I am not an exercise person. Not naturally, anyway. This is pretty obvious to those who know me, and maybe to those who don’t, I don’t know. For as long as I can remember, finding some form of physical activity that I liked and would stick with has always been a tall order for my decidedly non-athletic body and cynical personality.

Organized sports and I have a checkered past, to say the least. My parents put me in soccer at around the age of five or six: I was terrible at it. For reasons unknown, I played soccer off and on until the last season I played in early junior high. I tried softball, dance, tennis, ice skating, gymnastics… some of it was fun, but most of it was just comically sad when you’re an overweight girl who’s just hoping to fit in. High school and college marching band was virtually the only physical activity I got from about age 15 through 22: outside of football season I was a latent slug, happy to never break a sweat. After college, I’d hit the gym in random spurts that I was feeling motivated enough to want to lose weight, but it was largely a futile venture. Without knowing what the hell I was doing, it was hard to understand what I should have been doing, though I suppose moving on the elliptical machine for 25 minutes or so had to have been more positive than negative.

With Kara, a dear friend and amazing Yoga Booty Ballet instructor. She is just a beautiful person
inside and out, and she’s so well-suited to teaching this class. Check her out if you’re in Austin!

Maybe five years ago or so, I took up running. A good friend of mine and I decided to start training for a half marathon together, which seemed laughably impossible to me at the time. After the first race was done, I was hooked. Setting goals, making plans and seeing the incremental progress was exactly what my Type A brain craved. I completed four half marathons in the few years that followed and would have kept going, but shooting pain followed by a herniated disc diagnosis sidelined me from running for a good long while. Pain management doctors and physicial therapists and chiropractors urged me to find another form of exercise that wasn’t as jarring on my joints and spine. I swam for a stint. I tried to keep going to yoga but sometimes the rigorous power vinyasa classes were just too much on my back and it discouraged me from going at all.

After trying this and that, I’ve found a comfortable routine of personal training, group circuit classes, and cardio dance/ballet/yoga class that, miracle of miracles, I actually enjoy. I’ve found that, for me, it was all about finding the right people to work with: in my case, women who clearly love what they do, are empathetic to my struggles, and who have found whatever magic bullet of motivation that it takes for me to just get there and get through the workout.

My trainer, Holly, puts the hurt on (and it clearly makes her happy).
This woman is my age, has two kids, and seemingly boundless energy.
I’d hate her if she weren’t the nicest, most genuine “gym person” I’ve ever met.

In the past, finding a workout routine had been a desperation to shed pounds: a mandated slog intrinsically tied with a severely disordered eating pattern that I knew was incredibly unhealthy and not sustainable. But you know what? It’s just not worth the wasted time and emotional turmoil of hating your body when it’s the only vessel you’re given, and it’s totally possible to love yourself and your body while working on the things you want to improve. It took decades of missteps and self-loathing, but my body and my brain have finally clicked and realized that exercise makes me feel good about myself, and there’s a lot of strength in that realization, both physical and mental.

I’m working it out, one class at a time.