Falling in LOVE with Exercise (advice)

I already feel uncomfortable saying this.

Throughout my life, I absolutely hated exercise. I hated gym class. I hated everything about moving. Why move when I can stereotypically sit on the couch and play video games? Everything about the idea of moving was like hell to me. This lasted for around 20 years. I always watched others exercise, and I had no idea how others would actually talk about the benefits. I watched countless routines of people exercising and talking about the benefits without being able to understand why they found success and love for exercise while I didn’t. The blame game ensued.

As of the last two to three months, I wanted to change that attitude. I wanted to find reasons why exercise was good. Not just researching all of the benefits, in which there are tons of benefits!

You can read this article to find out all of those benefits: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/real-life-benefits-exercise-and-physical-activity (NIA, April 2020).

I found a gentle and effective routine for me that has really helped me with so many of the symptoms that I was facing. Here’s a list of those symptoms:

Fatigue, all of the time!

Heart skipping when under stress

Strange somatic symptoms

Difficulty regulating emotions

Tension all over my body

Any standing movements leading to an over-110 BPM heart rate

Difficulty relaxing

Lower ability to tolerate sensations.

After exercising, I won’t say that all of this has cleared up 100%. I am not striving for perfection with this, but I am striving for good enough, and all of those symptoms have been cleared up more than “good enough”. My life has changed significantly since starting this routine, and I am not joking! For those that don’t know, my grandma, who has raised me since I was 18 months old, is on the decline, and our time has been shortened with her. Before, I would have probably been an emotional mess and probably brought down everyone else with me. With exercise, I am able to just take time for myself and let my body feel its sensations without feeling “god awful”.

My routine:

I am someone who likes to keep things “up in the air” for many reasons but really focuses on being gentle with myself. This is not at all a recommendation, and you should consult with professionals who can give you the most accurate evidence-based recommendations for your needs.

10–20 minutes a day of some form of movement, incorporating a great mixture of body weight resistance and cardio.

Cardio:

GrowWithJo walk/dance

Walking with some jogging

K-pop Choreo Dancing

Joyful movement (It looks like I have no idea what I am doing, but I am letting myself just move any which way.)

Body weight resistance

Yoga

Pilates

TaiChi

Slow-moving traditional exercise variants (pushing up slowly, squatting slowly)

All of this being 10–20 minutes daily for around 5–6 times a week. I used to be the person who saw routines and saw that people went to the gym and did weight training for 50–75 minutes a day for four days a week. I thought I had to be that person in order to be the “optimal person”. What a load of crap! If you enjoy that type of structure and you want to focus on sculpting, building, and progressing with intensity, those workouts can be good! But if you want a workout routine that is really just for personal wellness, gentle movement, and slower progression, I recommend a very balanced and fulfilling personal routine like the one that I stated above.

How did I change my mindset?

According to the biosocial theory, which holds that we have biologic needs and the environment interacts with those needs, there were many times in which things were behaviorally conditioned for me through positive and negative reinforcements.

If you do not want to read about my life story with disturbing details, you can stop reading here.

My grandmother is someone who really likes control; she didn’t have much in her life before. My sister and I were not allowed outside or able to move around fluidly in the household to create a very controlled environment for her needs. Great for her, but not for my sister or me. We were exposed to a very comfortable environment that also did not reinforce the benefits of movement.

I also had a lot of experiences in gym class where I was shamed for not being at an optimal health standard. I couldn’t do a pull-up. I could barely jog. I would try to find ways to skip exercise. I hated gym class because it didn’t matter to me. I saw no purpose in gym class. I couldn’t understand what they were trying to reinforce. I don’t expect 7-year-old Sterling to know all of that, but I had undiagnosed autism, which made it more complicated for me to actually find the reason for what we were doing.

My dad pretty much forced me to help him over the weekends, and it wasn’t a very safe environment for me. The things he asked me to do would often leave me feeling exhausted within the first 30 minutes because my body was not used to what he needed (i.e., hauling heavy loads of wood, moving very heavy furniture, yelling at me because I had limitations that I did not know how to explain, etc.).

I am not trying to say that “evil people made me the way I am”. What I am trying to say is that there were social standards in a small town of a man in which I did not fit those expectations in many ways, and there was never anything done to change the cycle of the problem. As an adult, I can conceptualize what they were trying to teach me, but as a child, I had no idea why everything was miserable for me. Even as I write this, I feel some sensations that indicate to me that there is still some level of distress when thinking about it, so imagine how I must’ve felt as a child. These people were not doing “evil things”, but they were not doing much to change the cycle of what was happening because of generational trauma and not having the necessary resources to fix the problems. I can feel hurt and know the things that did occur were because of a lot of bigger problems.

______________________________________

I have always wanted to be the person who could do things. I wanted to take back control of my body and really allow myself to do something different. I am always someone who has the next goal in mind before I even finish the goal I am working towards. I wanted to feel confident and competent in my body.

I started out by doing exercises at an intense pace and judging myself for not meeting those expectations. There was this one video titled “Yoga for Beginners/Recovery for Athletes." I was doing that routine and found myself in a lot of pain and feeling pretty awful. I started to cry because “this is for beginners; why can’t I even do the beginner things?" My partner Alex looks back at me from the couch and says, “Why are you forcing yourself to do more than you can? You can take it slow. You don’t have to rush to meet others expectations.”

I sat there for a moment in disbelief. I then had a reality acceptance. This is my body, and for the person doing the routine in the video, that is their body. I do not have to mimic what other people’s expectations are. All of that advice I had ever heard, “go at your own pace,” suddenly made sense to me. I accepted the reality that, in my own time, I can move at my own pace. I cried about it because I had that moment of grief. Shame around this had become my personality at that point. After that, I talked to others because I had to verify my feelings because I was still at that stage of processing. Everyone agreed and applauded me for my realization.

After that week, I started finding movements that I enjoyed that pushed me enough but not overly pushing. For the first few weeks, I had a lot of judgmental thoughts about myself: “You have to do what others want or else,” and I had to challenge those thoughts by taking the opposite action. I couldn’t push myself hard, and I have found so much joy in not pushing myself every day beyond my limits. I didn’t realize how exhausting it was!

What I learned according to my environment counteracting my needs is that “life is full of suffering, and every day you are going to have to push yourself beyond your needs in order to satisfy others so you can actually live because if you don’t, you might as well unalive yourself because you are going to be even more miserable than if you didn’t push yourself”.

(I do recognize the privilege that I have in being able to challenge that because for many people that have different identities than me, they will always struggle more than me in many systems because I present as a white, cis man who is tall, and I have more access to the opportunities that help me create a life worth living quicker than other people can.)

What I want to encourage people who are at a similar stage is to be as gentle with themselves as they can be. Life does have a lot of suffering. We are doing our best and can do better. There is also time to accept and change things, depending on our life circumstances. When we are at that time of acceptance and change (individually and societally), we can find ways to be gentle with ourselves and find a life worth living that is more comfortable than before.

TLDR Recommendations:

If you are able to, find time and movements that feel more comfortable for you and gently challenge yourself to continue to be better. There are many instances in life that have led us to our current circumstances that we may or may not have control over. But our gentle and joyful movements can be the key factor in giving us the control we may need to improve our quality of life. Explore those options through reading evidence-based materials (or talking to health professionals) and finding your own exercise and gentle movement path that encourages you to love and accept your body with gentle changes.