Body Positive Exercise and Joyful Movement In A Diet Culture World
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.
So do whatever you want with your body. Move it. Don’t move it. Take a yoga class, or just stroll around the block. I changed the way I viewed exercise, which completely changed the way I engaged with it, and I am far happier now than I was when weight loss was my motivation.
