I saw a meme this past weekend about a study: negative experiences in P.E. class can build a resistance to physical activity that lasts a lifetime. And I’m pretty sure nothing has ever felt truer to me than that.
I hated P.E. as a kid and teen. From having to change clothes in front of other people, to mean P.E. teachers and meaner kids who mocked my weight and my total lack of athletic ability, I never had a positive experience in that class other than meeting my friend Renée in fifth grade. It didn’t help that in the 1980s, we didn’t have many female athletes as role models. There were the tennis stars – Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Tracy Austin – playing what felt like a sport for rich kids, and that was about it. I had friends who played softball, but my single mom didn’t have the interest or the resources to put me in any sport. So, based on all of that, I wrote physical activity off as something I’d never be good at or enjoy. There were athletic people, and there were folks like me. P.E. just reinforced the belief.
It’s About More than “Filling Your Cup”
Then, of course, came the focus on physical activity as the solution for weight loss. Rarely – never? – did anyone suggest that exercise could serve a function bigger than shrinking the human body. I mean, sure, someone probably did, but theirs wasn’t the loudest voice, and I was a full-grown adult before I understood a few things that changed how I experienced physical activity and how I saw my body. I’ve been thinking about those things a lot lately, as I’ve returned to the gym focused on rebuilding strength, not on making myself smaller. (Still, I admit there may always be a voice in my head telling me I’m worthless whenever the scale reads above a certain number.)
And this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you to fill your cup. To carve out some “me time.” To remember that you can’t pour from an empty vessel. I’m not going to do that – partly because you’ve heard it a hundred times, and partly because I think the cup talk lets the actual difficulty off the hook.
Because if you’re a mom – and especially if you’re a new mom, or a mom holding down a job and a household and the mental ledger of who has a dentist appointment when – the problem was never that you didn’t know exercise is good for you. You know. The problem is that the math doesn’t work. There is no spare hour. The cup metaphor assumes there’s a quiet moment in which to fill it, and most days, for you, there isn’t. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
So let me make a different case. Not why you should – you’re drowning in shoulds already – but why this particular thing is worth fighting for, even when fighting for it is one more thing on a list that’s already too long.
Moving Your Body Shouldn’t Feel Like Punishment
Here’s the first thing I learned, and it genuinely surprised me: strength training is fun. The kid who got picked last, who dreaded the locker room – turns out that kid likes lifting heavy things. And it wasn’t just the weights. Walking with a friend, a Zumba class, yoga, an afternoon in the garden – when I stopped keeping score of what each one was burning off and just let myself be in it, I noticed I felt better. Lighter in mood, not on the scale. Happier. The shift was small and it changed everything: I stopped asking what movement was doing to the shape of my body and started noticing what it was doing for the rest of me.
Why Moving Your Body Now Matters
Here’s the second thing I didn’t understand at 25, or 35, and, honestly at 45, I was put so off-kilter by perimenopause I just wanted to survive, but, the body you’re moving (or not moving) right now is the one you’ll be living in for the next several decades. I used to think of exercise as something you did to your body, like a punishment or a correction. I didn’t understand it was something you did for the person you’re going to become. The strength you build in your thirties and forties is, in a real way, a deposit you’re making for the woman in her sixties and seventies who’s going to need it – to stay steady on her feet, to keep doing the things she loves, to stay independent… and yes, maybe even chase around after some grandkids.
That’s the part that’s gotten my attention lately. The thing I’m after in the gym now isn’t a smaller number. It’s the ability to carry my own suitcase up a flight of stairs. To get down on the floor with a child and get back up without making it a whole production. To still be, at 70 and 80, a person who does things rather than a person who used to do things. None of that is vanity. It’s just wanting to stay myself for as long as I can, and slowly understanding that staying myself takes a little tending.
And if you’re reading this and thinking it’s too late for you and that you missed some window back in your twenties when this was supposed to come easily, I need you to hear that you didn’t. I’m starting over in my late fifties. The window isn’t a window. It’s a door, and it’s open every single day, and you get to walk through it whenever you decide to. Late is not the same as too late.
I’d know. I practiced yoga nearly every day for the last 15 years and became certified to teach yoga. Unfortunately, I let the strength training I had done consistently from 2008 until 2016 lapse when I moved to Chattanooga and didn’t have the comfort of a favorite gym. I learned the hard way the impact weakened muscles can have when I had a knee injury last fall. But, here I am, lessons learned and getting back on the strength training horse so I can feel more confident living life in this body for as long as possible. I’ve also added cycling to the mix, taking advantage of Chattanooga’s amazing Riverwalk.
Don’t Just Stand There, Let’s Get to It
But my personal experience isn’t what’s important. Here’s the part that actually matters if you’re doing this on a tight budget and a tighter schedule: starting doesn’t require a membership, a free hour you don’t have, or a single new purchase. It mostly requires picking something that doesn’t feel like punishment, and letting that be enough.
And if you live here in Chattanooga, you are spoiled for nearly-free options. The Tennessee Riverwalk runs about 13 paved miles along the river. Find one day a week to step on for ten minutes or ten miles, push a stroller, walk with a friend, or grab a Bike Chattanooga rental from a station along the way. The city’s Fitness Center at 1254 East 3rd Street, right by the Chattanooga Zoo, is genuinely free for anyone 13 and up: no membership, no monthly bill, just equipment and a full schedule of free group classes if you show up. And there are free outdoor fitness zones tucked into parks all over town, from the Main Terrain beside the Chattanoogan Hotel to St. Elmo, Warner, and Carver parks – open-air strength and stretching stations you can use on a walk you were already taking.
The public indoor pools at Brainerd and South Chattanooga cost only a few dollars with no membership, and South Chattanooga runs open pickleball if you want to try the thing the whole city is suddenly obsessed with. Neighborhood community centers like Shepherd and Washington Hills run daily fitness programming, too. And if a little structure and a friendly face is what gets you out the door, Chattanooga is full of yoga studios, trainers, and small gyms that would be glad to meet a beginner exactly where she is.
So, pick one. Just one. Put it on the calendar like it’s an appointment for someone you love…because it is. Some weeks you’ll keep it and some weeks you won’t, and the weeks you don’t aren’t failure, they’re just being a mom. The only version of this that doesn’t work is the one where a missed week convinces you you’re done.
