Is your workout fitness or binging?

Being disconnected from your bodies can cause you to overeat. This disconnection from your bodies is what can cause you to gain large amounts of weight without noticing. Interestingly enough this same disconnection can exist with exercise especially exercise that is fueled by fear and obsession.Many of my clients have dirty secrets when it comes to exercise. I did too. Instead of using exercise as a fierce gift to connect to your body and move in a way that is healthy, empowering and sustainable, many of us use it as a tool to punish/make-up for overeating or overdrinking, to lose weight quickly, or to combat a fear of gaining weight. Essentially, we try to “take” what we can get from exercise rather than view it as a " fierce gift” we give ourselves.It is a form of bulimia and I definitely had this condition when I was in my early-20s. I would go out with friends and have way too many beers and then binge on very unhealthy food. Because of my pride, I would spend hours the following day exercising in fear of gaining weight. This would lead to very negative feelings about my body and how I was abusing it. I remember once riding a stationary bike for 4 hours while hungover. So I would have to stop to vomit and then get back on the bike. Gross and nuts! I obviously had many emotional issues that contributed, but these bad habits can quickly get out of control even without hardcore emotional baggage. And I want you to benefit from my mistakes and lessons learned by helping you see how to use exercise for health and well being not punishment or shame.When we are in the mode of taking from exercise, we typically engage in workouts that we don’t enjoy, that are painful, and ultimately, we don’t stick with it. Many clients get so discouraged when they sign up for several hard-core workouts a week and don’t see the scale budging and ultimately quit. So, forget exercise to lose weight! I'm not kidding.  Do not do it for the fat loss because I can guarantee you, you are sure to be disappointed.  Weight loss is achieved through a majority of FUEL eating, healthy stress management, and sleep, but only 10-20% through exercise. Working out shouldn’t be used for weight loss. It should be used for the pleasure and empowerment it provides in and of itself.If you are someone that has been using exercise in an obsessive way at the expense of your own social life, or in a way that sometimes hurts your body, know that that obsession is a habit it is own right and can be undone. The goal is to stop fighting against your body. Try living in cooperation with it. You want to develop a safe and intimate relationship with your body so that you have very little desire to mistreat it.One of the obvious reasons to be careful with binge exercising is it can quickly lead to injury. An injury can set you back weeks or months. Fighting against what your body is "happy" doing is a sure-fire set up for failure.  If your body is saying "NO!" and you aren't listening, your body will have the last word one way or another.What I recommend instead is to find an exercise that you love, something that will entice you to stick with it. Yoga alone in your basement long walks with your dog, that spin class with killer music. There are so many options now, try them out and find that one that feeds your mind, body, and soul. I am currently rotating 3 workouts that I am absolutely in love with. I truly look forward to them and feel something is missing without them. Afterward, I feel invigorated and ready to take on absolutely anything. THAT is what you are going for. Not pinching your abs after feeling like hell abusing yourself on a treadmill for an hour and STILL feeling you did not do enough. The best result you can get from working out is the development of a habit you can use to connect with your body and relieve stress.Give yourself the fierce gift of exercise and take what you need from coaching to develop that amazing relationship with body and with food. I can totally teach you how to deal with your emotions without turning to food or obsessive exercise. I can also introduce you to exercises that literally GO ANYWHERE and can be done in as much time as you have. This is called CIRCUIT WORKOUTS: A set of moves are done that can be repeated as much as you want. The beauty of CIRCUIT WORKOUTS is that you can keep tally of the number of sets you accomplish and feel far less as if you "didn't finish". This will naturally lend itself to permanent weight loss and consistent exercise for the right reason. To learn more go to, please reach out to me.