10 Principals To Heal Your Relationship With Exercise & Stop Punishing Yourself!
Do you exercise to punish yourself for eating?
Do you body bash & speak negatively about your body?
Do you have negative body image when you look at yourself?
Do you think exercise is punishing?
Do you dread going the gym?
Well… Here are 10 ideas you can explore to help unwind these feelings:
1.Question diet culture & diet mentality: Reframe the reasons WHY you exercise... Exercise is not just for weight loss, earned food, looks, leanness, and calorie burn. It is for overall health, metabolic flexibility, disease prevention, healthy aging and stress/mood management.
2.Embrace Embodiment: Honour more than your physical body and how it looks. Appreciate how your body functions each day. Thank your body for another day and its physical strength and resiliiency.
3.Chase the feeling of exercise: Before you exercise ASK yours how you want to FEEL after you are done... then check back after your workout. Has your mood changed? How do you feel physically? Do you feel better than when you started? Sit with this feeling and enjoy!
4.Say NO to punishing exercise thoughts: Exercise should not be punishing you for something that you have done. Exercise is a tool and it is medicine for your body! Use it because its FREE.
5.Challenge the critical bi*ch voice: Tell your critical voice to "shut up" when she says... You didn't lift heavy enough, you didn't workout long enough, you didn’t do HIIT, etc...Scream a loud "NO" to that voice. You have done your best and that’s… that’s!
6.Respect your limitations: Tune into your body's signals, (pain, energy, mood, menses, stress) and modify as needed. No guilt here.
7.Stop relying on external validation: No more relying on apps, trackers, people, and the scale to tell you that you are look good enough. BELIEVE YOU ARE SIMPLY GOOD ENOUGH!
8.Honour your body's need to rest: Don't wait until you are over-trained, injured, and burnt out to justify having an active rest day. Feeling tired is normal. But, there is a need to move the body daily, just go with how you feel.
9.Do what moves you: There is NO wrong way to workout. Find what brings you joy, yet challenges you to feel strong. Strength training 7 HIIT is my favourite.
10. It okay to push yourself: Push yourself- you are not a fragile little doll. Change happens when you do hard things. NOW GO FOR IT…
If this information was helpful, feel free to contact me via email to book a 15min FREE discovery/strategy call for Hello@taniaatkin.com to see if we can come come with a great plan for you!
