And how that made me look even better
I’ve written about my past eating disorder, ongoing recovery and how it’s affected me as a mom. So this is about how I’ve changed my mindset around exercise, instead of abusing it, using it to heal from my abuse.
I’ve been a fairly active person my whole life.
It started in grade school when I took all the swimming lessons and passed with flying colours. I had dreams that I would one day swim competitively at the Olympics. I was relatively fast. I had the broad shoulders that gave me a slight edge on the butterfly stroke.
Then, after completing my lifeguard training, my instructor at the time thought I had potential and I was on my way to the local competitive swimming team.
But then I got my first period. My conservative Chinese mom thought tampons were the devil so that’s when my swimming career ended.
Now (as a mom) that I think of it, maybe she just didn’t want to do the 5:30 am swim practices, dropping me off and picking up?
Anyway, I still continued to play guard for the school’s basketball team, competing at track and field events, trying out (unsuccessfully) for the volleyball team and pulling my weight in a scrum as a flanker for the senior girl’s rugby team.
You can do too much of a good thing
It was around Grade 10 when I understood the concept of “calories in versus calories out”. It’s a simple math equation:
The more you eat, the more you need to expend. The less you eat, the less you need to expend.
The more you expend, the more you can eat. The less you expend, the less you can eat.
In order to lose weight, you can eat less and/or expend more. I wanted that thigh gap, those rail-thin arms, the flat stomach, to fit into size zero jeans, to tell people that I was an extra small when it came to buying clothes for me, to not get picked on for being the bigger girl at those Asian family dinners, to be praised for having lost weight etc.
So I took that equation and made up a dangerous game. Eating was tied to managing my emotions and exercising was tied to managing my mental state; I abused both, overexercising, starving and binging, consuming calories to fill a void, expending calories to expunge the guilt.
Whenever I ate too much or ate something ‘bad’, I needed to cleanse my sins and exercise was my penance.
Inhaled a bag of chips because I was bored?
Run 10km
Scarfed down half a box of chocolates because I felt lonely?
2 hours at the gym
Destroyed a muffin, a scone and a donut at Tim Hortons because I felt I deserved it after finishing mid-terms?
100 squats, 100 push-ups, 100 crunches, 100 burpees
And the endorphin high you get after a workout?
That became my addiction. It felt good to exercise in addition to rectifying my ‘fuck up’. Sweat, sore muscles, salt crystals forming on your skin were markers for my clean slate. The cycle would start again. I’d be ‘good’ for a week or 2, then I’d mess up and eat something ‘bad’ and I’d overexercise again.
Highschool was the start of this toxic journey and my obsession with exercise spurred my desire to do my Bachelor’s in Kinesiology and Biomedical Physiology. I excelled at courses in anatomy, human biology, anthropometry, exercise physiology, applied nutrition, sports nutrition, active health and rehabilitation, health promotion etc. I wanted to be a physiotherapist and/or personal trainer.
Although I was spending hours studying, learning, absorbing the correct information on how to be healthy, I was practicing the exact opposite. Again, knowledge isn’t power; applying it is. And in my case, applying it properly.
Living in irony continued into my Masters; while studying public health policies and programs, I was stress eating with weekly 3-course binges at fancy restaurants. Then I would punish myself with purpose, training for a half marathon to convince myself that I needed those 15km runs to prepare for the big day.
And after all those years of overexercising, did I end up with the perfectly sculpted body, a 6 pack, coconut shaped deltoids, a line on my inner thighs, chiselled abs, a lifted butt?
No, I had shin splints, plantar fasciitis, hip and knee pain, and an extra 15 pounds. I was in 20’s.
Here’s a picture of me 8 years ago:
I will now literally go upstairs, change into my bikini and take a picture of myself.
FYI: Please appreciate my dirty mirror in keeping it authentic and unfiltered.
How did I finally figure out a balance that made me happier, healthier and look even better than when I was in my 20s before kids?
I made physical activity a habit instead of punishment
Although I’ve never really had a problem missing my workout, the motivation for doing so was toxic. It was my daily opportunity to make amends depending on how ‘good’ eating wise I was that day.
However, physical activity is not punishment; it’s not redemption. It’s merely something that needs to be done regularly in order to maintain our health. It’s a habit.
So many folks struggle to get that workout session in because they view it as an additional thing they have to do. As all the health and fitness experts say, the key to making exercise a habit is to make it part of your routine.
However, in my case, it was removing the significance and the toxic purpose it served, making it almost a mundane part of my life like brushing my teeth or making coffee in the morning.
I realized I had a CHOICE in how I wanted to exercise
Like all healthy habits, it takes effort to keep. To lose weight, we’ve all heard the 80/20 rule. 80% of your effort should be focused on a sensible diet and 20% of your effort should be focused on regular exercise.
Because exercise was tied to what and how much I ate, I had to first learn to manage my emotional eating. Once I got a handle on my emotional eating, exercise became an opportunity to practice mindfulness and gratitude and really, to let loose and have fun.
Exercise is defined as moving your body to sustain or improve health and fitness.
You can interpret that as 1 hour at the gym, specifically 30 minutes of running on the treadmill at 6.0 mph then 30 minutes of strength training, alternating between legs and upper body days.
You can interpret that as a day of golf, 18 holes, walking around a course and whacking balls for hours on end.
You can interpret that as taking 10000 steps with your kids to walk to the playground, playing tag, doing pull-ups on the monkey bars.
The change in perspective about exercise empowered me to experiment and discover what I actually enjoyed doing. Knowing I have a choice in how I interpreted exercise freed me from my limited beliefs that it was dependent on what I ate that day.
I didn’t have to go long and hard if I ate chips and doughnuts that day. (see next point)
I didn’t have to go quick and easy if I ate salad, lean protein and whole grains that day.
I started taking yoga, Zumba, hip-hop, cardio kickboxing, Barre, and Pilates classes; I learned to swing kettlebells, to appreciate low-impact movements, to incorporate breathwork when I moved my body. Every day, I have a choice in how I want to exercise; I can challenge myself or I can take it easy and this keeps it exciting.
I focused on moderation and consistency
Becoming a mom of 2 young kids has made my time a hot commodity. I cannot do those 2-hour gym sessions anymore. Motherhood has become a forced function in preventing me from overexercising.
When I started exercising again after giving birth to my first, I had to drastically cut down my work-out. I started streamlining and optimizing what I could do in 30 minutes. I focus on completion and making sure I do a workout the following day.
Fortunately, because I was born during a time where the Internet exists, there are literally thousands of YouTube videos that do just that. I did a search and voila, I found about 10 that I really liked and started doing them.
I don’t track how many workouts I’ve done in the past week, month, years etc. I don’t keep a record of my gains, the number of reps I can do, the amount of weight I can lift, how long it takes me to run 5km etc. Honestly, I don’t care about those metrics. The only thing I ‘measure’ is how I feel during, after and between workouts; basically, it’s about being in tune with my body as much as I can.
I changed the reasons why I exercise
At the end of the day, I asked myself why I exercise. I wrote down a list of the reasons I used to have when I was using exercise as punishment and added ‘not’ in the sentences:
To feel better about your poor food choice is not a reason to exercise
Guilt is not a reason to exercise.
Eating a bag of chips is not a reason to exercise.
Self-hate is not a reason to exercise.
A thigh gap is not a reason to exercise.
A flat stomach is not a reason to exercise.
Eliminating cellulite is not a reason to exercise
So what are my reasons to exercise?
As I’m sitting here typing this sentence, I realize I’ve been in this position for the past 30 minutes. My hips are tight, shoulders are hunched; my neck is bent and my wrists are gaining carpal tunnel status. I look like the guy sitting in front of a computer meme.
Isn’t sitting the new smoking?
I’ve learned to love my body, appreciating the amazing things it can do. It created my children. It nourished them, allowing them to grow and develop into little beings. I only get one body and I want it to function as best as it can for as long as I live.
My reasons to exercise that motivates me to do this every single day are:
To be able to do my favourite hike well into my 90’s
To have the mobility to do my activities of daily living until the day I die
To have the agility to travel the world during my golden years
To prevent injuries, disability, back pain, neck problems etc.
To pick up my children (and future grandchildren) without straining a muscle
To get up from the floor after playing with my kids without pain
To walk up and down the stairs with a load laundry without fear of losing my balance
To carry ALL THE GROCERIES from the car
To pull my body up in case I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff
To have the cardiovascular endurance to run away, carrying my husband and kids and surviving a zombie Apocolypse
So Readers, why do you work-out?
