Why can't I exercise?
How I disappoint my chiropractor and other thoughts on aging
Hello and happy Wednesday.
This week I’m working like a maniac on a second round of novel edits for my UK and US editors (if you missed it, I made a video about how I’m handling receiving these edits a month earlier than expected), and I’m also starting consults with the four writers I picked from the paid subscribers who shared their novel descriptions and opening pages with me in July’s open call for this activity. Each writer will get a dedicated post sharing our full consult, allowing you to weigh in with your feedback (kindly, obviously!), so I’m really looking forward to that.
Accordingly, I’m checking in quickly to share a problem I’m having that you might be having, too. I seem to be allergic to exercise. As a teenager into my young adulthood, I was overly concerned—concernedly so—with my body and my fitness level, so I exercised all the time. I was a long distance runner, I was a gym rat, I swam and swam and swam. At one point, I even exercised at a well known boy’s prep school with a former Navy Seal who made me eat raw ginger and then do 100 sit-ups on an incline bench set to nearly vertical.
Today, I’m decades out of high school and I no longer run, I walk. My core is pretty weakened from writing in a chair all day, so I vowed to do twenty-five sit ups daily for my New Year resolution, but I do maybe twenty-five sit ups a month. Honestly, other than chronic insomnia, everything was going pretty well for me, body-wise, until this year. But oooh boy, once I turned 46? Things began unraveling. I started having foot pain, upper back spasms, writer’s neck, cramps in my hand—nothing ultra serious, but the writing was on the wall. I couldn’t coast in my body any longer without taking care of it.
I started seeing the chiropractor my husband uses for his tennis-related injuries (why are the leisures we pursue so often the ones that hurt our bodies?), and this man, who has magic hands and a kind heart, confirmed what I suspected. I’d got away with laziness for a long time, but the game was up. I had to start exercising. I had to strengthen my core and address my weak hips and my bad posture, which was causing me foot pain. I got measured for orthopedic insoles (sexy!). I had to do leg raises and back bridges and hip strengtheners and travel with the green flexy band the chiropractor gave me. I’m pretty religious about seeing my chiropractor—I go once to twice a month. He’s given me print-out upon print-out of exercises that I must (must!) do at home. And?
I never do them. I have done them once. I got a new batch of print-out exercises last week and I haven’t done them at all.
I know I need to. I recognize my bad posture and weak belly as a fact. I know that hunching over a computer all day is not going to get my body through the rest of middle age and into the golden years that I have big plans for. (They involve a caftan and, inshallah, this house.) I work from home. I have the time to do these muscle-building exercises. And yet, I do not do them. I don’t do them at all.
Normally, in a personal essay, this is where I’d pivot to how I found the motivation and inner strength to do the at-home exercises encouraged by my chiropractor. But I will not be pivoting to that content, because I haven’t got there, yet.
So I’m reaching out to you, dear readers and writers, especially the people like me who are hunched over a computer, growing smarter, wiser, kinder, even, but a little bit mushy: How do you find the will/incentive/bribes to do self-betterment exercises? Teach me your ways! Really! Tell me in the comments what you do to stay fit even though—especially if—you don’t really want to.
In an effort to keep our community positive, empowering, and kind, the privilege to comment is reserved for paid subscribers.
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That is all for this week!
If my edits go well, I’ll get the first of the four videos where I workshop paid subscribers up and running next week, but let’s see how things go.
Thanks as always for being here! And enjoy the rest of your day,
Courtney
Whenever I resist doing something that will be good for my wellbeing but feels as if it will take monstrous amounts of effort, I ask myself how I can bring ease to the activity. What is the tiniest possible step I could take to get me started? Instead of 25 sit-ups, what about one sit-up? Instead of a 30-second plank, what about a 5-second plank? Or setting a 1-minute timer. Even something as practical as putting on a sports bra and running shoes every morning makes me more likely to move. I also embrace the potentially not-mathematically-accurate saying, “One is infinitely more than zero,” which helps deprogram my brain from the perfectionism that tells me something is only worth doing if I do it “right.” Who’s to say what “right” is? I think much of these principles hold true in establishing practices around writing, so you might also ask yourself what about your writing practice has transferability to your exercise practice/posture practice. Also, being gentle with myself tends to be much more helpful than berating myself! 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
Try this: Find a photo of a stooped-over decrepit woman. Enlarge it. Tape it on your wall above your computer (or whatever you write on). Make a few copies of that picture (or other pics of more debilitated women) and tape them up in strategic locations in your home.
See if that's motivation enough.
The exercises your chiropractor gave you are a walk in the park. You can do them.
Take it from an 80-year-old woman with a congenital heart defect, auto-immune syndrome, and inherited foot defects, who nevertheless is in great condition.