I’m Pissed…

I’m mad that diet culture store fitness and movement from us. Whole generations of women taught to move their bodies solely for the sake of losing weight or maintaining a small physique with no mention of how important movement is to our brain function, our aging process, and our overall mood. Instead, we were taught to hate our muscles for fear of getting “too bulky” or stick to cardio because “that’s how you lose weight.” Now, at 41, I am having to relearn how to engage with movement and workouts because the rest of my life does depend on it - not for how I look, but for how I keep this body and brain functioning. I have to fight through the frustration that comes with moving simply because it’s important and not because it’s tied to a ridiculous temporary goal of weight loss and to be honest, I am having a hard time. When 25 of my years were focused on body building for the sake of maintaining a weight loss transformation or making me the best in my sport, moving my body “because it’s important” is not enough of an incentive.

This is a ragey article, but I don’t even care because I need to process these feelings and I believe that I’m probably not the only one. When I finally found my way on the other side of diet culture, I wanted nothing to do with everything that was tainted by it and this included: movement, exercise, sport. It wasn’t until 2020, when I heard a loud voice from within say “YOU NEED TO MOVE YOUR BODY” - at this point, I was 7 years into building my business and 7 years outside of diet culture. For that 7 years I never moved my body unless it was for a photoshoot because hustle culture, like diet culture, encourages you to disregard your body’s ACTUAL needs for the needs of the system. If I couldn’t answer emails, do a blog post, or be on social media while I was moving my body I wanted nothing to do with it. As a result, I was taking on all of my clients’ energies and then letting it all settle into my bones and muscles straightaway. This (+ living an achiever based life of it never being enough) resulted in chronic stress, burnout, weight gain, plantar fasciitis, tight hips, and a fucked up shoulder. Now, diet culture would have had me blaming my body for this, but thankfully, I had done all that work to realize that my body did what she had to do to keep me alive. The previous list was her talking to me - I just didn’t listen. When 2020 hit, I was forced to stop (like most people) and it gave me time to truly listen - to my body and my inner voice. I remember that day so vividly. I was sitting at my desk with terrible posture and that voice rang loud and clear. I had heard that voice in the past - once when I was about 7 or 8 and about to cross the street and I heard “STOP!” and a car ran through the stop sign. There was no one around. Needless to say, this was a voice I wanted to listen to.

I put on my orthopedic running shoes (because that’s what people with plantar fasciitis do) and stepped outside. As I began to move my body, it was like the tin man coming to life. My body was waking up and it was…painful. I could barely make it the 400 metres around my condo without crying. Shin splints, tender ankles, and a sore back were my prize for doing the thing I needed to do. I remember feeling embarrassed and ashamed. How could a once high performing athlete have become this? How could I let myself, once again, disregard the needs of my body for the desires of a system that was happy to spit me out for not performing enough? However, despite all of that, I showed up every day. The first goal: Go outside. Second goal: Walk until you don’t want to anymore. This became my ritual. Every morning without fail, I would get outside and walk. Sometimes it would be 2 times around the condo, other times I would walk for an hour. These walks gave me back my time for me. They gave me back my ability. And the cool thing, within 3-4 days of that initial walk, my body adapted…because that’s what bodies do. She remembered how to move and it almost felt like she was saying thank you as muscles flexed and connective tissue fell away. Since then, I’ve continued walking for the most part - in the winter, it would be on an elliptical and in the summer in the outside. Now that I live in Calgary and close to nature, I’m able to venture out into the grassy hills and challenge myself to hike up and down. Some days it’s certainly easier than others.

But this morning, while I was on the elliptical, I thought about how unfair it is that movement and exercise gets sold to women as a means to an end - a temporary fix. With menopause knocking at my door, my body needs me to move more than ever. It needs me to lift and push and stretch (oh, god, so much stretching) and protect my bones. And because of how it was sold to me, I don’t enjoy movement. And because I tend to be on the neurospicy side, if I don’t enjoy something I don’t want to do it. But the other day, I wrote a piece about achieving Body Joy and it allowed me to step into the shoes of my body, so to speak. I wondered what would make her experience joy and no surprise, movement and stretching was on the list. (And drinking a lot of water). While these things aren’t fun for me, they are fun for my body and when you are in a relationship with someone, you sometimes have to do things that they want to do, even if you don’t want to. So, I’ve started to move again for her. I started paying attention to when I like to move my body: dancing for my self portraits, building stuff or cleaning the house, shovelling snow (this one was surprising), meandering through a forest or yard, and going back to my martial arts roots by kicking and punching my kickpads, walking to get the mail, and walking around a thrift store - so I do those things a lot of the time and in addition to that, I do the lesser pleasurable things (elliptical) at the beginning of the day, so I, and my body, know what is the priority.

Diet & Hustle culture has already stolen enough from me - they tried to take my body from me and succeeded many times before, but I will not let them win this time. I am listening to my body and giving her the love and care that she desires and deserves and I will most certainly not let diet culture fuck up my aging process anymore than it already has. As much as I hate climbing stairs, I want to be able to climb them when I’m 80. As much as I don’t like bending down to search for elusive tupperware lids in a cupboard, I want to be able to bend down when I am in my 70s to find the cool mugs and plates at the thrift store without fear of throwing out my back. And I want to continue doing my work - I want to be able to photograph, talk on stages, host workshops, and write books and all of these things require energy, creativity, and vitality - all things that are improved with movement. So, yah, I’m pissed that diet culture took movement from me, but when I’m pissed I do something about it. Women, build those muscles, strengthen those hips, build that lung capacity, and fortify those bones because we’ve got some serious fighting to do in the upcoming decades. Personally, I’m taking back movement so I can continue to fight against all the systems that make us feel inferior so that we don’t have further generations under the spell of beauty standards that fuck up their relationship to movement, but also their relationship to themselves & their bodies. Who’s with me?