The mindset shift that changed my relationship to exercise

It's all about one word

As I have shared before, I am not typically what one would call a “go-getter,” or an overly ambitious person. I prefer a slower pace to life, have a strong tendency toward rumination and struggle with jam-packed schedules. I hate the societal pressure to out-busy one another, and believe we would all be a little bit happier if we were allowed to chill out.

I am certainly not the kind of person to voluntarily wake up at 6 a.m. and hit the gym, and have had a hard time maintaining any sense of consistency in workouts since I graduated high school 20 years ago. Back then, I rowed crew and would wake up at 4:30 a.m. to drive down to the lake for practice. Once I left that highly structured environment, though, I relished the opportunity for flexibility and moderation in how I exercised. I’d take a yoga or Pilates class here or there, and would perhaps go on a couple low-key jogs a year, when the weather was just right. But I never sank into much of a workout rhythm or schedule.

There was another reason why I didn’t take working out seriously, which I am ashamed to admit. But it was the truth. Exercise, to me, became mostly about aesthetics. And the millennial culture I was brought up in had one body mantra: stay thin. It was easier for me to maintain my weight when I wasn’t working out—muscle is heavy, after all. I was in my twenties, and certainly not thinking about my long-term health. As long as I looked good, that was all that mattered.

In 2023, I had a crisis of purpose, so to speak. My daughter was two years old, and I had spent the majority of her life at home with her. I was struggling to get back into my freelance work and had no idea who I was outside of now being a mom. I felt disconnected from my community and myself. I started to really think about what filled me up, and landed on two main pillars: writing and movement. I took two small steps that year that have had such a positive impact on my life. The first was that I enrolled in a creative non-fiction course through University of Toronto. And the second was that I signed up for a half-marathon. (You can read more about that experience here.)

Signing up for a race changed everything. Suddenly, I wasn’t exercising for the sake of exercising, I was training. There was an external goal I was working toward, an overarching purpose to the daily action. The first month was hard. I was out of shape, and would wheeze my way down the road. But most days I managed to put on running shoes and jog one foot in front of the other for varying lengths of time. I started tracking my distances and paces, and seeing concrete improvement was exhilarating.

After that first half-marathon, I thought I had cracked the code to consistency—I just had to keep signing up for races! I likened it to the concept of a deadline, a.k.a. the only way this ADHDer can do any work.

So that’s what I did for a while. The mindset shift from working out for my physical appearance, to training for physical performance kept me motivated. The drive came from a place of power and possibility, not a place of insecurity. Exercise, to me, could be kind of frivolous. But training? That was necessary. That was serious. That was worthy of blocking out time in my calendar, and sticking to a plan.

Committing to a goal and seeing it through made me more confident in other areas of my life, too. As corny as it sounds, I realized that I could surprise myself, and do things I previously thought were impossible. All it took was showing up and putting one foot in front of the other.

But deep down, I worried that if I stopped running for whatever reason, I’d lose all my momentum and never start again.

Then, of course, I got injured. A couple times. I was forced out of my routine and off my feet. This past fall, I took four months off to heal from a femoral neck stress fracture.

But the mindset shift remained. Instead of training for a race, I trained to get better, and back on the road. I focused on strengthening my hips, building muscle where I could, and even hopped on the elliptical to keep up some of my cardio. I started running lightly again in February, once I had zero pain, and have just signed up once again for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon this October—taking the lessons I learned training (but ultimately failing) last year with me.

The concept of training makes me feel powerful, and focused. It eliminates a lot of the back-and-forth in my brain about the workouts I should be doing, when I should be doing them and how often. And now I realize that even if I have nothing on the horizon to prepare for, I’m still training for my life. I’m training to be able to hike into my 80s. I’m training to be able to lift up my grandkids and chase them around the park. I’m training to feel as strong as possible right now, both in my body and my mind. I still don’t wake up at 6 a.m., but I’m finally finding joy in consistency.

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