Shut Down Your Inner Movement Critic
We have done ourselves a real disservice by labeling certain activities as exercise and others, as a matter of consequence, “not exercise.” As a result, I find most people have a very narrow understanding of what constitutes a sufficiently fitness-oriented activity to “count.”
With a background in public health, I fully support the use of institutions to set norms and guidelines for community behavior. I am confident that all the food and exercise recommendations that get circulated among our schools and medical centers are rooted in a health-promotion agenda. Somewhere along the line though, we find ourselves in a transactional relationship with physical activity.
We assign value to certain exercises as “better” or maybe “more rigorous” than others. At its core, what people are really talking about is trying to pay for their food consumption with whatever physical activity generates the greatest calorie deficit. Why “pay” for your dessert with a gentle walk when you can throw a great big high intensity interval training session at the problem and get more calorie burn in less time.
What this mindset has done is turn physical activity into a means, rather than an end in itself. Movement is a thing you do to make good on your nutritional debt. The wellness industrial complex rarely encourages movement for its own sake. But the reality is that movement of any kind is better for you and your well-being than sitting still. The research is clear on this point: If you choose just one behavior to incorporate in your life to improve your health, the most impactful thing you can choose is to move your body every day.
It does matter how you move, but not in the way that you think it does. It matters that we move with intention, with a sense of awareness of our body and without guilt or shame. Every now and then, it is a good idea to get your heart rate up in order to keep your heart healthy. But otherwise, we should move like we eat: by trusting ourselves and taking cues from our own bodies’ cravings.
When new clients come in and start talking about their movement goals, apologies about their weight usually follow closely behind. I am always surprised at how ready people are to hand me the right to be disappointed or angry that they aren’t at their goal weight. First of all, I won’t pretend to know what “goal weight” is for anyone. I have enough trouble trying to figure out what my own body wants to be let alone someone else’s.
Even more to the point, as a movement teacher it makes no difference to me what a person’s body shape is. When they come to see me, I am excited to help them experience movement, and movement happens in every body, no matter the size. Diet culture has not done us any good by using our innate fear of inadequacy to prompt us to buy things. I can see how much baggage people carry into a new session with me – all the histories of judgment, all the guilt about “not doing enough,” and all the expectations about what I as a movement teacher must be thinking about their bodies.
Additionally, since I work predominantly with clients experiencing chronic pain, clients seem to have internalized an idea that their pain is in part attributable to their perceived fitness shortcomings. “I’ll feel better when I lose weight” comes up in at least half of new client sessions. I simply don’t believe this is true. The data on pain and weight is very confusing–much as it is with determining the link between BMI and disease–simply because it is too difficult to separate out body weight from other issues like, discrimination in health care settings. In the research, stress, anxiety and other mental health factors are strongly associated with pain.
A history of trauma is strongly associated with pain. I don’t weigh myself anymore, but I can tell you I am in the largest body I have ever been in. And my pain levels are the best they have been in at least a decade. This is not my area of expertise, but let me at least summarize by saying that the connection between an individual’s body weight and overall health (mortality, quality of life, etc.) has been grossly overestimated over the years. If the research on this topic interests you, I would recommend Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon.
We know it is good for us to move often. Being physically active helps us maintain strength, build physical endurance, increase physical and emotional resilience, and improve mood. All of these things, as it turns out, help with pain. Consistency, rather than intensity, is what matters when it comes to health and well-being. You are more likely to find time for movement practice when the activity you are doing is something you enjoy.
Whether the activity is sufficiently rigorous is moot when you consider the fact that it is better to move your muscles and bones around in some kind of way than do nothing at all. The magical thing about movement is that the more active a person becomes, the easier it is to do things that require activity. It becomes a part of who we are.
But when we create shame around body size we are telling people not to show up at all. We are telling people to stay hidden, to suffer in solitude, and certainly not to choose health behaviors like self-love and joyful movement. And that is simply unacceptable.
If what we really cared about was people’s health, we would be bending over backwards to encourage physical activity, to eliminate diet language and to promote mental health. We would make it easier to walk places and reduce reliance on driving to get around. Our work cultures would incorporate incentives for community and physical activity; we would talk openly about depression and anxiety, and we would hold corporations accountable for pollution in our environment.
It is very clear that our society does not prioritize health. So by choosing to love ourselves, to eat intuitively and to move shamelessly we are choosing rebellion. Everything around encourages a focus on external validation. But the joy and fulfillment we seek lies internally. Know that in moving our bodies in pursuit of what soothes, invigorates and validates our sense of self, we are doing the single most important thing for securing a healthy, vibrant future.
