Exercise and (my) mental health - part one

part one: my personal history with exercise

Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't kill their husbands. They just don't.

yes, this is the first thing that came to my mind right after the title. i remember seeing this quote as a gifset on a fitblr in circa 2013. and i will be perfectly honest, firblrs motivated me to start running, even though i hated it. i was 14 when i first signed up for an orienteering race - but let's not get too carried away.

i wanted to write everything here, but it got long, so this is gonna be a series.

we know how kids move a lot. i did, too. i think it stopped once i went into 5th grade, and we got a specialised gym teacher. he was very oldschool, always wore a tracksuit, and had the weirdest rules ever. we needed to change for this class. i'd never been required to change clothes in school. sometimes i'd forget. we would leave the shoes in our classroom, so there was less to carry. i distinctly remember a class when i wasn't wearing a bra, because my boobs had just started growing and i only had one, fancy lace bra which i didn't wear often, and how i feel like having stretch marks on my boobs started on that day.

this teacher would test our fitness in different, torturous ways. i would fail at them, despite going to ballet classes by that time. i could not run gor 2 minutes straight. i hated being in a line organized by our height, separated into boys and girls. i could not jump as far as he required. i could not run fast. i could not jump over a vault. i only did floor "gymnastics" and not even all of the exercises that were required of us.

ballet on the other hand was lovely. hard, but lovely. in my group, i was the oldest, the fattest and the least flexible, and to be perfectly honest it did bother me a bit, but did not inhibit me from doing all the exercises we were required to. to balance out my perceived incompetence, i would memorise all the names for all the exercises. the longer and more french, the better. my memory was far better than my backbends.

it was also in ballet that i got really strong arms - you are required to use them and to keep them high, so that's logical. which led to me dominating the one gym class evaluation i could: pushups. girls had to do 7, boys had to do 10, and i could do 15 easily. there were other evaluations though, which i do not recall fondly at all. i remember being made to run, continuously, for 2 minutes, in the line organised by our height (so we had to keep pace with each other). i simply couldnt. and whenever i stopped, so did the timer, and we all had to start again. i wonder how i wasn't crying. i was so sure each of my classmates hated me, after all, they could probably do it, and there i was, the incompetent one, messing it up for all of us.

on another day, we had a test for leaps. you had to have a specified length for your leap, and that was the top mark, and then the teacher would calculate backwards towards the failing grade. i barely passed. or maybe i failed. i was so ashamed. and then the teacher stood up to the chalk markings he was using to grade us, did the warmup movement and leapt, far far away. it honestly was like watching a frog, tiny creature, leap off a leaf and disappear into the darkness of the forest. i did say this out loud, "like a frog". apparently, that was not a compliment. he came up to me and hugged me sideways, over the shoulders - i'd never felt so fucking tiny and yet highlighted - and said that we had to do the jumps, despite my insulting remarks. i was shocked, i couldn't even try to explain how i was meaning that as a compliment.

sometimes we would have to change in our classroom, boys and girls together. i don't know how this was allowed, i was so anxious.

sometimes we would have to sacrifice our longest, 20 minute break for a walk to the other school building, uphill and across traffic, where there was an actual building with basketball (and other) courts. and then we'd be late for whichever class followed gym.

so it is safe to say i hated it all. all the running tests, all the feeling weakest of my class, all the tininess and incompetence i'd feel in each cell of my body.

so, how did it change? well, it took long.

i signed up for a program with my math teacher, that was ultimately cancelled and thus we got a trip, for the money we'd already paid, to the Balaton. of course, i wanted to go. and all the ridiculousness aside, i loved it, i recall it with such fondness! one of the things i really liked about the place we were visiting, was that there were different things to buy, for tourists, all of them shiny. they had earrings, kitschy souvenirs, ice cream dots and glitter tattoos. i desperately wanted a glitter tattoo, it was basically lash glue and glitter, and i really needed something to make me feel shiny. i'd recently had half of my thyroid removed, had to give up ballet for the healing process (and decided to leave for good, to hopefully not be bullied in my new class, from 9th grade onwards). i could not get the shiny tattoo, but one day, there was a zumba class, just there in the wild, for anyone to join. our group was standing and staring, for some reason, and i'm just now realizing that i don't recall what actually happened. did i jump in and have a good as hell time, dancing and shaking my nonexistent ass with strangers? or did i just stare on longingly, wanting to try some new type of exercise for the first time in history?

i do think it was the first, because i was obsessed with zumba for the following months. as i was returning from this trip, i got dropped off at my grandparents, and, 14 and lost, i was trying to find some sort of exercise (hopefully zumba, but they wouldn't know what that was). i was told about orienteering, my grandfather's hobby, and while i was absolutely not interested, i did sign up for a race, because i wanted to run, because i wanted to get thin. i didn't, but found orienteering interesting enough that i still participate.

it was then that i realised, i didn't really suck at running, at least, not in the forest and on my own time.

when school started, i went to a few zumba classes with three girls from my new class, and i don't remember why i stopped, but possibly i was feeling inadequate.

and, through weheartit, i found tumblr, with all the thin and fit and inspirational corners of it. i would go out to run on a track near my house, it was 800 meters that i could do in total, then i'd trick myself into running more, but i hated it. i took music with me, had a few songs that really made me fly for a few seconds and then i'd realize how out of breath i was. then i was bored of the track and would run in the town, on a route carefully fragmented by pedestrian crossings, which was just as hard.

why did i run when i hated it? i thought that was what everyone did to lose weight.

but i also did butt exercises, that i was also finding on tumblr. i remember doing squats in my room at night, then my mother opening the door one night, to see what the fuck i was up to. i did try to exercise, but only in my room, because where else would i be able to? a gym membership at 15 did not cross my mind, despite having read various times that women should lift weights as well, that we should stop being terrified of weights, of the gym, of getting bulky. i just didnt. well, in fact, i didn't get a gym membership until i was 20.

i came away for uni, and fell instantly in love with Krav Maga. for years, any other training i did, was intended to be an accessory to it, and it continues to be the love of my life.

i got my first gym membership with my university swimming pool, which gave me access to the pool and a small weights room, where i was absolutely out of my element. i do miss swimming, though. this covid thing has me absolutely disgusted of ever swimming again.

in 2018, i went home for xmas. my father and brother were training to run 10k in april of 2019, and for two weeks, not only did i accompany them to the gym, i went each day while home.

it was on a day of all three of us training together, that i completed a day of c25k and felt absolutely delighted. in that moment, i loved running - but i also couldn't understand, why i'd tortured myself for five years with it, given that only then did i love it. the rest, really, is history, because ever since then, whenever i run or do any sort of cardio, my brain immediately lights up. it's like fireworks going off inside my skull. you've probably seen fitness advice/memes telling you that working out is easy, actually eating well is diffiult, and this is exactly the reason why. when you work out, you'll enjoy it in ways you can't really explain, especially to your earlier self, who hated exercise.

because it's still the same thing: your muscles are burning, you're out of breath, pulse through the roof, face redder than tomatoes, and you, for some absolutely incredible reason, are enjoying it. you are willing to pay for it and are planning on doing the same thing the next day, week, year...