Exercise? Just do it. Forget what you look like

A ILMOST half of us say we’ve gained weight during lockdown, and I am among that hungry half. It’s not rocket science how I put it on (hint: pastry) but getting it off is more complex. know what I have to do (eat better, move more) but when it comes to the moving part there’s a gremlin in my head. It tells me exercise isn’t “my thing”, that I will fail, that somehow whatever I’m doing, I’m doing it wrong.

I always thought of exercise as punishment — a way to atone for the sin of eating — it was always a man with a nice body and mean face yelling at me in a boxing class, or the self-inflicted torture of comparing myself to the girl effortlessly doing burpees at the gym next to me. So I felt bad when I was exercising, and bad when I wasn’t (I still have the lingering guilt of one very expensive annual gym membership that I used twice — and once was just for the steam room). Slowly though, through working out, I’ve worked out what I like (walking, jogging at my own pace and rebounding, which is the fancy term for jumping up and down and looking very silly on a mini-trampoline.

But see, here’s the thing — what you look like when you exercise is of zero importance. When I run in the summer, my fingers swell up like sausages, my face turns to what an ex-boyfriend once described as a shade of ‘nuclear’ red. When I’m done, I look like an angry root vegetable that should have stayed buried. But none of that matters because I feel good. Exercise has become so commodified you do not need a single thing to do it — not a Stella McCartney x Adidas sports bra designed for women with no breasts, not €98 Lululemon leggings, an Apple watch or a gym subscription — all you need is you, oh and a pinch of not giving a f *ck what anyone else thinks helps too.