Nov 29, 2022·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith
I was literally laying in bed after my baby’s 5 am wake up beating myself up for being off my “movement” routine when this came in. Yes to learning to love both sides of ourselves whether we move or choose to read and listen to a podcast w a coffee instead. I never had words to pinpoint that I seem to devalue the me who doesn’t move as much. It’s not something I can learn overnight but at least I have words for it now. Thanks for diving into this and sharing your perspective. And as always, for being vulnerable.
I love the concept of detangling exercise from weight loss. I’m not going to say that the fact that I exercise regularly is not tied to that, but I also cling to the hope that exercise will stave off what my 82-year old mom is going through right now. She has had health issues in the last few years -- she is still in relatively good health for a woman her age -- but her lifestyle has changed markedly, causing depression. There are days she feels too weak to get out of bed. Her doctors tell her more exercise would help her physically and mentally. I am hoping beyond hope that the strength exercises I do will delay some of what she is going through. And help my balance and bone density. My mom is only 23 years older than me so something about seeing her so frail and resistant to exercising is driving me to an extent. I realize I’m probably replacing one obsessive behavior with another but it feels now more about being healthy than thin. I fully admit that the seeking thinness part of the equation is still there for me -- and that kind of sucks -- but it’s become less of the entire reason that keeps me motivated, for better or worse.
I have always been disabled, and was born with some messed-up feet, and movement has never not meant pain for me. I really hate exercise, and it's even worse since I broke my leg and ankle in 2019 and had surgery and two metal plates and 20 screws permanently installed. My doctor called it a "career-ending injury" if I were an athlete. Even just sitting at my desk right now, I'm in a pretty high degree of pain. So exercise has only ever felt like a punishment to me. I loved reading this because you articulated something I still, even in all my fat/body positivity, feel shame for being a Person Who Doesn't Exercise. I know movement is helpful for my body and its many chronic conditions, but it's so hard when it hurts so much. Exercise always feels like punishment because it hurts. The only time I ever enjoyed movement was in PT because I could feel and see how it was helping me get better. Regular exercise doesn't do that. I had a year--2011--where I did yoga every single day. And it never got any easier, and I actually tore a tendon in my ankle. I don't know what the solution is to finding a way to move that doesn't make me want to cry (both emotionally and physically). I wish I could find/afford some sort of movement coach that was similar to a physical therapist but I'm not sure that exists! Anyway, that's a long comment, but this piece resonated with me SO much. I feel like I have an essay of my own on this topic. :)
Damn I can't believe how skewered I feel, here in my jumper under a blanket with a hot water bottle trying to force myself to go on a miserable chilly run. I really really love how much this made me think, and also I kind of resent you for it, but in an appreciative way. What if instead of continuing to make my workouts harder, I just.......enjoyed them and revelled in being in my body and did what feels good.
This feels like a good next step for me; I have spent a lot of time shifting my feelings about exercising to align with my feelings about food: I like sensual things! I like to feel good in my body! It's ridiculous to pretend that eating snacks is antithetical to working out when in fact they're both about enjoying having a body.
I wonder if there's also a distinction between "activity as a hobby" and "activity as a moral mandate" in terms of what becomes your long-term identity. I was a college athlete, and I continue to think of myself as an athlete of some kind, even during times when I'm not particularly active, and even though my body has changed a lot since then. Maybe the same way you likely think of yourself as a gardener, even when it's winter?
As a person who menstruates, it’s been helpful for me on a micro-seasonal level to pay attention to my energy across my cycle (literally just an up, sideways, or down arrow on my calendar each day - 2 seconds, no fancy tracker), and plan my movement to be much more restful during week 4 and the first half of week 1 (so, PMS week[s] and the first couple days of my period). Fitness culture has such an emphasis on sticking to a workout plan that doesn’t take into account injury, stress, life, etc, but also is designed for cis men, who don’t deal with hormone fluctuations. The difference is enough for me to have the best, most joyful and endorphin-filled run during week 2 and to walk slowly followed by a nap in week 4 (that’s today’s plan!).
Wow, reading this I realized another way that WW messed me up: that your exercise earns you food points. I have done so much healing about food, but that terrible equation has stuck with me in ways I didn’t even realize. The worst thing about it is that I do actually love moving a lot of the time, and I’m mad that got pushed aside for “earning” food with it.
The other thing that stands out is exercise as an elitist thing for “health” and what total BS that is when doctors recommend it. I had a heart issue and at the bottom of my hospital discharge papers was “exercise, and practice yoga and meditation.” I’m a yoga teacher. There was nothing on there about how, how long, what kind, and god forbid, how to access and pay for classes.
There is still so much to unlearn and untangle, and I am grateful for your vulnerability to write about this.
Wow there is so much to process in this piece! I’m sitting here trying to decide if I am naturally a person who does not exericse. Even though I have been fairly regular my whole life, but so much of that has been diet culture influenced.
One of the things I found when I was in the real trenches of restriction and over exercising is that I am a “good” weight lifter, and I enjoyed it to the point of multiple injuries because of the all or nothing mind set. My local gym closed and I was sort of forced into only cardio for a few years and now, way on the other side of giving up dieting, I have found the perfect trainer who trains in a weight neutral space. And I am back to it and loving it so much. Not using it to burn calories (though I find myself thinking about that from time to time) but to make my life easier. I am in my mid 60s and I want to be able to not only go up and down stairs with ease, but go on those woods walks, especially if there are not harrowing heights involved. Woods walks are awesome. Forced 5 mile walks on the road is not awesome. Not for me.
I have to reread this as there was so much truth. Thank you!
I don't precisely know how to articulate this, but for as long as I can remember, I've connected exercise to feeling "holy". I know that's a weird word choice, but that's the word my head has always used. (I'm not religious in the least, so I don't quite know why.) Anyway, that feeling has ALSO always come with the feeling of being so hungry you couldn't think straight. Because the way fat girls achieve uh, well, virtue, I guess, is by starving themselves and then working out until they can't think straight.
I'm no longer feeling hunger as virtue; I haven't been able to even touch exercise as virtue. It's so fucking triggering for me that I just...don't exercise. My mom is very worried that I'm "unhealthy"; she is also a fat person, but one who is still hugely enmeshed in diet culture (we are those ages; 40s and late 60s). I tried to explain that I'm not convinced I want to spend my life pursuing health at all costs, but she was just horrified that I might die before my niblings grow up. As if there is a 100% chance I'll die young if I am fat, eat what I want, and don't exercise.
I guess what I'm saying is, while I appreciated this piece, there is still something missing in it for me. It still feels very "Not that there's anything wrong with it!" towards people who don't exercise, who consciously choose to never exercise. I'm trying not to read it that way, but I've read it three times now, in a short span. I don't know.
Thank you so much for this. I am partially disabled due to rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic illness, so I cannot exercise “hard” or else pain, pain, pain.
Because of my diseases, and depending on the dose and type of meds I’m on, my weight can wildly fluctuate from being thin to being fat. The amount I move and exercise has NEVER impacted my weight, however when I’m thin (which is ironically when all my blood work shows my body is struggling and in a flare) the doctors approve and don’t ask about exercise. However, when I’m in a fat body (the current state), I get all sorts of questions, with the pressure not only to exercise to lose weight, but also to become able-bodied, that if I just worked harder then I would be “fixed.”
I fired my doctors that buy into diet culture in ableism, and have a more supportive bunch that doesn’t tie exercise with weight loss. I found ways to bring in movement and exercise into my life to support my joints, the strength of my muscles, and my heart, because those things help me manage my diseases better. Being able to remove that need for a weight loss has allowed me to find a way to adapt and enjoy walks in the woods instead of grueling exercise that is hard on my joints. I love hiking, but adjust the difficulty of the trail based on what my body is capable of that day.
I live in a very “fit” state (Colorado) and it can be hard not to be a part of the hardcore exercise culture and compare what more able-bodied people can do. I’m finally at a place where I (mostly) don’t compare myself to others and allow everyone the relationship with exercise that works for them.
Thank you for sharing this vulnerable and thought-provoking piece!
I love this piece. It says out loud so many of the things I’ve felt for decades and never quite articulated.
Have you been watching “Fleishman is in Trouble”? I read the book in 2019 and loved it, and the show is great too. Both book and show have this running gag that all the thin, rich ladies always wear those tank tops with bragging or humblebragging workout-related statements on them, like “your workout is my warmup” and such, and the way this is presented as a joke is so refreshing, like it’s calling this behavior out for what it is: a performance of thinness.
As an exercise-resistant person in the (I think) “small fat” category of fatness, I’ve long been plagued by this cultural practice. I was all like “ugh, go away” when I walked through the downtown area of an affluent suburb recently and saw that they had, just in the space of a few blocks, a PureBarre AND a Club Pilates AND an F45 Training AND a StretchLab. All so the already-thin women can go swanning around in their tank tops. What adds insult to injury about this is, every time I HAVE had a period where I was exercising regularly, it didn’t result in any weight loss. And studies have shown that exercise doesn’t really cause weight loss. And even if you adopt the firmly anti-diet stance of not doing anything for the purpose of weight loss, the trope persists, that if you would just work out harder/more often/ at all, you WOULD BE thinner, and that these women are thin BECAUSE of all the working-out that they do. When actually these women were already thin anyway, and probably would continue to be, whether or not they went to PureBarre, so when I see this performance in action I resent that I’m essentially being lied to, and the lie implies that I’m inferior to these women.
One more thing: Every day, without fail, I do the NY Times crossword, the Spelling Bee, Wordle, Quordle, Worldle, Globle, Nerdle, and Heardle. My commitment to these puzzles is both intrinsic and irrational. I have heard that some people are like this about their exercise routines, like they are compulsively driven to do them. It “exercises my brain” to do the puzzles, yes, but I am (not to brag or anything) already smart. The same way those women are already thin. I think maybe one reason why the puzzles are satisfying is they reaffirm and focus on that smartness that I already feel confident about. However, there aren’t any venues for me to show off my prowess to the world at large, nor do I get socially rewarded for it the way the performance-of-exercise people do.
Nov 29, 2022·edited Nov 29, 2022Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith
Wow wow wow this resonates SO strongly with me. I’ve gotta process and come back with more thoughts. Thank you for writing this.
Ok I'm back - this could be a whole therapy session for me or book for you, Virginia. This insidious conflation of fitness/thinness/worthiness has plagued me my whole life and definitely played a role in the end of my 25yr marriage. I was married to that obsessed Ironman/Tough Mudder guy and "maybe" he didnt put pressure on me to become a regular exerciser, "maybe" I put it on myself along with all the other diet culture crap I put on myself. But, 13 years later, I'm in a bigger body, yes, but I have so much more peace in my life. I know that keeping myself strong is key to healthier aging and I've decided to use the considerable privilege I have to engage a trainer for my husband and I (who also doesn't love exercising). That way we avoid the judge-y gym atmosphere and have a truly comfortable fitness experience. That and enjoying movement outdoors has been the key for me. But there are no rules - I do it when I can and when I want to. So freeing.
I loved this. I'd love to think about what "a body not meant for movement" means in the context of disability. I feel so many of the things you do about privilege and capacity, about my relationship with exercise and the all or nothing mindset, because of disability. When your body is a body always in PT, always recovering from or "succumbing to" an injury, what does it mean to feel diet culture's demand for exercise - and judgment of those who don't?
"If we didn’t assess our success or failure as a Person Who Exercises based on weight, it would be much easier to just be a Person Who Does Some Exercise and to understand that as a morally neutral habit."
Yes, yes, yes. There is no morality to being a person who works out. I have personally come a long way in divorcing my self worth from my physical appearance. It's a long battle.
I want to plug a movement instructor that has helped me a lot and is very aligned here. Kara Duval has a pilates platform and movement practice called "Range." As I read this article, it was interesting to connect how Kara puts into practice these concepts. She never uses the word exercise, but rather movement. She emphasizes rest and trusting your body. She openly talks about her ED and past as a ballet dancer and how she had to unlearn the views on exercise that were taught to her. She uses specific, non-triggering language for folks with EDs. And she always includes accommodations for injuries or pre/post natal folks. I've never felt as motivated to keep up with a movement routine and it's because I don't feel the moral pressure to. Her classes are truly movement medicine for me.
I was literally laying in bed after my baby’s 5 am wake up beating myself up for being off my “movement” routine when this came in. Yes to learning to love both sides of ourselves whether we move or choose to read and listen to a podcast w a coffee instead. I never had words to pinpoint that I seem to devalue the me who doesn’t move as much. It’s not something I can learn overnight but at least I have words for it now. Thanks for diving into this and sharing your perspective. And as always, for being vulnerable.
I love the concept of detangling exercise from weight loss. I’m not going to say that the fact that I exercise regularly is not tied to that, but I also cling to the hope that exercise will stave off what my 82-year old mom is going through right now. She has had health issues in the last few years -- she is still in relatively good health for a woman her age -- but her lifestyle has changed markedly, causing depression. There are days she feels too weak to get out of bed. Her doctors tell her more exercise would help her physically and mentally. I am hoping beyond hope that the strength exercises I do will delay some of what she is going through. And help my balance and bone density. My mom is only 23 years older than me so something about seeing her so frail and resistant to exercising is driving me to an extent. I realize I’m probably replacing one obsessive behavior with another but it feels now more about being healthy than thin. I fully admit that the seeking thinness part of the equation is still there for me -- and that kind of sucks -- but it’s become less of the entire reason that keeps me motivated, for better or worse.
I have always been disabled, and was born with some messed-up feet, and movement has never not meant pain for me. I really hate exercise, and it's even worse since I broke my leg and ankle in 2019 and had surgery and two metal plates and 20 screws permanently installed. My doctor called it a "career-ending injury" if I were an athlete. Even just sitting at my desk right now, I'm in a pretty high degree of pain. So exercise has only ever felt like a punishment to me. I loved reading this because you articulated something I still, even in all my fat/body positivity, feel shame for being a Person Who Doesn't Exercise. I know movement is helpful for my body and its many chronic conditions, but it's so hard when it hurts so much. Exercise always feels like punishment because it hurts. The only time I ever enjoyed movement was in PT because I could feel and see how it was helping me get better. Regular exercise doesn't do that. I had a year--2011--where I did yoga every single day. And it never got any easier, and I actually tore a tendon in my ankle. I don't know what the solution is to finding a way to move that doesn't make me want to cry (both emotionally and physically). I wish I could find/afford some sort of movement coach that was similar to a physical therapist but I'm not sure that exists! Anyway, that's a long comment, but this piece resonated with me SO much. I feel like I have an essay of my own on this topic. :)
Damn I can't believe how skewered I feel, here in my jumper under a blanket with a hot water bottle trying to force myself to go on a miserable chilly run. I really really love how much this made me think, and also I kind of resent you for it, but in an appreciative way. What if instead of continuing to make my workouts harder, I just.......enjoyed them and revelled in being in my body and did what feels good.
This feels like a good next step for me; I have spent a lot of time shifting my feelings about exercising to align with my feelings about food: I like sensual things! I like to feel good in my body! It's ridiculous to pretend that eating snacks is antithetical to working out when in fact they're both about enjoying having a body.
I wonder if there's also a distinction between "activity as a hobby" and "activity as a moral mandate" in terms of what becomes your long-term identity. I was a college athlete, and I continue to think of myself as an athlete of some kind, even during times when I'm not particularly active, and even though my body has changed a lot since then. Maybe the same way you likely think of yourself as a gardener, even when it's winter?
As a person who menstruates, it’s been helpful for me on a micro-seasonal level to pay attention to my energy across my cycle (literally just an up, sideways, or down arrow on my calendar each day - 2 seconds, no fancy tracker), and plan my movement to be much more restful during week 4 and the first half of week 1 (so, PMS week[s] and the first couple days of my period). Fitness culture has such an emphasis on sticking to a workout plan that doesn’t take into account injury, stress, life, etc, but also is designed for cis men, who don’t deal with hormone fluctuations. The difference is enough for me to have the best, most joyful and endorphin-filled run during week 2 and to walk slowly followed by a nap in week 4 (that’s today’s plan!).
Wow, reading this I realized another way that WW messed me up: that your exercise earns you food points. I have done so much healing about food, but that terrible equation has stuck with me in ways I didn’t even realize. The worst thing about it is that I do actually love moving a lot of the time, and I’m mad that got pushed aside for “earning” food with it.
The other thing that stands out is exercise as an elitist thing for “health” and what total BS that is when doctors recommend it. I had a heart issue and at the bottom of my hospital discharge papers was “exercise, and practice yoga and meditation.” I’m a yoga teacher. There was nothing on there about how, how long, what kind, and god forbid, how to access and pay for classes.
There is still so much to unlearn and untangle, and I am grateful for your vulnerability to write about this.
Wow there is so much to process in this piece! I’m sitting here trying to decide if I am naturally a person who does not exericse. Even though I have been fairly regular my whole life, but so much of that has been diet culture influenced.
One of the things I found when I was in the real trenches of restriction and over exercising is that I am a “good” weight lifter, and I enjoyed it to the point of multiple injuries because of the all or nothing mind set. My local gym closed and I was sort of forced into only cardio for a few years and now, way on the other side of giving up dieting, I have found the perfect trainer who trains in a weight neutral space. And I am back to it and loving it so much. Not using it to burn calories (though I find myself thinking about that from time to time) but to make my life easier. I am in my mid 60s and I want to be able to not only go up and down stairs with ease, but go on those woods walks, especially if there are not harrowing heights involved. Woods walks are awesome. Forced 5 mile walks on the road is not awesome. Not for me.
I have to reread this as there was so much truth. Thank you!
I don't precisely know how to articulate this, but for as long as I can remember, I've connected exercise to feeling "holy". I know that's a weird word choice, but that's the word my head has always used. (I'm not religious in the least, so I don't quite know why.) Anyway, that feeling has ALSO always come with the feeling of being so hungry you couldn't think straight. Because the way fat girls achieve uh, well, virtue, I guess, is by starving themselves and then working out until they can't think straight.
I'm no longer feeling hunger as virtue; I haven't been able to even touch exercise as virtue. It's so fucking triggering for me that I just...don't exercise. My mom is very worried that I'm "unhealthy"; she is also a fat person, but one who is still hugely enmeshed in diet culture (we are those ages; 40s and late 60s). I tried to explain that I'm not convinced I want to spend my life pursuing health at all costs, but she was just horrified that I might die before my niblings grow up. As if there is a 100% chance I'll die young if I am fat, eat what I want, and don't exercise.
I guess what I'm saying is, while I appreciated this piece, there is still something missing in it for me. It still feels very "Not that there's anything wrong with it!" towards people who don't exercise, who consciously choose to never exercise. I'm trying not to read it that way, but I've read it three times now, in a short span. I don't know.
Thank you so much for this. I am partially disabled due to rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic illness, so I cannot exercise “hard” or else pain, pain, pain.
Because of my diseases, and depending on the dose and type of meds I’m on, my weight can wildly fluctuate from being thin to being fat. The amount I move and exercise has NEVER impacted my weight, however when I’m thin (which is ironically when all my blood work shows my body is struggling and in a flare) the doctors approve and don’t ask about exercise. However, when I’m in a fat body (the current state), I get all sorts of questions, with the pressure not only to exercise to lose weight, but also to become able-bodied, that if I just worked harder then I would be “fixed.”
I fired my doctors that buy into diet culture in ableism, and have a more supportive bunch that doesn’t tie exercise with weight loss. I found ways to bring in movement and exercise into my life to support my joints, the strength of my muscles, and my heart, because those things help me manage my diseases better. Being able to remove that need for a weight loss has allowed me to find a way to adapt and enjoy walks in the woods instead of grueling exercise that is hard on my joints. I love hiking, but adjust the difficulty of the trail based on what my body is capable of that day.
I live in a very “fit” state (Colorado) and it can be hard not to be a part of the hardcore exercise culture and compare what more able-bodied people can do. I’m finally at a place where I (mostly) don’t compare myself to others and allow everyone the relationship with exercise that works for them.
Thank you for sharing this vulnerable and thought-provoking piece!
I love this piece. It says out loud so many of the things I’ve felt for decades and never quite articulated.
Have you been watching “Fleishman is in Trouble”? I read the book in 2019 and loved it, and the show is great too. Both book and show have this running gag that all the thin, rich ladies always wear those tank tops with bragging or humblebragging workout-related statements on them, like “your workout is my warmup” and such, and the way this is presented as a joke is so refreshing, like it’s calling this behavior out for what it is: a performance of thinness.
As an exercise-resistant person in the (I think) “small fat” category of fatness, I’ve long been plagued by this cultural practice. I was all like “ugh, go away” when I walked through the downtown area of an affluent suburb recently and saw that they had, just in the space of a few blocks, a PureBarre AND a Club Pilates AND an F45 Training AND a StretchLab. All so the already-thin women can go swanning around in their tank tops. What adds insult to injury about this is, every time I HAVE had a period where I was exercising regularly, it didn’t result in any weight loss. And studies have shown that exercise doesn’t really cause weight loss. And even if you adopt the firmly anti-diet stance of not doing anything for the purpose of weight loss, the trope persists, that if you would just work out harder/more often/ at all, you WOULD BE thinner, and that these women are thin BECAUSE of all the working-out that they do. When actually these women were already thin anyway, and probably would continue to be, whether or not they went to PureBarre, so when I see this performance in action I resent that I’m essentially being lied to, and the lie implies that I’m inferior to these women.
One more thing: Every day, without fail, I do the NY Times crossword, the Spelling Bee, Wordle, Quordle, Worldle, Globle, Nerdle, and Heardle. My commitment to these puzzles is both intrinsic and irrational. I have heard that some people are like this about their exercise routines, like they are compulsively driven to do them. It “exercises my brain” to do the puzzles, yes, but I am (not to brag or anything) already smart. The same way those women are already thin. I think maybe one reason why the puzzles are satisfying is they reaffirm and focus on that smartness that I already feel confident about. However, there aren’t any venues for me to show off my prowess to the world at large, nor do I get socially rewarded for it the way the performance-of-exercise people do.
Wow wow wow this resonates SO strongly with me. I’ve gotta process and come back with more thoughts. Thank you for writing this.
Ok I'm back - this could be a whole therapy session for me or book for you, Virginia. This insidious conflation of fitness/thinness/worthiness has plagued me my whole life and definitely played a role in the end of my 25yr marriage. I was married to that obsessed Ironman/Tough Mudder guy and "maybe" he didnt put pressure on me to become a regular exerciser, "maybe" I put it on myself along with all the other diet culture crap I put on myself. But, 13 years later, I'm in a bigger body, yes, but I have so much more peace in my life. I know that keeping myself strong is key to healthier aging and I've decided to use the considerable privilege I have to engage a trainer for my husband and I (who also doesn't love exercising). That way we avoid the judge-y gym atmosphere and have a truly comfortable fitness experience. That and enjoying movement outdoors has been the key for me. But there are no rules - I do it when I can and when I want to. So freeing.
Again - thanks so much for writing this.
I loved this. I'd love to think about what "a body not meant for movement" means in the context of disability. I feel so many of the things you do about privilege and capacity, about my relationship with exercise and the all or nothing mindset, because of disability. When your body is a body always in PT, always recovering from or "succumbing to" an injury, what does it mean to feel diet culture's demand for exercise - and judgment of those who don't?
Wow, Virginia, this one was incredible, and I have to admit, eye-opening for me. Thank you.
love love love
"If we didn’t assess our success or failure as a Person Who Exercises based on weight, it would be much easier to just be a Person Who Does Some Exercise and to understand that as a morally neutral habit."
Yes, yes, yes. There is no morality to being a person who works out. I have personally come a long way in divorcing my self worth from my physical appearance. It's a long battle.
I want to plug a movement instructor that has helped me a lot and is very aligned here. Kara Duval has a pilates platform and movement practice called "Range." As I read this article, it was interesting to connect how Kara puts into practice these concepts. She never uses the word exercise, but rather movement. She emphasizes rest and trusting your body. She openly talks about her ED and past as a ballet dancer and how she had to unlearn the views on exercise that were taught to her. She uses specific, non-triggering language for folks with EDs. And she always includes accommodations for injuries or pre/post natal folks. I've never felt as motivated to keep up with a movement routine and it's because I don't feel the moral pressure to. Her classes are truly movement medicine for me.
Link to Range by Kara Duval: https://range.karaduvalpilates.com/catalog