gentle with myself. I’m mixing it up this summer and REALLY trying to focus on being kind to my body, getting in movement every day even if it’s just walking or stretching. If I feel like doing more—great, but I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself to hit a certain mile goal or time limit. Yoga/stretching is good for the body and strength workouts without cardio still count, even if my brain still has an unfortunate hierarchy set up that constantly compares things to a 4 or 6 mile run. Biking is an option, or dancing, or even swimming if the pool opens up. Hiking does count as a workout (which I’ve been doing a lot of) and remember that heat and elevation affect the difficulty of a workout. Also rest days are important!!

I’m not sure who else needs to hear this, but it’s okay to not be on the top of your game all the time. Just because you may not be going as fast or far or as often as you have in the past, that doesn’t mean you are unworthy of rest or eating or treating yourself. Overworking yourself in any aspect of life will just lead to downfall eventually, so pace yourself.