Intuitive Eating 101 Series - Principle #9: Exercise - Feel The Difference

Learn how to enjoy exercise and moving your body at any size.  ​

**Disclaimer: Please note that the information in this or any other blog posts on this site may not be suitable or apply to you, depending on where you’re at in your mental health and/or eating disorder/diet recovery journey. This information is for educational purposes only and not meant to be a substitute for medical or psychiatric advice. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before making any changes. See full disclaimer here.

Welcome to part nine of a ten part series, breaking down each principle of Intuitive Eating, a non-diet and weight-neutral approach to health. If you missed the introduction about what Intuitive Eating is and the deeper dive into the first principle, read this post first. You can also read the last part in the series here.

**Also, please note that this 10-part blog series was based on the 3rd Edition of Intuitive Eating, and there is now a 4th Edition out (June 2020), where some changes have been made. However the information in this series is still very much relevant to learning and applying the Intuitive Eating principles.   
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This post is going to be all about Principle #9: Exercise - Feel The Difference.
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Before I get into it, I want to acknowledge that not everyone needs to exercise or should feel like they have to. Just like food, whether you exercise or not, has nothing to do with your moral worth or value as a person. Also, if you've been struggling with over-exercising or with restrictive eating behaviours, taking a break from exercise may be more what you need. But if you're wanting help with figuring out how to incorporate fitness in your life, in a way that is nourishing and joyful for you, then I invite you to keep reading...

Unfortunately exercise is often intertwined with diet culture. If you want to lose weight, it’s often advised to go on a diet and start exercising- usually intensely. Whole programs and marketing campaigns in the fitness industry are built around how many calories you can burn in a certain workout or how many pounds you’ll lose if you do this 30 day “fat-burning” program, for example. And just like dieting, exercising intensely for a period of time may give you some weight-loss results, but it will be temporary and most likely hard to sustain in the long-term.

Exercise cannot guarantee weight-loss, but there are lots of other benefits of exercise that make it worth it, such as improved mood, focus, energy and body confidence, improved metabolic and cardio-respiratory health, increased bone strength and lean muscle tissue, and better appetite regulation, to name a few. And you can gain these benefits from exercise regardless of your body weight or size. That is really, really important to understand. Just because someone is thin, doesn’t mean they are healthy. And just because someone is fat, doesn’t mean they are unhealthy. Body size does not determine health status. More research is showing that healthful behaviours can have such a higher influence on your health than your weight or BMI. If your sole motivation to exercise is to lose weight, you will most likely be sorely disappointed, will give up prematurely, and miss out on all the great mental and physical health benefits of physical activity.

If your exercise habits have been mimicking your dieting habits of being on and off the weight-loss “wagon”, it may be challenging to view exercise in any positive light or be motivated to move for any other reasons than for weight-loss. Tribole and Resch (2012) mention a few reasons why people may have a negative association with exercise, including:

• Not fueling your body enough while following an exercise program: If you’re dieting and therefore restricting calories or carbohydrates, you may not feel you have enough energy when you exercise and therefore it feels like you have to “push through” and force yourself to finish your workouts. This is not a sustainable, nor pleasant way to exercise and will most likely lead to burn-out and stopping exercise all together.
• You had a bad experience with fitness: Maybe as a child you were bullied or teased for not being athletic or coordinated. Or as an adult, you had a personal trainer force you to push through exercises that were too hard for you or not appropriate for your needs or goals. If it’s the latter, please know that there are personal trainers and fitness instructors who will listen to your goals and needs and not enable unhealthy exercise behaviours or push you to go beyond your limits into submission. So if you had one bad experience, try again with someone else.    
• You’ve been told to exercise by others:  Maybe your doctor or your spouse has tried to push you into exercise, telling you that you “should” start going to the gym and lose weight, for example. This will most likely lead to resentment not lasting motivation to exercise for yourself. Research has shown that the more internally driven exercise motivation is, the more likely you will enjoy it and stick with it in the long run. 

Similarly Tribole and Resch (2012) suggest more ways to start enjoying exercise and reaping all the healthy benefits from it, regardless of body size or weight-loss.

• Focus on how exercising feels in your body. Focusing on how many calories burned or how many crunches you’re doing (which, by the way are not a great exercise for most people and won’t get you “abs”), keeps the focus on the futile goal of weight-loss instead of the other markers of progress or positive changes that exercise can bring. Asking yourself, how do I feel when I exercise and after? How is my stress and energy levels? How do I feel about my body and my confidence overall? How is my mood and sleep? Noticing any positive changes in these areas can increase the chances of sticking to your exercise program and actually looking forward to it.
• Don’t move to lose weight. Move for movement’s sake. Yes, exercise will probably improve your metabolic health and preserve or increase lean muscle tissue, which may all help towards some weight-loss. But again, body composition and weight-loss is way more complex than just “exercise more” and there is definitely no quick fixes to losing fat when it comes to exercise. So better to focus on moving your body because you actually like to and to enhance your overall quality of health and life. 
• View exercise as a form of self-care. If you exercise out of guilt, fear and self-punishment, you will most likely not enjoy it and feel like it’s an awful chore. You may also get injured because you will push your body too hard or not listen to its internal cues of pain or fatigue. But if you exercise in moderate, enjoyable, safe and sustainable ways, you will most likely enjoy it and feel better during and after you do it. And exercise doesn’t have to be going to the gym. It could be going for a walk, playing a sport, or dancing in your own living room. Start asking yourself, what kind of movement would nourish my body and mind?
• Watch out for common exercise mind traps such as:
  • “It’s Not Worth It”: This is part of the cognitive distortion of all-or-nothing thinking. You may think that a 10 minute walk is pointless (because it doesn’t burn many calories, for example), but likely you’ll get other benefits, such as some fresh air and some movement in your joints and muscles. So don’t discount the small things. Any movement you do all counts towards better health.
  • “Couch-Potato Denial”: Maybe your life feels super busy, like you’re always running around between work and home and family. But when people say they are “running” around, they are usually not actually “running”, they are sitting in their cars or on the bus or in their office all day, with minimal walking in between. We live in a very sedentary culture and it can be challenging to get more movement in your day when your life is built around sitting. But you can try to consciously add more movement into your day, whether it’s stretching every hour at work, or parking further from the grocery store.
  • “I Have No-Time-To-Spare”: I hear this all the time as an excuse not to exercise. And I get it. It can be a legitimate excuse when you’re over scheduled and over committed, or have children or others to take care of. We live in a time-strapped world as well as a sedentary world. But if you do want to make exercise a sustainable habit, you have to make it a priority in your life. It may be committing to less things, or watching less YouTube videos. But it’s totally possible to make the time if you want.
  • “If I don’t sweat, it doesn’t count”: This comes from diet culture, where the messages about fitness is about pushing hard, "no pain no gain", and only feeling like you’ve had a “good” workout if you’re sweating like crazy. But this is just so far from the truth. Yes, some sweating can be great and feel good, but you can reap the benefits of exercise through more gentle and non-aggressive means. How much you sweat or how much pain you’re in at the end of a workout does not determine your fitness progress.

A few other things to think about when practicing Exercise- Feel The Difference are:

• Dress comfortably when you exercise. If you’re not comfortable when you move your body, you will not have a pleasant experience when exercising.
• Take rest days. It is possible to over-exercise and have it become problematic. A huge part of Intuitive Eating is about learning to tune into and respect your internal bodily cues with regards to food, but this could be extended to exercise as well. Exercising through pain or pushing yourself through fatigue can lead to burn-out, injury and more stress on your body. So listen to your body and make sure you’re not over-doing it either. Remember that resting is also a form of self-care and body respect, and an essential part of a sustainable fitness regime.

I hope this gave you some ideas of how you can start practicing sustainable and enjoyable exercise.
Next - Read about the tenth and final principle of Intuitive Eating: Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition.

References 
Tribole, E. & Resch, E. (2012) Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press

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