Reframing Strength and Living in a Larger Body

For the last eight months or so as I’ve given up dieting, I’ve been struggling with the role of exercise in my life now that I’m not using it to lose weight. I’m still trying to figure things out, but I have a better idea now, especially after spending the last week in Costa Rica. 

Fitness and exercise and athletic achievement, these have been important in my life for a long time. I drew strength from them, physically, mentally and emotionally. Strength training reshaped my body, olympic lifting challenged me physically and mentally, and mountain biking gave me never-ending challenges to work toward. Being fit, and especially being strong, became part of my identity. If I was strong enough, if I worked hard enough, if I physically accomplished more than most, I would be good enough. But good enough for what? That’s the catch. Good enough to make up for my larger body. How could someone who trains so hard be so large? I used to think that all the time. I could never be the true success I imagined for myself if I couldn’t be a so-called “normal” weight. And that seemed impossible. So instead, I trained harder and harder. There was no day off from exercise.

In my Oly lifting days, I would routinely push through illness or fatigue to complete workouts. I trained with strep throat. I trained more than once with the flu. (This is also because of my general avoidance of and fear of weight shaming from mainstream medical doctors.) I thought this was a sign of fortitude and strength that separated me from others, mere mortals. I thumbed my nose at the weekend warriors and people who just couldn’t seem to find the time to work out. Weak sauce. 

On weekends, prime exercise time, I used to buzz with anxiety until I could get in a workout. It’s only now that I can see it for what it was. Back then, I liked to do a long bike ride or some other strenuous exercise first thing in the morning to take the edge off. If I wasn’t able to get in my weekend workouts, you had better stay out of my way. When I missed workouts, I truly beat myself up over it. The negative self-talk helped to reinforce my internal beliefs that I was not good enough, not disciplined enough, not working hard enough—all of these very negative narratives that I now recognize weren’t serving me. Moving away from dieting and toward intuitive eating would require a huge mindset shift and force me to question a lot of my own hardened behaviors and beliefs.

One of the 10 principles of intuitive eating, as outlined in Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole’s book “Intuitive Eating,” is movement—feel the difference (not the most apt description). I interpret this as engaging in exercise for joy or health or just because you feel like it or just because you like the way movement feels or just because you like the way your body feels when you move—not for weight loss. I struggled with this principle from the beginning. In fact, when I started intuitive eating, I skipped the chapter dedicated to movement because I wasn’t in the right headspace to even think about giving up exercise and athletic achievement, at least not as I had known them. If I had been forced to go cold turkey, I probably would have given up intuitive eating altogether (I give myself mad props for somehow recognizing this early on). Outside of my neurotic overexercising, there are benefits to movement. And unlike most of the planet, I genuinely love to exercise, especially outside in nature. It’s my head-clearing, reset-everything “me” time; it’s my emotional regulating (aka slaying demons) time; it’s my flow state dreaming time. Given how complicated my relationship was with exercise, I knew it would take time to parse through it all. 

There were so many questions, starting with the most basic to the existential. What is a reasonable amount of exercise? I certainly didn’t know. What should my exercise goals be if they’re not for weight loss? Can I even still have exercise goals? Will I want to work out if I’m not working toward something? Is it ok to work out enough to maintain my skills and fitness level? If I only work out when I feel like it, will I ever want to work out? Who am I if I’m not working out? Who am I if I’m not working toward something? Who am I if I am not fit and strong? 

Since I didn’t have the answers and I didn’t want not having the answers to derail my progress with intuitive eating, tabling the topic was the only option. But I did stop pushing myself to exercise when I didn’t feel like it or I had other things going on. Obviously, this was a total reversal from where I used to be, and I am still working on it. Sometimes I still catch myself in negative self-talk when I skip a workout or even cut a workout short (yeah, I do that now too). My harsh internal voice hasn’t completely  gone away, but I can spot it faster, and I’m much more likely to respond to myself with kindness and compassion. 

Over the last few months as I have gained weight, my body has changed. Movement and mobility have become harder, and frankly, it’s been tough. But I also know it’s temporary and part of the process I have to go through to get to a healthier place long term. I still haven’t read the chapter on movement (maybe this week), but I’ve done enough research now to understand that I can exercise for pleasure and for goals that aren’t tied to self-worth, such as mobility or strength that will allow my body to do the things I need and want to do. I hope that once my body finds its happy place, it will settle into a weight that allows me to achieve these new goals. I’m not gonna rush this process, and it’s not going to involve dieting. This hasn’t been the answer so far in my life, and it’s not going to be the answer going forward. 

As I mentioned earlier, Hubs and I just returned from a week in Costa Rica, which might as well be called paradise. I’m going to be unpacking the takeaways from this trip for a long time. It brought up so many mixed emotions, especially in the beginning. I should preface that we are active travelers. Hiking, biking, kayaking, aerial tight-rope walking (yes, for real), this is how we roll. On our first day, we did a rugged hike through the jungle to a waterfall at the foot of the Rincón de la Vieja Volcano. This is not for the faint of heart or out of shape! In America, a guided trek like this would come with a bunch of warning signs and a liability waiver. Here, we were simply handed life jackets and dry bags and told to leave sunglasses and hats and anything of value behind.

 The journey required crossing a rocky river multiple times, scrambling up and down boulders and ladders, and twisting through caves in tight spaces. All told, it was just under 4 miles out and back, and we averaged roughly 36 minutes a mile, which included plenty of chill time in the water, but that gives you some idea of how difficult it was.

The last stretch of the journey to reach the falls required us to swim through a cave, and then get out and into another pool, where we had to then use a rope to pull ourselves against a swift current through a narrow canyon. Our guides made us go one at a time through the tapered slot, pulling ourselves along until the final pull, in which we had to hoist ourselves over a boulder against the strongest part of the current and up and out of the water. The reward was views of the stunning La Leona waterfall and its surreal turquoise-blue waters.

We didn’t really know what we were getting into when we started this “hike.” Typically, that doesn’t matter, because we consider ourselves fairly fit. But since I haven’t been weightlifting for over a year now and I’ve scaled back on exercise, there were a few moments where I questioned my abilities. I had not spent much time in Costa Rica yet and everyone who was with us on this hike, the guides and another family, were all very small people. I was by far the largest, and I was worried they would think I couldn’t do it. Worse, I worried they were thinking, “These fat, lazy Americans are so damn entitled. What an indulgent life they lead— they never go without!” I wouldn’t blame them—I was thinking these things too. I’m not going to lie, I was battling a lot of negative self-talk on the first part of this hike.

But I also know myself, and even though I am not in the same level of condition I was a year ago, even though I am a much larger person now, I am still more fit and stronger than most Americans. In the face of doubt, I also knew what I needed to do. No matter what obstacles we faced, I was absolutely intent on making it to that waterfall. Having trained competitively for 5+ years and gone through the mental training required to compete, tapping into mental fortitude is in some ways second nature. It’s almost like flipping a switch. There were a couple of times when I would approach a major step-up, a larger rock or set of rocks, sometimes with swift currents rushing underneath me, and I knew I 100% would have to rely on my leg and arm strength to get through it. In those moments, I tapped into that deep place of knowing still within me and went for it. Absolutely, unequivocally I knew I was capable of doing whatever I needed to do to get my body through these obstacles. I could have let my negativity defeat me, but I wasn’t going to. And for the first time since I began intuitive eating all these months ago, I felt like myself—my strong, old self. It was a powerful feeling, because it told me that no matter my size, I can still accomplish athletic pursuits. I can still be strong. I still am strong. 

I am now living in a larger body and have been for a few months. While I didn’t really know what my goals should be when I started this process, or even if I should still have goals as it relates to exercise, what I’m learning is … yes, I can. Living in a larger body has been tough. I have more mobility issues and more physical discomfort, and so my health goals are beginning to take shape around those issues. I want to live a long, active life, and exercise is the key. I want to be able to hike to that waterfall 20, 30, 40 years from now.