Can We Get Fit Sanely (or Die Trying)?

Thanks for reading Almost Sated, a newsletter about appetite and empowerment. I write about the messy process of detoxing from diet culture and the personal growth that comes from it. If you like what you’re reading, please consider subscribing and sharing! It’s free to join, and subscribing ensures you never miss a post.

On Mondays, I round up the most interesting reads and listens from the last week.

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I haven’t been riding my bike enough lately. When I haven’t been riding enough, I get anxious. Antsy. This isn’t a new phenomenon. This was very typical for the old me, but it used to happen with more frequency and for different reasons. I needed to get my workouts in. There were planned down days, but on the days I had scheduled to work out, if something came up, or if I had to push my morning workout to later in the day, I was a bit of a beast (and that’s a bit of an understatement).

That old anxiety was driven by the idea that if I wasn’t working out, if I wasn’t doing something productive, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t tough enough, I wasn’t working hard enough. And, oh yeah, I was going to gain weight. If I didn’t work out, it meant I had to adjust all my eating for that day, and that also made me cranky.

Me at Slickrock in Moab

I still get anxious when I can’t get my ride in, but I’m no longer beating myself up over it, and I can go a lot longer without melting down.

About a week, it turns out.

For the last week, my bike has been in the shop for service and so has my car, so I’ve been down a bike and without a bike rack. I’ve been schlepping it inside on the Peloton, but this is a mountain biker’s idea of torture. After a week, I needed to ride outside. I finally got the call the bike was ready, so I headed to the shop and then to the trail.

On the way, I started listening to a Ten Percent Happier Podcast between host Dan Harris and The One You Feed podcast host Eric Zimmer. It covered a range of topics, but near the end, Zimmer brought up a series of podcast interviews Harris had done in June on exercising sanely and posed the question, “Can you get fit sanely?”

I imagine many of you who have a healthy relationship with exercise are wondering what he means by this question, but I knew immediately where he was going.  

“Many of us have a relationship with exercise that has been driven by…very often…poor body image or insecurity or trying to look a certain way or going overboard.” —Eric Zimmer

Boy, do I know about going overboard.

I had spent the whole morning examining my need to ride and checking in to see if it was old habits and beliefs creeping in. I started listening to the podcast on the way to the bike shop, and let my mind wander in and out as Harris discussed meditation, the difference between anxiety and panic attacks, and the trigger of his now-famous panic attacks. Somewhere before they got to the topic of fitness, I concluded that I simply need to ride because it makes me feel good and keeps me sane.

I always feel better when I am outside moving. There is no other equivalent. Working out indoors is a substitute, but it’s simply filling the need to keep up my cardio in a shorter amount of time and a cooler environment. 

My motivations are different now that I’m not dieting. I’m exercising now for my mental and physical health. I want to be active so I can experience nature up close and in person. Biking takes me to places I’ve never been and might not otherwise be able to experience. Sometimes, it just takes me out of my head. It also keeps me strong and fit for other adventures. Thirty years from now, I still want to be able to pull my body through a crevasse against swift currents to a canyon waterfall in Costa Rica. I want to be able to navigate down (and back up) a 75-foot cliff using rocks and roots as foot and handholds to a hidden, black-sand beach in Hana. 

Harris shared that the series he did on getting fit sanely helped him examine his own motivations with exercise. He admitted that some of them, such as working out so he could look more like the people he sees on Instagram, were OK but maybe not as meaningful as others, such as staying healthier for his son.

“Can I really consciously boost my attention on my motivation of staying healthy for my now 8-year-old son as he gets older? And what would the ramifications of that be? So yeah, maybe I’ll spend less time on my biceps because I like the way my arms look good in T-shirts and more time working on, I don’t know, my core because that will help me get up or tie my own shoes when I’m a 100, if I live that long.” —Dan Harris

For Harris, getting clear on his motivations for getting fit helped him focus on his larger goals and led to stickier habits. He now uses that clarity at the start of workouts to help reinforce his goals.

We all have different reasons for getting fit, but getting clear on that why can help us make better decisions when time is precious, our bikes are in the shop, or we just need to clear our minds.

What motivates you to get fit, and has it changed over time?

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Other Interesting Reads and Listens This Week

• Linn Thorstensson
  of
  Joyful + Nourishment
  did a thoughtful podcast episode exploring diet culture, what it is and how it shows up for us in everyday life. What I found most interesting were her points about “diet talk.” This is how many of us make small talk. Women especially. We bond over what we should and shouldn’t be eating, the workouts we didn’t do, and how our clothes don’t fit like they used to. And often we don’t see the harm these kinds of discussions cause.

• SleepyHollowInk
  of
  Home|body
  , who is allergic to small talk, makes the case for staying present even when just about everything else is telling us otherwise. She writes about the sweet seduction of seasonal marketing, which is “on a mission to scare and shame us into spending by making us feel insufficient.”

• Is it too early to break out the cake and champagne?

  Virgie Tovar
  , who was told she would never be a bride because of the size of her body, is going to be documenting the entire year leading up to her wedding as a plus-size bride, and I can’t wait to read more.

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Coming Wednesday! Your Diet Rejection Stories

I am starting a regular feature where I share people's stories about what led them to quit dieting. My first interview is going live later this week! Do you know someone—maybe it's you!—who would like to share their story? I will feature it here, along with bio and relevant links. Please email me at kristik @ substack.com.