Let’s say I’ve come to you desperate to lose weight, but I want you to guarantee that I can do it without moving even one tiny little bit of a muscle.
I hope you wouldn’t lie to me and tell me it would be impossible. Or even difficult.
I hope you’d tell me that I was in luck, that every day countless people all over the world are losing weight and not lifting even a tip of a finger. For prolonged periods of time. That the success of what you could offer me was well-documented.
I hope that what you what you would caution me about, would be what could happen once I was able to start lifting my fingers again.
(Because you’d remember that is where I told you the trouble always started.)
Even though it’s probably not normal to envy people in comas, during the time in my life when I felt like the only time I wasn’t eating was when I was sleeping, being knocked out seemed exactly like one of those really good ideas at the time.
(Ok, depending upon how long it took, maybe I would have lost a pretty significant chunk of my life along with the weight, but priorities, people.)
That’s why I hope when I woke up – ecstatic – you kept your word, I moved not even a muscle and look at me now! you would tell me the truth.
“Exercise can be of great benefit to your physical and mental well-being, but is of zero consequence to what you weigh.”
Because that’s important to wake up to.
I hope you’d prescribe me this before I left your care.
“Have fun with your body and do what you love to do in it.
Ask yourself, what would you enjoy doing even if you didn’t burn one calorie doing it, even if the ‘calorie burn’ didn’t matter?
(Because it doesn’t, and you’ll miss out on what does matter about it if your focus is on that.)
Consider that you never yelled to your parents as you ran out the door to play that you were doing it to maintain your girlish figure.
That you never looked up how many calories you burned riding your bike or running the streets or swinging along.
Refill and enjoy as necessary.”
Since this would be all new to me, you would understood that I might be worried about how I was going to maintain my girlish figure without being prescribed 24/7 sleeping pills, especially if whether I moved or not wouldn’t matter.
It wouldn’t surprise you at all if had a couple of questions for you as I folded my prescription up and got ready to leave. You’ve heard them both before and you have a standard response. (Which I will take note of in the comments and write down on my prescription.)
“How did it happen that I’m at my ideal weight, but I didn’t move at all?”
And ” if it doesn’t matter to my weight whether I exercise or not, why do it?”
I’d love to hear your answers for me about sleeping it off and moving on. 
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“What would you enjoy doing even if the ‘calorie burn’ didn’t matter?”
I would dance and skip and play, mostly dance. And I would sing while I dance because it just felt so damn good.
Hmm, maybe I’ll go do that today.
xoS
Clever and true. We’re not all meant to be a size zero, but we are all meant to move. So dance, run, Zooma or swim–do whatever brings joy to your soul. That’s how you nurture yourself. Once you really get that concept, everything else falls into place–including your weight.
So where does the “I don’t necessarily like the exercise but I like the benefits and like the physical high from after the exercise” fit in?
I sometimes suffer through a class, but I love the feeling when I am done.
Great question. Thanks for asking it, Susie!
Your question reminds me of something my husband said to me when we inherited my brother’s 1993 Volvo. I told my husband that I was going to drive the car as little as possible so “it would last as long as possible.” His response… “cars like to drive.” Of course, if I just let the car sit there, it was going to be less efficient than if I drove it on a regular basis.
We’re no different, our bodies like to exercise. In fact, our bodies love it, which is one of the reasons why we get the physical response that we do after we exercise, whether we think we like to exercise, or not.
The reason why I am adamant about crushing diets is because they disconnect us from our “I like to drive” feeling that comes as naturally to us as the feelings that come after we exercise do.
I have a 10 year-old daughter, heaven help us all if she doesn’t get out to play, then her activity is bouncing off the walls. Without anyone telling her how many calories she’s burning or she’ll look better in her jeans, if she doesn’t get to a playground or ride her bike or get to her dance class, she’s dancing around the house or doing cartwheels. I know what to expect at home if it’s a rainy day and they haven’t gone outside for recess at school… bounce, bounce, bounce.
(Same reason why our dog Mikki used to wag her tail every night at 7pm. She didn’t watch her figure, but she watched the clock because she loved her walks. And if it was a rainy day, she pouted.)
With all that said, even though my daughter loves gym class (her words) she doesn’t like everything that they do in gym. Mikki preferred walking and chasing balls, our cat couldn’t care less about chasing a ball, but will chase a string for days.
I encourage people to get in touch with what wags their tail. What you enjoy before, during and after. We weren’t born with that sucky “I have to feeling” re physical activity in general, but making ourselves do it for other reasons than enjoying it engenders that feeling.
Choose physical activity that would make you feel deprived if you didn’t do it. That you would do if you were told the only benefit that you would get is that you would like the way it doing it feels.
(Interestingly, you can imagine the response I get when I tell someone that they are not allowed to do any physical activity that they enjoy.)
My question re exercise is the same as it is for food… with so much to choose from, why do anything that you don’t enjoy?
I have not yet found an exercise that does it for me and I have tried loads. What I will say is that it gets better as I get into better shape. So I think that sometimes you need to stick it out even if you don’t like it but like the end results.
In life coaching, sometimes you have your eye on something you want to achieve, yet you don’t like the process. For instance, someone wants a kids , they have fertility problems, their past kids have come from treatments and they know they need them to conceive another.
They want the end goal, not the process. In that case we keep reconnecting them with their goal, so they make it through the process.
BTW-if it had not been for eating foods I don’t like I never would have acquired a taste for foods that I had a hard time getting used to but love now, like broccoli, sweet potatoes, quinoa.
I see your point and I am sure it works for many people. I also think that no one thing works for every single person. We each have our own tinted glasses.
Something I’ll be ever grateful my life coach (Tim Brownson) called me on almost every time I used them are the words “need” and “have.”) (Almost every time by asking me how I would respond/what I would offer if a client said that…)
Which reminds me about your post on birthdays. http://bit.ly/g05wZT. No matter what color the tint of the glasses we eventually end up wearing, we get everything we *need* – barring any meddlers – on the day of our birth to enjoy the time we have in our bodies, the wonder of our palates being among our pre-installed parts.
What I appreciated most about your birthday post was that you stressed being happier in our day to day lives, (especially since no matter how we all decide to spend our in-the-meantime, it’s going to end the same way for all of us.)
Thanks for the dialogue!
KP
Hi Karen and Susie,
I was going through old posts, obviously, and found this one. I read the whole thing and all the comments.
Karen, your absolutely right!
Susie, your absolutely right!
Here’s my thang. I knew I had to move, the not moving was killing me from the inside out. I did the only thing I knew how and rejoined the gym and bought boat loads of personal training sessions. I did this for the accountability, because without it I wasn’t going to move.
But then of course, movement started feeling good, my body started remembering. My body and I were enjoying movement. But that first part of the process sucked.
Then I discovered group exercise and vibe in the room was so uplifting that I never went upstairs to lift another weight again and have only been on a machine once in the past year.
Today, I dance (Zumba), I stretch (yoga) and if I want a little more strength building or resistance in my routine I’ll consider a barbell class. None of it intimidates me anymore, this coming from someone that suffered from social anxiety for YEARS!!!! Didn’t want anyone to look at me, well, look at me now.
I still work out at a gym, only doing my home routines if I can’t make it, because I still like the group and party vibe. It’s only when I’m there do some instructors remind me about the burn and calories, I just repeat to myself, “have fun, just go all out and have fun.” Because at the end of the day, if your not having fun then what the hell did you get out of bed for.
Thanks for having this discussion 4 months ago, it was great to read today.
XO,
Alma
Alma, you’re absolutely right! And great to have your company here. Thanks for coming over!