*PTW – this post mentions calories (no specific numbers) and excessive exercise*
Honestly, this post feels pretty scary to write. It feels like a new level of vulnerability to me. I tend to write about things that are comfortably in my past. While I now have a healthy relationship with both exercise and my body, it’s something that I’ve taken a long time to figure out. Because I care so much about others, I’m honestly ashamed of how poorly I treated myself. Me. Someone who advocates for self-love and self-care. Yet, I didn’t practice what I preached. But I’ve learned that there is so much strength in vulnerability. Hopefully my experience can give some of you that “me too” moment, and encourage you to be gentle with yourselves. So, here’s my story – unedited, and imperfect, just like me.
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with yoga and exercise for a long time. I’ve flipped from thinking that yoga was too *alternative* for me, to thinking it would be a great way to “cheat the system”, to genuinely loving it for all it has done for me. By “cheat the system”, I mean I saw it as a way to get around what I *should* and *shouldn’t* be doing. Last year, I would spend so much of my day thinking about exercise, how I could maximize the amount of calories I burned, and how I could manipulate my body and make it smaller. Spoiler alert – none of that ever worked very well. Because I was directly working against everything that biology/genetics/evolution had dictated for me, I just wasn’t able to be healthy and happy while also having (what I thought was) my “dream” body. I wasn’t “good” at exercising, because I wasn’t eating enough to be strong. I didn’t realize it at the time, and hadn’t accounted for the fact that more exercise means you need to eat more. I fell into the diet-culture mentality, and genuinely thought I was getting enough nutrients for my level of physical activity, and that this was what healthy was supposed to feel like. I thought that I was tired because all students are tired, I thought that I was healthy because I still had four limbs, and that I could just, in the words of T Swift, “shake it off” (yes, I went there). I grew increasingly frustrated, I wasn’t seeing the “progress” for which I so longed, and I felt stuck.
Because I started seeing exercise as such a negative thing, I was told to take time off from doing it. For a while there, I hated exercise. I hated it, yet I felt like I needed it. Exercise was a punishment. If I didn’t do well on an assignment, for instance, I would take it out on my body. Every negative emotion I felt my brain translated into “you feel fat”. I took all of my academic, personal, and social insecurities, and the trying-to-find-myself-while-making-everyone-else-proud confusion, and channeled all of these feelings into how I saw my own body. I’ve since learned that fat is not a feeling. It’s a noun and an adjective. That’s it. It doesn’t reflect anyone’s worth, and it’s not a bad thing. In fact, if you are a living, breathing person, you have at least some fat on your body. Anyways, when I was first told to take time off of exercise, I didn’t think I could do it. I really didn’t. It sounded so scary to me. I thought if I feel bad about myself now, how am I going to feel when I “let myself go” and don’t exercise? And yet, I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. So, I wanted to “compromise”. I decided to do yoga. Since yoga typically isn’t high-impact, and it can be low-intensity, I thought it would let me win (exercise) and keep my treatment team happy (not at the gym/putting myself down so much). I bet you can guess how that worked out.
Little did I know, yoga would become the enemy. Yoga became my new obsession. I would set an alarm for 40 minutes earlier than usual every single day so I could practice before work. And by “practice”, I mean following “yoga for weight loss” YouTube videos and having such poor form (because I was thinking about calories burned instead of stability and strength) that I often injured myself. I was unhappy. I was unhappy with my body, I was unhappy with how I was treating myself, and I just felt lost, confused, and that this just couldn’t be the best things were ever going to get. I was mad at myself, but turned that into being mad at yoga.
One weekend, my aunt came to visit me in Halifax, and I lost my student card (and with it my bus pass). Since I wouldn’t be able to replace my student card until Monday, I used this as the perfect excuse to walk everywhere. I walked to her hotel and back several times per day, I walked around downtown, the water, to museums, you name it. I walked so much that I ended up putting too much stress on my ankle, and I injured it. That Monday, I went to a counselling appointment, and my psychologist said “Listen. We have to talk about this.” She said that she hadn’t liked my attitude towards exercise, but that she didn’t want to push me, and that she didn’t feel she needed to intervene because I wasn’t hurting myself. Coming into the office with a wrapped ankle, however, changed her perspective. When she asked “will that injury stop you from going to the gym?”, I realized that my answer was instinctively “No”. This was when I knew that “rational” Ally would never want to put herself through that, nor would I suggest any of my friends exercise while injured. In this moment, I knew that my psychologist had been right. No matter how uncomfortable, no matter how anxious I would be watching friends return from the gym, or go to that yoga class, I had to take a step back. And I’m so glad I did.
I got back into exercising in May. At this point, I was actually afraid to. I didn’t want to get back to being in that unhealthy mindset. I had actually found comfort in avoidance (all my psych majors out there are probably rolling their eyes at that). At the same time, though, I was eager to explore ways that exercise could be fun. I know so many friends whose recovery was cemented through yoga, which helped them find peace with their bodies. I have so many friends who run to de-stress, or go to the gym because it makes them feel good. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to exercise to become strong, but more than that, I just wanted to feel good about myself for the first time in as long as I could remember. I wanted to stop seeing exercise as input/output, or calories consumed/burned. I wanted to let go of food guilt and let go of exercise as punishment for my “flaws”. And I knew that facing exercise head-on was the way I, personally, needed to do that. Since I was taking one night class and one online, I knew that I needed something to help fill my days, and get me out of the house, into the sun. So, I decided to take a leap of faith and trust myself. I decided to give yoga another try, hoping that this would help me get back into other forms of exercise as well. I decided to sign up for a month pass to Moksha yoga, and I was hooked. (Side note, UMM I WISH I could do yoga with all the cute animals like this gif).
Hot yoga is something that I thought I would hate. Humidity and hot air often makes me anxious, and since I was trying to get back into being comfortable with exercise, I was afraid of what my first class would bring. It ended up being amazing, though, and allowed me to make leaps in my self-love journey. I can’t describe the transformation that I felt in those first few weeks. It wasn’t yoga that changed my life. It was me. I was the one who changed my life, but yoga gave me an environment where I could test my own limits, and step out of my comfort zone. For those hours, I was able to set aside others’ expectations, and challenge myself. The first day I was able to do a class in shorts was a win.The first day I was able to practice in only a sports bra and leggings.The first day I was comfortable enough to shower at the studio. All of these things, which others might do with ease, were huge milestones for me and my self-acceptance and self-love journey. In fact, the first few minutes of those first few weeks of hot yoga forced me to face my biggest fears head-on. I was terrified of having panic attacks. Each and every time, I would do anything to make them go away. Because breathing in a heated room felt like what the initial symptoms of my panic attacks feel like, I would instantly start to feel anxious. I knew, though, that starting to pace, cry, or hyperventilate would disturb others in their practice, and I knew that I wanted to be in that room more than I was afraid of it. So, I forced myself to breathe. I reminded myself that my body was designed to keep me alive, and keep me breathing. And you know what? I breathed. For 5, 10, 15 minutes. And then I realized I was okay. Hot yoga gave me the gift of not fearing my panic attacks. While I still wouldn’t wish them upon anyone else, and I really do wish I could stop having them, I know that I’ll be okay if I do.
Once I started getting more into yoga, I realized that I wanted to be stronger. Stronger, not smaller. This was huge for me. I wanted to be stronger so I could hold myself up into wheel pose. I wanted to build ankle strength so that I could stand up into tree pose, and work towards that headstand (still can’t do it, but one day I will!). I set realistic goals for myself, and learned not to expect perfection. So, I started lifting weights, and I started trying to build up my strength and endurance. I started running again. I still don’t love running, and would much rather do yoga, weights, or bike, so I currently only run on the odd day where I feel like that’s what my body needs/wants. Now, I feel like I finally have the freedom to say YES to things I actually want to do, and NO to those I don’t. I can go for a 2-hour kayak down the river with my best friend, because I’m strong enough to do that now. But, I can also go out for brunch with her after because I’m not “making up for” anything that I have eaten or will eat. I can take a day off for a Netflix marathon, or because a sushi date with a friend sounds like a lot of fun, and I don’t want to pass it up.
I never thought I’d get to this place of being happy, healthy, and confident. I never thought I could come to enjoy exercise, and seek out fun new activities to try (tomorrow, I’m trying paddle board yoga with my best friend – I didn’t even know that existed a week ago!). And I’m so happy and proud of how far I have come. That being said, it took work. It took taking those months off of exercise. It took talking to different people in my life, and learning how to exercise in a healthy and enjoyable way. It took talking to my yoga teachers, and learning how to build strength so I wouldn’t hurt myself trying to do asanas I wasn’t ready for. It took conversations with amazing friends who answered my endless questions on how to exercise, what the heck protein powder is, what the deal is with rest days, and all that fun stuff. It took really taking a step back and thinking about my health holistically – what could I do to make sure I was both physically and mentally healthy? It took work. But damn, it was so. Freaking. Worth. It.
If you have any questions about my story, I’m happy to share. And you’re going through something similar, don’t be afraid to reach out for help to people who can support you.
Here’s to vulnerability, and loving ourselves.
Ally
PS. I did finally nail that wheel pose :)
