It’s not your fault, a personal failing or a sign you’re lazy.
Its a principle of psychology and coaching that your thoughts create your emotions, and the way so many of us are taught to think about exercise creates emotions like hate, disgust, shame and fear.
Thoughts like:
- I’m a bad person for not exercising
- I need to exercise to earn what I ate
- It’s terrible or shameful that I’m so unfit
- No pain, no gain
It’s normal to avoid behaviours which generate those feelings and therefore avoid exercise. The most primitive parts of our human brains evolved to avoid fear, which could indicate a tiger hiding behind a bush and shame, which could indicate we were going to be exiled from the tribe we needed for protection against the tiger. So trying to change your behaviour without changing your thoughts is fighting against your own brain.
But thoughts such as those listed above aren’t just random thoughts that make it difficult to stick with a regular exercise pattern. Our thoughts reflect the way we grow up and the society we live in. So that’s what I’m aiming to help unpack
This site is about sharing my work to go beyond fitness – using psychology and coaching to change how I, and other women, feel about exercise and our bodies. To allow us all to climb any mountain.
Exercise for comfort & joy
The diet and fitness industry is a billion-dollar industry which inundates us with messages about how this purchase or that program could make you love exercise and your body. But that’s not my approach – my focus is to stop hating exercise not love it.
My values are that exercise is not a moral good itself. For me there are good reasons to exercise, but you aren’t a bad person if these don’t resonate with you.
- Exercise for comfort – we all exist in a body, and a regular exercise routine can make you feel more comfortable in that body. For example:
- manage back pain from sitting in an office chair for 8 hours per day
- feel comfortable carrying bags full of groceries
- to generate dopamine and stress relief
- Exercise for joy – exercise you do to build towards a goal. It might not be a joy every minute of your training, but the goal is worth it.
- Go for a hike and climb a mountain
- Coach your kid’s sports team
- Run a marathon
Services
What We Do
Exercise focused on making your body feel comfortable. Addressing those aches and pains that build up in an office worker lifestyle.
Coaching to help you understand where your feelings about exercise come from, identify thoughts that are holding you back and change them
Support for exercise to reach your goals, and bring joy into your life. With a body positive and health at every size approach.
Want to learn more?
Start here
- Why making plans to exercise feels good but doesn’t workThinking you’ll get up early tomorrow and go to the gym feels good. I used to imagine in detail what exercise I was going to do the next day. This kind of detailed planning is a type of fantasy and gives you a dopamine hit. But, it doesn’t make you more likely to actually go to the gym the next morning.
- 23 thoughts that will make you hate exerciseIt is hard to find the motivation to do something you hate. Given that your thoughts create your feelings, these thoughts are more likely going to create feelings of dread, shame, anxiety, irritation, apprehension, disgust or fear and make it hard to exercise.
Stop Hating Exercise 