In this episode of Translating ADHD, hosts Ash and Dusty explore the often contentious relationship between individuals with ADHD and exercise. They discuss the cultural stigma surrounding body image and the challenges of maintaining a consistent fitness routine. Through personal anecdotes and client experiences, they highlight the importance of redefining exercise not as a punishment for one’s body but as a celebration of its capabilities. The conversation emphasizes the need for self-acceptance and the freedom to explore different forms of movement without the pressure of achieving a specific outcome.
Ash and Dusty share their unique journeys toward finding enjoyable ways to stay active, revealing how community support, novelty, and external accountability have played crucial roles in their success. They encourage listeners to experiment with various activities, focus on building consistency, and detach from societal expectations regarding body image and fitness. Ultimately, this episode serves as a reminder that nurturing our bodies can be a fulfilling experience when approached with the right mindset.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:00:03] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:04] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. [00:00:06] Dusty: Just a trigger warning for listeners, this episode will be touching on topics surrounding stuff like weight loss, and I think we’re going to deal with it in an awesome way, but if that is something that’s triggering to you, just be forewarned. [00:00:19] Ash: Dusty, you want to tell our listeners what it is we’re going to be talking about today? [00:00:23] Dusty: We’re going to be talking about ADHD and something that many people with ADHD consider a dirty word, exercise. [00:00:30] Ash: Ooh, I considered that a dirty word for a really long time. [00:00:34] Dusty: Maybe? Yeah. [00:00:35] Ash: Yeah. Exercise, fitness, body image, right? Making peace with ourselves where we are, which is really hard. Why is this such a struggle? Do you think? I know you said you had a client who’s struggling with this currently when we were talking before we hit record. Tell me a little bit about that situation. [00:00:52] Dusty: Yeah. So, so there’s sort of two questions there. Like, why is it a struggle and what’s going on with my client? And I’ll just say I think from my personal experience and working with a lot of clients, there’s a lot that goes into this, right? One thing is that exercise can be, can feel really boring, right? It can feel boring. Painful and uncomfortable if you aren’t sort of naturally athletic to begin with.So thinking about stuff like going to the gym over and over and just like doing a bunch of exercises can be really boring. And we know that anything that’s boring is like boring is quite painful for ADHD brains. And it requires consistency, which we’re not great at.
But I think it also does tie into this idea of like moralism. You know, there’s this idea that being fit is like morally good and being consistent is like morally good. And that like being fit, fat is bad, right? We have this idea in our culture that there’s a sort of like moral corruptness to being fat, right? We look down on fat people. And, you know, we’ve all heard that thing that like, if you’re fat, especially a fat woman, your doctor like won’t take your health concerns seriously. There’s a lot of shame. If you’re fat, it’s your fault. It’s probably because you’re like not trying and you’re like eating all the wrong foods and stuff.
And then that gets even more complicated with ADHD because we know that ADHD does have an association with stuff like binge eating and eating for dopamine, right? That ADHD brains, especially those that are really struggling are more prone to choosing like fatty and sugary foods. We struggle with sleep more, and studies have shown that sleeping six hours or less a night consistently is correlated with your brain wanting to choose more sugary and fatty foods. So like you’re getting the one, two punch of maybe like poor sleep plus eating for dopamine.
We see an association with ADHD and binge eating disorder, so like eating large amounts. And that gets complicated too when we add in like stimulant use, which sometimes kills your appetite. And then when your stimulants wear off, you’re like starving because you haven’t eaten all day.
And also just, I think we struggle with that short term like that inability to work towards long term goals, right? So we may have a goal of like weight loss or weight management or fitness and we might really intend to follow through on that, but in the moment if we’ve had a hard day, if we’re tired, if we didn’t get organized with like groceries, which is a whole other podcast, right? Feeding yourself in an organized fashion with ADHD. If you don’t have those things ready, if you don’t have time to cook, if your kitchen’s messy, of course, you’re going to choose like takeout in the moment.
And then, so we’re always kind of making these choices that might not be in line with what you want, with how we might like our body to look like long term when it comes to the shape and size of our body. And then that feeds back into that loop of Oh, it’s like a moral failing to be fat. Right?
So then if you’re going to the gym to lose weight, and you’re someone with ADHD, and you’ve always struggled with disorganized eating and with weight, it becomes this like punishment thing. And I just think there’s so many layers related to what makes it hard to to engage in body movement with ADHD.
[00:03:48] Ash: Yeah, I agree with all that. And so many of those things speak to my personal struggle with weight and ADHD. And the one that I will add is there’s also so much information out there and so much mixed information out there. So for those of us that tend to want to find the quote unquote right way of doing things that all or nothing thinking where if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. I’m going to, I’m going to clean up my eating and I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do that.It can, you can get stuck in the research phase, right? Because you can find so much conflicting information about what does a healthy diet do. really constitute? What does that look like? Is it keto? Is it this? Is it that what is a quote unquote good exercise routine? What should you be doing? What’s optimal?
And so we get caught in this perfectionism of I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it the right way. And that unto itself becomes overwhelming before you even start. Like it becomes a barrier unto itself of, I don’t even know what the right way to go about this is despite putting time and effort into answering those questions. So what do I do?
[00:04:59] Dusty: Even if we’re just talking about what you’re doing at the gym, like there’s so many different ways to do bicep curls or like work on, you know, this particular muscle. What’s the best way? How do you know why do one over the other like I found that really overwhelming for sure. [00:05:14] Ash: Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about this client and what their struggles are. [00:05:20] Dusty: So I have a client who is somewhat younger. They’re like a university student, and they very much want to develop a fitness routine. That’s really important to them. And you know, obviously being a student, they’re already so busy, but I think it’s sort of the classic thing where, you know, they say they want it they think of it, they’re like, yeah, I want to do that. Right.And then the actual follow through is there’s so many things, right? Sometimes you’re Just kind of everything we talked about. Being busy, you know, feeling, often feeling fatigued or tired, right? Honestly if you don’t already love going to the gym, and sometimes even if you do, if you’re sitting at home in your cozies, and you’re feeling comfy, or you’re tired, or you’ve had a long stressful day, and you physically feel a bit like bleh it’s really hard to be like, to overcome that feeling and be like, okay, yeah, I’m going to go to the gym. And it’s so funny.
I don’t know if you have had this Asher, but I find this even with clients and with myself for stuff that we do like to do. Like we know we like to do something that’s like fun, make art or go for a bike ride. And when we think about doing that, we’ll still be like right.
So now we add in something like go to the gym, which is like work. So this client in particular is kind of struggling with all of those things, right? Not having the time, not finding the time, being quite busy, being tired. And just not being motivated, even though, you know, they know, and we talk about it in their head that they have a global motivation to have a fitness routine. But in the moment, it’s like you’re, it’s two different people, right?
[00:06:42] Ash: Yeah. And that is something I see so often with my clients and with myself. The things, even the things we truly enjoy, we can struggle to match intention with action. That’s a hallmark of ADHD. Why do I not do the things I ought to do? And more so than that, why do I not do the things that I know? I really want to do the things that matter to me at my core.And so If you’re already a little exercise adverse or you’ve not had good experiences with exercise, there’s no positive evidence or motivation there yet to tap into. Cause so much of coaching is about finding that positive motivation . And finding ways to match intention with action that aren’t urgency based or it’s on fire based that can make it a really uphill struggle.
I know that was certainly very true for me is I had so much imposter syndrome around exercise for so many years because I’ve been doing ADHD coaching for a long time, and I’ve had many clients over the years who had a good exercise routine coming into coaching and would talk about how that supported their ADHD – which by the way, is something that we should mention here as we’re talking about this, is exercise does have tremendous positive impacts on executive function and energy. Two things that we really struggle with as ADHD people – and I’ve had several clients over the years who had that in place when we started working together.
And I know the science, I know that this is helpful. And here I am an ADHD coach, helping other people. With their executive function challenges, and yet I’m unable to engage in this quote unquote, really simple way of bolstering executive function in a consistent way and never have been able to until the last couple of years. It’s tough.
[00:08:33] Dusty: And that’s it. It has so many benefits, it’s quite important for people with ADHD, which is why for me, I’m always really motivated to help clients with it, you know. And a lot of the times clients will come more for the you know, the, Oh, I need to lose weight. Or it just, it feels like a thing you should be doing and you maybe don’t even know why you’re motivated, but at the end of the day, it is one of the, I think, keystone pieces that helps us manage our ADHD if we can find that way around it.And you mentioned like mindset and you know, sort of finding that positive motivation. And so with my client who’s kind of working on this right now, I think that is the thing, you know, for this person is it’s not just like a, Oh, I don’t have any you know, clean gym clothes, although maybe sometimes it is. It’s okay, the time does exist. We’ve got down to brass tax. The fact is, okay, you’ve, you do have the time sometimes, not all the time cause you’re busy, but there are moments. But in those moments, it’s that lack of motivation, right?
It’s like everything else is so important. You know, tons of assignments due. I’ve been really busy this week. What is that thought, what is that mindset that you got to have that’s going to push you to go when you’re not in the mood? How do you have to frame it to yourself?
And we’ve kind of, what’s interesting is I think for this client they’ve tried out a few different ways of talking to themselves about it. And this is what I call or actually, maybe I stole it from Cam, I don’t know. But it’s like an in, yeah, I stole it from Cam. It’s an internal resource, right? Like an, you know, an external resource is you know, Hey, let’s make sure that your shoes are by the front door. But this is more of that internal resource where it’s like, what is the thing that you say to yourself that gets you over the hump?
And I think they’re starting it to, you know, to get it. I think they’re kind of finding and it takes some playing around because I gave them some of like my frameworks, like here’s what has worked for me. And they were like, it’s funny. I love this. When this happens with a client, they’re like, yeah, no, that totally doesn’t work for me at all.
And it’s cool, but I’m glad I could at least give you like, you know, a jumping off point. And I think they’ll get there. They’re working on it.
[00:10:25] Ash: Like everything else in coaching, it’s trial and error. As you said what works for you doesn’t work for that client. And so some of this process I think is finding the thing you uniquely will do. Which can be really tough. It certainly was for me. I found exercise to be incredibly boring. I tried everything.I did a couch to 5k and I quit in the last week. I took a body weight and fitness for a while. Cause I liked the idea of functional movement and fitness. And so I found that really appealing. I did that for – I was probably the most consistent with that – I did that for a year, but then life got crazy, and I fell off the wagon and could just never get back on.
And for me, what ultimately ended up working was when I started testosterone. I was really scared of gaining weight. I was already the heaviest I had been my entire life, and I knew that hunger was going to be something I was dealing with. And I just did not want to gain any more weight. And on top of that, I quit being able to cry.
And so I had this sort of emotional outlet piece that I was looking to deal with. And I happened to be working with a client who does Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and talks very positively about it. And it sounded really interesting. And so I just asked him one day, if I was as a couch potato, as an unathletic couch potato, if I was going to take up a combat sport, what would you recommend?
And he recommended kickboxing. And I walked in not knowing what I was doing. Still largely don’t know what I’m doing a year and a half later, but for me, what I’ve found works is it’s always novel. There’s always something to learn. And you’re so busy focusing on what you’re trying to do, what combo you’re trying to throw or if you’re holding for your partner, holding the pads correctly, so you don’t get hit in the face or frustrate your partner by not doing what you need to be doing. So you’re mentally engaged In a different way, which makes it feel less like exercise to me. And so there’s something about the novelty piece for me.
There’s also something about the community piece. These are my friends. These are people I look forward to seeing every week. These are people I look forward. I don’t compete, but these are people that I look forward to seeing get up in the ring and fight and compete and show show the results of their hard work and I love to show up and support that.
And so those elements together are what make it easier for me to show up day after day, week after week. And on top of that having a great coach is helpful for me too. I often say the work comes in many forms and I tell my kickboxing coach all the time, you and I do the same job. We just do it by different means.
And so when my own internal motivation is really low, when I’m not showing up, there’s a safeguard there because my coach will reach out. He will harass me a little bit, but in a positive way, right? He never rings me to come into the gym, but if I’m not showing up, I’ll start getting text messages from him, encouraging me to come back.
[00:13:36] Dusty: Nice. Yeah. And there’s, it kind of comes back to that. We were talking on another episode about the idea of external structures, right? Like community, wanting to be with friends, like having someone who’s going to bug you. We know that all of these things are helpful with follow through for anything related to ADHD and so too for exercise, right?So I can share a little bit of what worked for me because I had a lifelong aversion to exercise as a child. My mom was a chain smoker, so I grew up surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke. I was also skipped a grade. So I was younger than all my peers, which made our physical exercise class, our PE class really hard for me.
And I seem to have skipped a, I don’t know if this is exactly what happened, but in my memory, I skipped a grade right when we learned all the rules for sports. So I just remember that I never knew the rules for soccer or basketball. I didn’t actually know what I was doing. So not only was I like clueless in sports class, I was younger and smaller than all the other kids and I was suffering from constant like bronchitis like lung issues . And I would read while eating because I found eating too boring. And I would like, inhale my food. I ate so fast.
And it became this thing that I’m really sensitive about because my mom would always comment on it in this really Oh my god, you like, you inhale your food. Did you even taste that? But the truth is that I think because of ADHD and just sensory stuff, like I just, I loved, I don’t know, I live like love the feeling of being really full. And like I just love to eat, but I ate so fast that I didn’t feel full.
And so as a result, I did grow up with a very big appetite. And you know, I think when you eat a lot, like your stomach kind of stretches and then you kind of are used to eating that volume of food. So I definitely did kind of overeat for my whole life. And I am, like, I would like to self identify as fat I am fat, and that’s fine.
Fat is not a dirty word. Fat is just the shape that my body is. I’m also short. I’m short and fat. And you know, obviously I had a lot of shame around that as a young woman. And so when I decided that I wanted to start exercising, it was just this absolute it was so hard. I had the worst cardio because of growing up with a smoker and never having really, you know, built fitness or any kind of athleticism as anything positive in my life.
So it just felt absolute, it felt horrible. And I always thought to myself, like, how am I going to, How can I do this for the rest of my life? How can I turn this into a an ongoing thing because it’s just it’s so terrible and boring and hard and painful and awful And so I would go through little fits and starts of you know going to the gym or jogging or whatever. Or, you know, kind of participating in diet culture, and then I would like backslide.
And I’ve had like really bad body dysmorphia my whole life where like I look in the mirror, and I just hate. I remember like the first time I saw myself – I think I was 12 years old – and I had the least little bit of I don’t know, like maybe my pants were a bit tight or something, so I had a little muffin top, and I was 12 years old. And since then I’ve like always hated my body, and felt really bad about my body, and like just felt like it was wrong, and like I have to fix it. But then there’s that compounding shame of like never being able to follow through.
[00:16:32] Ash: So Dusty, what changed for you? [00:16:35] Dusty: Thank you for asking. So there was this one quote that I read, and it actually it’s crazy, it changed everything for me. It was just a quote. And the quote was “Exercise is not a punishment for what you ate. It’s a celebration of what your body can do.” And I read that and I was like, ooh I really like that. Like what if I sort of did that? Took that to heart.So I started kind of thinking of, okay, well what if exercise is just about joyful movement? What if it’s just about celebrating what my body can do? And that kind of kicked me off into anti-diet culture movement.
So then I read this book called The Body is Not an Apology. [Sonya Renee Taylor] I can’t think of the author off the top of my head, but it’s a wonderful book that talks all about decoupling the idea of like weight loss as this like moral thing from how you feel about your body. And around this time I was already working as an ADHD coach, and I thought to myself, okay, what if I shifted my goal from, like losing weight because I would always, I would never lose weight. I would exercise and exercise for a few weeks, not see any results, and then get frustrated and give up. So I thought to myself, okay, well, I’m not going to be able to see results within a few weeks and I’m also not going to stick with it unless I see some results, so I need to shift what my results are.
So instead of weight loss as a goal, I started thinking to myself, what if my goal was just consistency? What if consistency was the goal? Right? My goal is to get to the point where I can exercise consistently. So, that was the first thing I decided, was I made that shift from outcomes to consistency.
And then I thought to myself, okay, well, what do I know about my ADHD? I need novelty. So, what I actually did was, I decided to put my money where my mouth was and invest it, some money. And I didn’t have a lot of money, but I was like I need to make a commitment because I know for me that if I put money in, I’ll follow through. So I signed up for a not inexpensive like class thing that you go to a couple times a week where they lead you through these exercises.
But at the same time I was like, okay, I can’t just do one thing. Cause like you Asher, I had tried like this and that and the other. And I tried like all these different kinds of fitness things. And I was like, what if the answer isn’t one thing? What if it’s a lot of things? So what I did was I made myself up a weekly schedule with six days of exercise and I didn’t do six days of exercise, but what I did was I picked a different thing every day that I could do.
And so I would, it would be like yoga one day, walking to pick my daughter up from daycare another day. Hiking with a friend, doing these two classes, like I basically looked at everything in my town that had a two week free trial, like yoga or kickboxing or whatever, like any place that I could go and try for free for a couple weeks, and I would like cycle through them so that I wasn’t spending too much money, but I always kept changing it up.
And my goal was just like yeah, move your body. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting stronger, because you’re going to the gym consistently, it doesn’t matter if you’re losing weight, your goal is like move your body three times a week. And even if I went for a 10 minute, at first, even if I went for a 10 minute walk or I did 10 minutes of yoga, I would count it.
And I started tracking it so that I could see my progress. And then it got to the point where several weeks had gone by and because I was tracking it, even though it was different stuff all the time, and you know, maybe it was only 10 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of yoga, I could see that for several weeks, I had been physically active multiple times a week. And that was really important.
So I gave myself do more than one thing at once. And how I made that financially feasible is I used up all the free trials I could find. I shifted my goals to just consistency. And I really learned a lot about getting over this idea that like I have to do this to lose weight, or that I even need to lose weight, or that there’s anything wrong with my body in the first place, which is, which was really hard.
And it’s still a journey. It’s not something that I’m like perfect at. There’s certainly times that even now I, you know, I kind of relapse into feeling like weight loss is something that I should do or that’s morally important. But for the most part that is behind me and I’ll kind of loop back around to that in a second.
But the second phase of what helped me. was gamification and playing a game with myself. And so just really quickly, I’ll say I knew this guy. His name was Brad. This man had no vices. I don’t know what his deal was, but he didn’t drink coffee, he didn’t eat gluten, he didn’t eat sugar, he got up and went to the gym at 5 o’clock every morning.
He was the most annoyingly perfectly, perfect human I had ever met. No vices! And so I remember one day, I was laying in bed, and I was gonna go to this class thing that I had signed up for, and I did not want to. I was tired. I was like, comfy in my bed. And I just had this thought, and I thought to myself, God, what would Brad say to himself about going to the gym right now if he was tired and comfy in a bed?
You know, I bet you that frickin’ guy, I bet you he’d be saying something to himself like, Oh man, this is gonna be the best part of my day. I’m so looking forward to this, and I just can’t. This is gonna be the most important thing I do. I just started talking to myself in my head. I was Brad.
And the next thing I know, Asher, I had those frickin’ running shoes on, and I was out the door like I literally borrowed his motivation by speaking in his voice to myself. It worked. And so then I just started doing that instead of being Dusty, the person who doesn’t like to exercise and is tired. I would be like what would a person who loved exercise say to themselves right now. And doing that kind of imaginative roleplay really helped me in any moment that I was feeling like Okay, I, you know, the workout clothes are clean, the shoes are there, the time has been booked, the, you know, class has been paid for, but I’ve got a real bad case of the I don’t wants. I would just be like, what if I was a person who did want to? And it actually helped.
[00:21:48] Ash: Dusty, the first thing that caught my attention about what changed for you is there is a perspective shift there. We talk a lot about coaching being perspective work. And so moving from this perspective of punishment, and there’s something wrong with my body that I need to fix. To this can be joyful. This can be a celebration.This can be about what my body can do, which by the way, has become a huge source of motivation for me as well. My first kickboxing class, I was gassed before the warmup was over. I couldn’t make it through the warmup, and everyone was so encouraging. Here are these incredibly fit men running circles around me, right, that are all stopping to encourage me. And, yeah, my body can do stuff today, at 40, that I couldn’t do at 20. And that’s an incredible feeling.
So like you, I’ve had a perspective shift from, it’s about how I feel, not necessarily about how I look. I don’t necessarily look like I’m in incredible shape. I too am fat, but I am capable of things today that I wasn’t capable of a year and a half ago before I started doing this. I have physical stamina and energy in ways that I never have in my life, and that feels amazing.
There’s also in that perspective shift, an element of self acceptance of being where you are and being at choice about what’s going to work for me, not from a, what does society say? What does diet culture say? How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to look? But what is the thing that I will do and not attaching to outcomes?
So there’s a journey-thinking in there too, letting go of this isn’t about weight loss. And that was there for me too. It was about not gaining weight, hopefully, right? If I add exercise where there is none exercise, but don’t otherwise stress out about changing anything else. Hopefully I will not gain weight. So yeah, elements of self acceptance and journey-thinking coupled with that perspective shift are what made a huge difference for you.
[00:24:04] Dusty: Yeah, and it’s crazy because like I remember being in that headspace where I felt like exercise was so unsustainable and like it felt completely that I could ever be the kind of person who genuinely enjoyed body movement. And I would say, I feel like I am my own huge success story because I do feel like that now, like for me going to the gym and I do, I just like to go to the gym.I mostly do like strength training. That’s my thing. I do a little bit of cardio and I do a lot of yoga and I’m like, I’m at the point where I’m very good at yoga. Like I’m really flexible. I can do, you know, balance things. things, which feels great. And I find yoga again for ADHD mindfulness. It’s very helpful for me. I try to do it as often as I can because it really slows my fast brain down.
But with weightlifting and stuff I do, I would say in the last year and a half. So I went about a year and a half working out really consistently. And then when my mom passed away, I fell off the wagon and I moved. And because I was in a new context, like new town, didn’t know where the gym was. There wasn’t like a class like there, like I had before that led me. I had to go to the gym and, you know, like we talked about early in this episode, got totally overwhelmed. So I lost a lot of ground and I had to kind of get it back.
But in this last year, I would say that there’s only been maybe two or three weeks in the last year that I haven’t, that I’ve worked out once or not at all. So you know, in this last year, it’s like really rare that I won’t work out a minimum of two times a week. And here’s the thing, dear listeners, please know, there was a point at which I was working out six days a week. And And that kind of thing.
And I’ve done stuff like tracked calories, and my weight never really changes more than five to 10 pounds in either direction. I, my physical body in terms of like my weight and my size, has really not changed at all. Certainly things have shifted cause I’m way more muscular than I used to be now cause I’m like super strong.
But I’m still fat and my weight is approximately still what it was. Whether I did that. Nothing and I ate, you know, whatever, or I do a bunch of movement and I, you know, I’ve made steady changes to my diet that make me feel good. That make me feel healthy, but I’m not trying to restrict or participate in diet culture.
And my body has not changed weight wise. Here’s the thing though I’m much stronger. Like I, it’s funny. My boyfriend calls it man lifting. He’s have you been man lifting again? I can pick up a dude who weighs 230 pounds, fireman, carry him over my shoulders and squat with him on my back.
Like I can do that. I’m so strong. My daughter’s almost seven. I can still carry her around with one arm. And the crazy thing is, Asher, is that my body dysmorphia, when I’m working out, when I’m strong, even though my size has not changed, my body dysmorphia is gone. Like, when I look in the mirror, I literally look different to myself than when I’m, like, not working out.
And I think it’s because I know I’m doing everything I can, right? Is there more that I could do if I wanted to make myself smaller? Probably. But it would probably result in me being, like, hungry and grumpy and you know, It would be really challenging for me to make more drastic changes to my diet that would result in having a smaller body.
But I also just don’t feel like it’s important anymore because like I’m doing all this stuff. It feels good. I’m genuinely enjoying it. I feel stronger. And so I’m satisfied, right? And I know that I’m doing everything I can and I think that’s why when I look in the mirror, I struggle less with like how I look.
[00:27:22] Ash: Listeners, do you hear how in both my case and in Dusty’s, the exercise itself kind of became the reward? When Cam and I have talked about self care on this show before, and when we taught our self care group coaching class, the way we define self care is just is distinct from taking care of yourself, meaning brushing your teeth, hygiene, exercise, eating well.These are all really hard things with ADHD, but that’s not what we mean when we say self care. We mean what puts something back in the tank for you, what gives you energy, what makes you feel better about yourself or about your life. And those are the things we tend to put off and not make time for as people with ADHD.
I would have never thought that I would consider exercise to be self care under that definition of self care. Sure, it’s taking care of myself and my body, but it’s never going to be something I enjoy in and of itself. And now I absolutely consider it to be that. I can tell how different I feel when my consistency drops below a certain point.
And like you, that doesn’t necessarily mean six days a week, but it certainly means two to three. If I’m not there, I physically feel more sluggish. I can feel the lack of executive function. I can feel lower energy. And so it really is – and don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s still hard to get up in the morning and go, and sometimes I choose the cozy bed, especially right now. It’s, we’re coming into fall, the house is open, right? So it’s nice and cool in my house in the morning. So it’s really easy to want to just snuggle back up under the covers and get another hour or two of sleep rather than going to the gym.
But the difference now is there’s this body of evidence. Right? Like finding a place where you can start and finding enough consistency in something, you start to feel different. That’s the place in which it becomes its own motivation. There’s new evidence there that I’ve never had before in my life.
And that now is the positive motivation more often than not that gets me out the door. Not always. Sometimes it’s still my coach texting me and maybe laying on a little guilt trip if it’s really been too long. But more often than not, I’m able to self motivate for that in ways that I couldn’t before.
[00:30:03] Dusty: I know that’s so trippy, right? Like I said earlier that it’s rare in this past year that I don’t exercise like multiple times a week. And a couple weeks ago I went to the gym four times, and then there were two straight weeks where I didn’t work out at all because it was the end of summer and then the beginning of school.And so I’m like in that phase right now where like last week I think I only worked out once. But the thing is, here’s the difference, is that I don’t feel like Oh no, like I lost my streak. I’m back at the beginning. I have to build it all up from the beginning. I have a confidence in myself. I’m like, oh, whatever. That’s not a big deal because I know I’ll go two or three times this week.
I don’t feel like it’s all crumbled, right? Which is, you know, we get in that cycle so often. We like kind of get a, we get momentum going and then we lose it. And then we’re like, ah, like I actually trust in myself. I know that this is part of my lifestyle, and this is part of who I am. And it’s oh, it was just a couple of weeks where I didn’t go. It doesn’t mean, Oh no, the other shoe has dropped.
And that for me is like the huge thing because all the stopping and starting over the years with fitness, it always felt like I could never gain any ground. And yeah, I just have that trust in myself. Right. Which is like really huge.
[00:31:07] Ash: So listeners, what’s the opportunity here? We’ve talked about a few things self acceptance and journey-thinking, right? What’s the perspective shift that you need? How can you detach from Outcome. And maybe just start to think about what’s the thing that I will do. What’s the thing that I want to try to see if it’s something that I will like? What’s the thing that I could start to build some consistency around?And Dusty and I have very different stories and very different journeys there. I needed someone else to tell me exactly what to do and still need that. And needed the novelty that comes from a sport like kickboxing. That’s what works for me. Dusty needed variety, just the ability to be at choice, right? Here are seven different things I could do in these seven days, and I don’t have to do all of them, but any one of them is a win.
So, and remember, at the end of the day, we call it practice for a reason. So try something on. And even if it turns out not to be your thing, like running was not my thing. I really thought running was going to be my thing. I have so many friends that are runners who have ADHD, who talk about that runner’s high, who talk about what it does for them. I have never gotten a runner’s high, not once in my life. I think it is so incredibly boring. But I know that because I put enough time into it to know that it wasn’t for me.
So think of it like an experiment. You don’t have to be attached to finding the thing. How about just try some things? and see what you find that you might be interested in, cultivating a little more consistency around, without attaching to anything else, without changing your diet, without worrying about what it will do for your physical appearance.
[00:32:59] Dusty: Yes, certainly running. I’m built for comfort, not for speed. And I just wanted to say a quick sidebar – I don’t want to make it sound like I didn’t need external accountability. I want to just give a quick shout out. I do have a coach that I work with, and much like your coach, he’s really on. He gives me a lot of accountability. Right?Because I know how to do stuff at the gym. What I need is someone to care about whether or not I go. And when we were first working together, he kept trying to say, what are your goals? What are your goals? You know, is it weight loss? Is it strength gains? And I said, honestly, it’s consistency. And I felt like at first he was a little confused, but now that he’s been working with me for a while, he gets it.
He sees that it is hard for me to just be consistent. And if I can just stay consistent, that in and of itself is such a victory. And so again, for me as well, Asher, like having that person who’s going to like, be like, Hey, that external structure. That’s the, that definitely I need that too.
[00:33:50] Ash: Right. I think this is a good place for us to wrap for today, Dusty. So listeners until next week, I’m Ash. [00:33:57] Dusty: I’m Dusty. [00:33:58] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
