🏋🏻♀️ Ever since the start of the pandemic I’ve been trying to get a handle on what types of exercise actually feel joyful and sustaining for me. I have a very complicated relationship to powerlifting and strength training and bodybuilding.
😀 I first visited the weight room at a family YMCA when I was 14. I was immediately drawn towards learning how all those Nautilus machines worked and it felt so good to lift more and more each time I went back. So it’s not an exaggeration to say that for *several* decades, it’s served me well in preventing injury, improving my mood, and preserving bone density.
🌊 It’s also been a relentless current, sometimes an undertow, taking a toll on my mental health. The chronic struggle for better gender alignment through weightlifting has swept me off into periods of disordered eating, overtraining, and pushing past my limits in the name of HUSTLE. GRIND. NEVER STOP. toxic fitness culture.
💪 Now that I’ve more-or-less achieved gender alignment (mostly through starting T and having top surgery), I no longer need to rely on weightlifting to pass.
➡️ Side note: It feels important to acknowledge that 1) I have passing privilege and 2) passing is not the goal of every trans person. But it’s what feels right to me.
💉 So when you pull back the oversized weighted-blanket of gender dysphoria from the equation, what are you left with at the heart of the issue? The questions that have been swirling around for me are:
❓ Do I still want to keep lifting weights?
❓ What do I *actually* like about it vs. what every fitness influencer on IG says that I *should* enjoy about it?
❓ How can I prioritize the aspects of strength training that feel important or helpful or sustaining?
❓ What support might I need to help figure this out
💡 I had a fascinating conversation with @hannahhusband recently about this very topic. Hannah does coaching for the emotional side of exercising and has a deep understanding of all the systemic factors that are holding us back from really being able to experience joy from our movement practices.⠀
👟 Inspired by our conversation, I had just finished eating breakfast on Saturday, I’d filled my water bottle with electrolytes and was lacing up my sneakers to go to the gym (ok who am I kidding, I put my socks and shoes on like clockwork first thing in the morning! But I did glance down to confirm I was wearing shoes 🤣)
I was listening to a really good song called Purple Hat by @SofiTukker and was noticing that my kitchen cabinets were really dirty. And there was still that smoothie splatter up on the ceiling that’s been there since my second kid was born in 2016. Oy.
But if I took the time to clean the cabinets, I wouldn’t also have time to get to the gym. I might be too tired. I felt anxiety build as I pondered what that might feel like. That anxiety spilled out into dance. OK, so now I’m dancing around my kitchen. But is that enough movement? Can I count this as a workout? What do I actually feel like doing right now?! I had no clue.
🧠 My ADHD brain was just like “I want to dance to this song then scrub the heck out of my cabinets then mop the floor and maybe vacuum something but I also want to stop for breaks to use my Theraband because my shoulder’s been a bit creaky. And I also want to lay down a few times. And I want to walk around and pick up the stuff that my kids have scattered around the living room.
✨ BUT THAT SOUNDS SO DISORGANIZED! It’s not a perfect, contained, programmed workout. I might not get the desired results. Blah, blah, blah. Time was ticking away. I needed to just commit to either leaving the house to drive to the gym or getting out some cleaning gloves.
🕺 Then I thought: “I FEEL REALLY GOOD RIGHT NOW! I’m in a great mood, I’m loving this playlist. I’m just gonna clean the cabinets and dance around today.
❤️ So I did. I cleaned every cabinet. I’d like to say my whole house is sparking clean. But that would be a lie. But my cabinets and kitchen floor look rejuvenated.
😁 And I feel likewise.
AND JUST FOR FUN… a little AI FAIL
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