Boosted energy levels. Mood stabilization. Improved circulation, heart function, lungs function, brain function. Stronger bones. Better sleep. Better sex. Longer lifespan. Greater ability to fight disease.
These are just some of the many benefits of the gift of exercise.
Yet when you think about the reasons you “should” exercise today- are any of these the prime motivator?
If you are like the majority of westerners, exercise is a means to an end for you. And that end is to look good. (More specifically to look in the way society says looks good.)
Yeah health may be a plus, too, sure. But how exercise affects our physical image is absolutely what drives most people to the gym, not a concern for their bone health.
Might seem like no big deal. What’s the harm in wanting to look good? You’re still taking care of your body right?
The challenge comes in what that motivation reveals about our culture’s disordered values.
For is your body’s purpose to make you look good? And is that your purpose in life?
It implies that if your body fails, whether genetically or behaviorally, to fit into that narrow standard society deems acceptable it doesn’t deserve respect. So you punish it until it serves that shallow, fleeting purpose.
It means you work out to burn calories, to fit into a dress, to make it to your goal weight, etc, rather than moving your body to bless it, to strengthen it, to care for it.
That shift in motive can be pretty groundbreaking once you carry it out.
Decoupling exercise from body image and letting it serve its greater human purpose helps relieve you of the oppressive “should” when it comes to exercise and instead embrace the gratitude toward your body for allowing you to move in the first place. It’s a privilege to run, walk, and move, and being aware of that helps launch us out of that pit of “ugh I should go to the gym.”
It allows you to listen to your body if it says it needs rest rather than being a slave to your calories in/calories out goal.
It even allows you to enjoy exercise because you can practice it in a way that is fun for you, rather than as a form of punishment for what you ate last night.
You’re not gonna be hot when you’re 80. But you will have a heart, lungs, brain, bones – a whole body of which you will either be friend or foe.
Pursue things that are lasting and meaningful.
Enjoy your life. Make peace with your body (beyond how it looks.)
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