The gym used to be scary, but this IS how I grew to love it.
Growing up in a world that praises high exercise and a high diet, I never had the best relationship with food and exercise. This year, however, I made a goal to make exercise fun again. While my journey is nowhere near over, I wanted to share my experience as someone who exclusively enjoyed playing team sports.
In high school, I played competitive softball and loved it. I worked out with my team four to five times a week at a minimum, which didn’t even include weekend games. I was constantly active, which was a fun way to be active. So, when the pandemic hit in 2020, it wasn’t surprising that becoming sedentary was easy. I stayed inside all day and did not have an active outlet I was comfortable with.
This was when I began seeing those two-week abs challenges online. Long story short, these intense workouts were toxic for me, and I began to restrict my eating while increasing my exercise. Exercising became a punishment for overeating during the day, and a mentally taxing, unhealthy lifestyle began. I worked hard with my therapist to overcome this lifestyle and to relieve myself of this; however, I never got back into exercising when I started college. The gym scared me, and every time I went to a class, I just had flashbacks to those workouts I would do when I used them as punishment.
I started small at the gym in my neighborhood and began with a two-day full-body split. This split helped me get used to gym machines and general comfort. At times when there were barely any other people there, I made sure to make a special playlist to boost confidence. I split the upper and lower body the following week and the week after, push and pull days. I habitually scheduled time to work out in my calendar so that I had a blocked time.
I did not restrict eating or any of my other habits in the mix. I think this is what I made the mistake of doing during the pandemic: restricting. When I restricted food, I created negative habits and thoughts; this time around, I did not make that choice. When I returned to school this spring, I started working out at home on my yoga mat because I feared my college gym. However, on the first day of school, one of my friends told me she would go with me and stay with me the whole time. This act of kindness made my experience positive, and I’ve been going to the gym two to three times a week since then.
Learning to love exercise at the gym could not have happened without my support system. The people who have made the gym and exercise a positive place have been vital to my success and consistency. I’ve also learned that my fear of everyone looking at me at the gym was not genuine. While in a public place, everyone at the gym is just there to move and do something for themselves.