#um. this is hate against ibs culture :

[ixalit]

Hey I’m the anon that asked if I could ask you about exercise and stuff... thank you, by the way. Um so I’m just getting into it and trying to be healthier and hopefully lose weight and everywhere I look people say contradicting things and I was just wondering if you had any tips that you’ve found helpful? Or suggestions to kind of navigate the information and everything?

Hey Nonnie, that’s exciting! Go you!!!

I completely know what you mean with so much contradicting information. I’m going to share a few things that have helped me and a few that I do personally, but ultimately it’s completely up to you. I can’t make personalized recommendations because one, I’m not qualified, and two, I don’t know who you are!

Discussion of exercise, food, body image, and similar topics under the cut that might be triggering to some

Note: I use “fitness” and “getting fit” in this answer to mean happy and healthy in your body, not any standard of weight or other measure of athletic ability.

My personal experience is based on four years of research, experimentation, and finding what works for me.

You probably know the basics, but in case you don’t...

Sleep! Getting adequate sleep is going to help you so much. It’s the time for your body to rest, recharge, heal, and prepare for the next day. It regulates your hormones, repairs your muscles, and helps keep your body in a cycle where it feels safe to improve. Personally, I’ve found that a consistent bedtime and wake-up time with quality sleep helps me more than getting 8 hours no matter what.

Water! To make it easy, I pick a bottle I can easily carry around, and work out how many times I aim to fill it up per day. For me, it’s a 24oz bottle, which I fill up 4-5 times a day. That way I’m getting in around 100-120 oz of water every day, in addition to any tea or coffee.

Healthy food! What’s “healthy” varies widely from person to person, and you’ll need to find what that means for you. Basically, it’s food that you feel good about eating and that makes your body feel good.

I have three main pieces of advice that have helped me.

The first is to check (and maybe change) your mindset and relationship to food and exercise before trying to go anywhere with it.

Our culture, media, and society as a whole are very “less is best” when it comes to food and weight. As a result, most people have distorted views of themselves and an unhealthy relationship with food, whether it be rules, restriction, shame, or something else.

It is about a million times more challenging to meet your fitness goals when you’re also fighting against your mind. Instead, my advice is to heal that part of yourself before attempting anything big. This way, you’ll be more likely to fall into a “binge/restrict/shame” cycle that can seriously fuck with your mood.

Personally, I’ve struggled with disordered eating in the past, both restrictive (brought on by a period of circumstances that triggered my PTSD and put me in a near-constant state of fight/flight) and binging. I’m still learning how to have a healthy relationship with food, but I’m a lot better now than I was three years ago, mostly due to a period of time I devoted to healing that specifically before trying to lose weight or gain muscle.

Also, if you can, try to view getting fit as self-care. Make peace with your body as it is in this moment, and try to avoid thoughts of “I’ll be happy/be able to do ____/be able to have ____ when I meet x goal.”

Goals are good to have and work towards, but not when they put conditions on your current self-worth or confidence.

My second piece of advice is to pay attention to your body—moods, pain, sensitivities, etc—and take the time to find what works for you. Most likely, it’s going to be different than what anyone else does, and it will likely change over time.

For example, I’ve found that I can’t do certain exercises because of the stress they put on my joints, so I find what muscle that exercise works and research variations and/or other exercises to target muscle.

There are also certain foods I have to stay away from because they act up my IBS or make my body retain more water in a way that’s uncomfortable.

Through trial and error, I’ve discovered that cheat days/meals don’t work for me and that I like measuring stats but have to be careful that I don’t start obsessing over them. I’ve learned that my body doesn’t feel good with heavy exercise every day, and that my body hates (and I mean hates) sugar.

Basically, check in with yourself frequently.

Do you feel happier, more clear-headed, and more energized after a workout? Make that your main reason to work out.

Does a certain exercise (coughrunningcough) make you wish you were doing literally anything else? Stop doing it and find a different exercise.

Does your stomach hurt after eating a lot of sweets? Space them out or try eating half of what you would normally and see if it satisfies your craving.

Do you find you’re beating yourself up every time you exercise under the guise of “motivation”? Find someone to exercise/go on a hike with you and talk about literally anything else.

Something that’s helped me is getting a body composition scale. I have this one from Amazon. It works well for tracking trends, and helps to understand how my body composition is changing. Through this, I know how many calories I need to eat in a day for my basic functions (my BMR) and go from there when deciding what to eat.

My third piece of advice is to make sure whatever you do, it’s sustainable.

Cutting out all your favorite foods and exercising three hours a day might feel good at first, but it will take a toll on your body in the long run, which will probably work against you.

And don’t stress the small stuff. Being consistently “good” 80-90% of the time is much better than being perfect 20-30% of the time.

Find a way to live that’s adaptable but that you can enjoy doing for years and years to come.

And lastly, here are some random things.

Personally, I eat foods that make my body feel good when I feel hungry. I also track my calories, but more out of curiosity to know how much I’m eating in a day. I need to watch this to make sure I don’t attach unnecessary self criticism to eating “too much” or “not enough.”

My goal is to do something active every day. Some days that’s a 50 minute HIIT workout, some days that’s biking 30 miles, some days that’s a 20 minute walk with my dogs around the neighborhood.

Finding a few active things you like doing really make all the difference. For me, that’s hiking, skiing, boxing, and swimming. Because of covid, I’ve taken more to HIIT and biking, because some of my “go to’s” aren’t safe.

It’s true that at the end of the day, to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. An easy way to do this is calculating your base metabolic rate (how many calories your body burns in a day when it does nothing), keeping track of the calories you eat in a day, even if it’s approximate, and exercising to put yourself in a deficit.

Weight fluctuates. Bodies fluctuate. Water weight and rentention, bloating... what you eat, how much you eat, time of day, how you exercise, hormones, and a million other factors can have an affect on weight. It’s not uncommon for weight to change 5 to as much as 20 pounds in the curse of a day. I try to pay more attention to my muscle mass, body fat percentage, and how I feel in my skin rather than my weight. (I have 13% body fat, which means 20lbs of my weight is fat. I’m also focused on gaining muscle, which means my BMI is technically in the “overweight” range, even though I’m considered “fit” and “muscular”)

Most importantly, try to remember that a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have an “end date” and it’s not something you have to endure

These are just the basics, the foundation. The details (time of day, heavy or light weights, type of cardio, macros, etc) are up to you. I know there’s a lot of contradicting information, and my recommendation is to experiment and find what makes YOU feel the best.