Breaking up with Exercise

I quit exercising (it really feels so good to say that)!

The girl who has exercised for over 10 years has given up formal exercise for the time being.

You heard me right. I've embarked on a journey that a lot of people may question and say is unhealthy, even I would have said that not too long ago. If I've learned anything the past few months, it is that the definition of health is very subjective; it means something different for every person, which is why health for me right now is defined as quitting formal exercise.

Most people would look up to my habit of exercising and deem it something to be admired. They would say that I have extreme dedication and wish they could form that kind of long-term habit. My commitment was something to be admired and I am so proud of myself for developing that habit, but unfortunately, I took it too far. If you were to scroll my Instagram feed, you'd notice that a lot of my posts are geared towards fitness, so much so that it has become part of my identity. I want my identity to be in Christ alone, so this needed to change. 

I've been on my health journey for many years now. It's evolved so much and when January 2017 rolled around, I finally felt like I was at a good place. I overcame my food issues and now have complete food freedom (which is fantastic, by the way). I also exercised 5 days a week, both cardio and strength training.. Life couldn't be better, right? Wrong. Well, not completely wrong, but I still didn't feel fully over my body image problems. I do think that this will always be something I struggle with, but I don't think I'm in the "fully over it/recovered" phase just yet.

This January, as I started actively becoming more body positive and actively trying to accept myself and everybody else no matter their size, I started questioning if I gave myself the same freedom with exercise as I do with food:

• Do I exercise only when I want to?
• Do I do the exercises I only want to do?
• Do I exercise only as long as I want to?

The answers to these questions were no, no, and no. Why didn't I answer yes to any of those? If I asked myself the same questions about food, my answers would be yes, yes, and yes.

• I eat when I want to, regardless of hunger.
• I eat what I want to, regardless of how many carbs, calories, or if I should be eating more veggies because I didn't have any that day.
• I eat as much as I want to, regardless of if that means 2 pieces of cake or an extra slice of pizza.

The choice is entirely mine on when, what, and how much food, but why wasn't I doing any of these in relation to exercise? It was at this time that I knew I needed to challenge myself with this to move forward to fully accepting and loving myself, regardless of my size.

Going in to this I did some research (do blogs count as research? Haha) on others who did the same thing as I am doing and the most common "side effects" of giving up exercise included: improved sleep, better digestion, and even weight loss. The majority of those individuals I learned about had come to a point where they were over-exercising and actually gaining weight. I won't get all scientific on you, but the idea behind the weight gain, despite exercising a lot, is that the body was being over-stressed. Too much stress causes an increase in Cortisol (the stress hormone) and too much Cortisol is said to increase weight gain.

Too much exercise = increased stress to the body= increased Cortisol = increased weight gain.

This also explains why these individuals were losing weight once they stopped exercising.

Less exercise = less stress to the body = less Cortisol = weight stabilization or even weight loss.

It's been a little over a month since I gave up my exercise habit "cold turkey" and it has, surprisingly, been such a great experience. There have definitely been ups and downs but this experiment is proving to be both physically and mentally freeing.  I've learned a lot the past month, but I'll save that for another post. In the meantime, I haven't broken up with my Fitbit yet, so here are some comparison graphs that show my calories burned for 1 month of regular exercise (Cardio + BBG workouts) versus 1 month of not exercising.

Calories burned during 1 month of regular exercising

Calories burned during 1 month of not exercising

There is less than a 10,000 difference in calories, but oddly enough during the month I DID exercise (left graph), I had a lot of high days and a lot of low days, but since switching to no exercise, my calories burned have become more stable (right graph). This totally helps ease my fear of losing all control of my health. Logically, I know that won't happen, but the irrational part of me thinks that.

My goal is to get to a place where I exercise when I feel like it, doing the kind of movement that I enjoy, and for however long I want to. A long run will be on the same level as some gentle yoga. Both are good movements for my body and an act of self-care. I want to exercise out of self-love for myself not out of self-hate.  Here's to the rest of 2017 being all about loving ourselves both mentally as well as physically!

XOXO, Ashley