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Originally shared as part of Inbox Reflections - my honest, heartfelt emails to support your binge eating recovery as a highly sensitive woman. 

For a long time, exercise for me was synonymous with burning calories and weight loss.

Even when I tried to kid myself that I was exercising for my health, mostly I was trying to control my weight.

(I’m thinking about my early 20s here, when my ED was at its worst and I pretended to love running.)

But a wonderful thing that I recognised is that the more I’ve let go of exercising to lose weight, the more active I am and the more I enjoy it. 

In fact, the things that I do now which could be classed as exercise are just things that I do, for the joy of doing them. 

I love walking, my yoga practice, roller skating, swimming outside and lifting kettlebells. 

And I think that if I started to attach weight loss goals to any of these, my enjoyment of them would go down and my resistance to doing them would go up. 

So I want to ask you, how has focusing on weight loss affected your relationship with exercise / being active?

And what activities would you love to do more, just for the enjoyment of doing them?

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