'I'd be out of breath running five meters - time to get fit': the thing I'll do differently in 2023
I turned 30 last month, and naturally I spent the last part of my 20s thinking about all the things I wish I had done differently. During therapy sessions, I would go over long metaphors involving boats, tides, and storms, which confirmed my long-held suspicion that I am definitely not a poet at heart. Amid all the soul-searching, however, one theme seemed particularly relevant: exercise, or the lack thereof in my life.
Something (perhaps the slight crunch that my right hip now does regularly) was telling me that I needed to do more fitness, and, by "more", of course, I mean "not at all". And so, here I am, declaring that 2023 will be the year I overcome my fitness phobia, the albatross I've been dragging around since my very first day in elementary school.
My teachers let me organize the school library during PE class for all of 6th grade , which felt like divine intervention at the time and now seems more empowering to my dysfunctional habits. Like many habits, things only got worse in high school, where I either got elaborate sick notes from home or wrote them myself. When I really had a health problem, which forced me to miss sports for a year in sixth grade, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
>Now I'm 30, I'm slowly realizing that the exercise itself isn't the problem, but rather my anxiety-inducing relationship with it. Talking to friends who also hated school sports but now run, box, dance or swim made me realize more and more that staying in shape is actually something everyone can – and should – do. That school bully voice in my head telling me not to try is actually just that: a voice in my head (well, except for this one gym instructor made faces on my spine spine and said I could never lie on the floor properly, which I think is an overrated skill).
Like most things related to our childhood is something I had to slowly start conditioning myself to – the weird pilates class here, a challenging but very motivating yoga class there. It's still a huge effort, and I think I'll have to work for a while. But hopefully 2023 will be the year booking a gym class is as much about self-care as it is about doing a guided meditation.
At the aforementioned yoga class , there are few rules, which is a blessing for someone who has spent his entire life wondering how to fit into the sporting and active world that everyone else seemed to have entered by default. Instead, we are reminded - much like in therapy - that we are enough, and have always been enough.
As a perfectionist at heart , worried, someone who self-sabotages, and so many other things for that matter, it feels good to get out of my head and into my body – to sweat a little, thinking a little. I think my brain will thank me for it in the long run - and maybe my creaky hip too.
I turned 30 last month, and naturally I spent the last part of my 20s thinking about all the things I wish I had done differently. During therapy sessions, I would go over long metaphors involving boats, tides, and storms, which confirmed my long-held suspicion that I am definitely not a poet at heart. Amid all the soul-searching, however, one theme seemed particularly relevant: exercise, or the lack thereof in my life.
Something (perhaps the slight crunch that my right hip now does regularly) was telling me that I needed to do more fitness, and, by "more", of course, I mean "not at all". And so, here I am, declaring that 2023 will be the year I overcome my fitness phobia, the albatross I've been dragging around since my very first day in elementary school.
My teachers let me organize the school library during PE class for all of 6th grade , which felt like divine intervention at the time and now seems more empowering to my dysfunctional habits. Like many habits, things only got worse in high school, where I either got elaborate sick notes from home or wrote them myself. When I really had a health problem, which forced me to miss sports for a year in sixth grade, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
>Now I'm 30, I'm slowly realizing that the exercise itself isn't the problem, but rather my anxiety-inducing relationship with it. Talking to friends who also hated school sports but now run, box, dance or swim made me realize more and more that staying in shape is actually something everyone can – and should – do. That school bully voice in my head telling me not to try is actually just that: a voice in my head (well, except for this one gym instructor made faces on my spine spine and said I could never lie on the floor properly, which I think is an overrated skill).
Like most things related to our childhood is something I had to slowly start conditioning myself to – the weird pilates class here, a challenging but very motivating yoga class there. It's still a huge effort, and I think I'll have to work for a while. But hopefully 2023 will be the year booking a gym class is as much about self-care as it is about doing a guided meditation.
At the aforementioned yoga class , there are few rules, which is a blessing for someone who has spent his entire life wondering how to fit into the sporting and active world that everyone else seemed to have entered by default. Instead, we are reminded - much like in therapy - that we are enough, and have always been enough.
As a perfectionist at heart , worried, someone who self-sabotages, and so many other things for that matter, it feels good to get out of my head and into my body – to sweat a little, thinking a little. I think my brain will thank me for it in the long run - and maybe my creaky hip too.
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