My moves yesterday: 45 minutes of yoga, attempting headstands (are they supposed to be harder than handstands?!), 8 minutes of abs, walking.

So basically, yoga and walking. That sounds like a nice active rest day doesn’t it? A few months— or even weeks— ago, I would say so. Now though, that’s a lot for me.

I mentioned yesterday that slower workouts need to happen right now…but didn’t I say that a couple times on the blog already? Yeah, I did. I said I wanted to slow down my workouts to help me increase body fat so that I can get my woman processes all sorted out. Then I said I wasn’t doing a good job of actually giving my body rest, so I put even more restrictions on my exercise. But I still exercised a good amount because I still had a gym membership, dance, and opportunities to work out with my friends.

To be honest, when I wrote that second post about how I wasn’t really resting correctly, I sort of gave up on the rest thing until the end of the school year. I was involved in so many activities that working out became…automatic? (For lack of a better term.)

Well now that it’s summertime, I ended my gym membership, and I’m done with dance, I’m buckling down and really (REALLY REALLY REALLY) trying to rest more. Just more, not totally. I know what you’re thinking— sure you are, girl who cried wolf. 

As someone who had an eating disorder in the past, increasing the amount of food I consume has actually been the easier part of recovery. Decreasing exercise, on the other hand, has proven to be so difficult, and I honestly think that has been preventing my body from doing what it needs to do (ladies…ya know).

Why is it so difficult to not work out? For one, I simply love to move (hence the blog name). But there is also a huge culture of “discipline” in the fitness world, which can help motivate people to exercise…

…However, I feel like these kinds of messages are also guilt-trips. If I intentionally don’t work out for a couple days in a row, and I see a photo of a sweaty, flexing person on Instagram with the caption, “get it done” (or something similar), I can’t help but feel like I should get up and do burpees right then and there.

This kind of advocacy for workout discipline is great, don’t get me wrong. These “fitspiration” messages help prevent me from being a veg on the couch watching Giada and Ina on Food Network all day.

But right now, I need a sort of opposite discipline. I need the discipline to say:

No to burpees.

No to pistol squats.

No to tons of push ups.

No to running (yeah, RUNNING— the thing I don’t even like that much).

No to being out of breath.

No to pushing myself.

And I have been doing this for the past week or so. I’m not saying I’m completely resting, because I’m obviously not. I never did. It has just come to the right time for me to finally take this more seriously. Again, no doctor ever told me to stop exercising, and my doctor just told me last week that I should still be doing some sort of exercise, and I am. {I even said a few days ago that I could do a single dead hang pull-up now, but I’m pretty sure that’s mostly because of muscle memory. I use the door frame pull-up bar every time I walk by it.} Any movement right now is for my sanity— my mental health. I’m being mindful and careful all the while though.

Am I sure a decrease in working out will help out my situation? Nope. But I think my body needs the rest either way. I’ve also been eating even more.

Foooooooood.

So maybe this is just going through one ear and out the other for some of you at this point, but I’m still figuring out what the heck is happening too. Whatever it may be, for now, I’m practicing a different kind of discipline in telling myself to NOT go hard. Hold me accountable.