I Rest When My Body Tells Me To

I rest when my body tells me to.

I have to bust this affirmation out quite often as I attempt to re-frame and reinvent my relationship with exercise.  Recognizing the idea of resting being a good thing is not an easy thing to do in a culture that promotes and lauds physical activity to the extreme.  How many times do we see posters, signs and advertisements with slogans encouraging us to get to the gym, to push ourselves to the max, or to push past the pain?  These messages are everywhere in our culture, telling us we're never good enough and that getting to the gym and pushing our bodies to or beyond their limits in some way makes us better, or increases our value, or allows us to earn our next indulgence. 

For those of us with eating disorders, our culture's fixation on exercise and pushing our bodies to the max can make it very difficult to try and change our relationship with exercise.  I know that when I was very mired in my eating disorder, I knew my food habits were abnormal and unhealthy, but was always able to rationalize my obsession with exercise.  It wasn't hard to rationalize my obsession since our culture promotes the idea of more and more exercise as something that somehow makes us "better," and as something to be applauded.  How could I be doing something bad if I was doing something I constantly saw or heard being praised?  Not until getting into recovery did I start to practice a new way of thinking about exercise: as something to be enjoyed, as something healthy in moderation, and as something to be done with the necessary nutrition to go with it.  I can see clearly now that my eating disorder took our culture's messages about pushing ourselves physically, and not listening to our bodies' limits, to the extreme.  It told me that I was somehow better and stronger when I could push myself physically without eating - it told me people would admire how strong and physically fit I was, when really it was making me weak and ruining my relationship with exercise. 

I still struggle daily with the ingrained belief that I have to exercise, especially since for so many years I believed that in order to eat I had to earn it with physical movement.  However, as I get further along in recovery and have learned to give my body some days of rest every week, I see how much better, healthier and more balanced my life feels.  Our bodies need rest and breaks from activity.  By resting them, we are able to feel better when we do get outside to move and do the physical activities we enjoy.  In addition, I'm learning to reconnect to my body and trust its wisdom.  It knows when it needs rest - I just need to have the courage to listen to it, choosing my body's wisdom over the messages my eating disorder and our culture throw at me, always telling me to push my body in order to be "better."

Even though we don't hear it often, listening to our bodies, being gentle with them, exercising them in kind ways, and resting them when they need it are beautiful things.  I wish for everyone to know and trust their bodies, and to rest them when they ask for it.

May we all take some time to listen to our bodies and their needs,

Taylor