Wellness is Not “One Size Fits All”

When we first enter the world of fitness, it’s understandably overwhelming. We’re often flooded with information about fitness “hacks,” exercises that everyone must include in their movement routine, and mounds of contradicting information about the “right” way to move your body. SPOILER: There is no one right way to move your body.

As with most things in this life, wellness is in no way “one size fits all.” Each body has different capacities, each person strives for different goals, and each individual’s lifestyle requires different accommodations. This piece is meant to provide considerations for building a healthy, gentle, and loving relationship with movement.

1. Think about why you’re moving. It’s important to understand why you’re deciding to start a relationship with movement beyond aesthetics, or the way you look. In a fulfilling, healthy friendship, your friend wouldn’t ask you to change who you are or how you look, right? Your relationship with exercise is no different than that friendship. Movement is meant to improve all facets of our wellness, which is so much more complex than being “skinny” or “buff.” Grounding our entire relationship with movement in fundamentally changing the way we look is not going to lay the foundation for genuine well-being, mental or physical. Consider goals like:
   1. I want to be able to pick up my grandson more easily
   2. I want to have the stamina to go on a trail walk with my partner
   3. I’d really like to improve my energy levels!
2. Find movement that you enjoy! Founders of Beauty Redefined, Lindsay & Lexie Kite, encourage us to ask ourselves this question: If doing this exercise had absolutely no effect on my weight or appearance, would I still do it? If the answer is no, explore something else! It’s okay to challenge yourself and pursue specific exercises for the ways they help you achieve your goals, but if you’re clearly dreading the workout you have planned for the day, you likely won’t stick with it, and it may not be the right choice for your health journey. That’s more than okay.
3. Create a routine that adds to your life, not detracts. In other words, do what you have time for. If you’ve got a busy schedule (as most of us do), don’t sacrifice the time you have to see your siblings that weekend to do a three-hour workout because you feel like that’s what’s “good” for you. Social connection is good for you. If you have time for 30 minutes of movement, two or three days a week, that is more than enough. That’s an hour and a half more movement than you would have gotten otherwise. In choosing exercise that adds to our quality of life, we choose movement that makes us happy, that energizes us, that we can potentially do with our loved ones, and that we genuinely have time for without sacrificing other important aspects of our health. 

Naturally, applying these ideas that promote physical and emotional health is much easier said than done in a culture inundated with fatphobia and diet mentality. Be gentle with yourself. Meet yourself wherever you are at on this journey. The key is just remembering that any movement is good movement (so long as it isn’t harmful to you). You don’t have to go on this journey alone! If you would like support from Transcend the Binary’s health and wellness advocate, we encourage you to contact fitness@transcendthebinary.org.