You know… For years I had an on again, off again relationship with exercise over the years. I found exercise at a young age in an attempt to lose weight and then it became an unhealthy obsession. I found ways to work out as often as possible throughout the day to burn as many calories as possible. It was never about getting better or stronger but just about losing weight and getting thin. In order to break free from that unhealthy place – I decided to let go of exercise completely. I treated it like an addiction and cut myself off in hopes of finding greater health and balance… but elimination isn’t any healthier than obsession…

After the break from exercise, I came back to exercise multiple times over the years. I say that because I’d come back to it but I’d come back to it full force and too hard and ultimately either burn out or hurt myself. (I have a bit of an all or nothing mentality so that didn’t really help my obsessive nature.) So when I finally started finding health… finding balance… I decided it was time to approach exercise from a more healthy stance.

So I EASED into it… I started simple. With my love for BeachBody workouts – I started with Piyo – it’s an easier program with 20 minute workouts. To me this felt like the perfect way to ease back into exercise from a place of moderation and avoidance of over-exertion and potential injury. I did this program with the other occasional yoga routine to be gentle to my body and build up my strength. Once I felt strong in my Piyo routine I upgraded to the 21 Day Fix. Again this felt like the perfect step up from Piyo. It was 30 minute routines with modifications that I could do even at my heaviest – something that was hard to find in other workout programs. And of course, from there I continued to graduate up to more difficult programs like TurboFire and then to Insanity, which I’ll be finishing up this week.

Here’s my point… I think sometimes we get too gung-ho for results and we push ourselves to an unhealthy point. We want to see those changes, we want to keep up, we’ve been taught to believe “no pain, no gain.” But this, I think, is a terrible flaw in our thinking… This is how we end up failing… we either get frustrated, overworked and burnt out, or we injure ourselves. And then we fall out of the habit, the routine of exercising… and then months or years down the road, we find ourselves having to start all over again. It’s a viscious cycle.

The point of exercise isn’t to punish your body. The point isn’t to push it to it’s breaking point. Exercise should be fun. It should be something you can enjoy. Maybe you hate kickboxing but you love hiking. Skip the kickboxing class and go for a hike! Find the things that make you happy and they are easier to sustain. And give yourself time to build up your strength, flexibility, and endurance. Then as time progresses you’ll find yourself able to do more and more! Above all – whether you’re thinking about starting an exercise program or planning on starting one up – I want to encourage you to be patient, gentle and kind to yourself because this is how you’ll go farther in your exercise journey.