I Was a Personal Trainer That Hated Working Out

Image by Victor Freitas

I was around 12 years old when a family member commented on my weight. It completely turned my life upside down. I started obsessing over my appearance, the food I ate and I felt obligated to exercise to burn calories. Yes, even at 12 years old.

Trips at the park or walks with my family were no longer about having fun, they were about the calories burned.

When I was in high school, I used to do workouts on YouTube or Jillian Michaels DVD’s after school. I used to have a specific plan: Monday I’m doing a HIIT workout, Tuesday I’m doing an upper body workout, Wednesday is core… you get the point. If I went astray from that schedule I was ridden with guilt and it messed up the rest of my week.

Fortunately, I found a YouTube channel that I used religiously that wasn’t too ridden with diet culture which probably avoided an even worse relationship with exercise. That channel actually taught me a lot about exercise, good form and helped my love for exercise flourish.

Speaking of loving exercise… I’ve never been good at team sports and didn’t particularly like them. I played soccer and basketball when I was younger but quickly realized that team sports aren’t my thing. However, when I look back, I realize that I did pretty well in my swimming lessons and in track and field. Also, when I started exercising using YouTube videos or when we used the weight machines in our school gym for PE, I finally found a way to exercise that I felt comfortable doing and that I actually enjoyed. Clearly, individual sports are more my thing!

At this point, I absolutely loved anything involving nutrition and exercise. My goal in life was — and still is — to become a personal trainer (achieved), fitness instructor (achieved) and a registered dietitian (ongoing dream). So, when I was in university, I started working in a gym as a front desk employee. That’s when I dived deeper into the world of fitness, a world I had never explored through the workout videos I did at home.

I found out about bodybuilding, Powerlifting, strongman, CrossFit, you name it. The most present crowd in that gym was the bodybuilders. Even though I was a bit mesmerized by the bodybuilding world, the sport never appealed to me and seemed too extreme, even though my habits were intense in their own way. I did get greatly influenced by their diet talk and workout habits though.

I had wanted to work as a personal trainer since I started doing those YouTube workouts and those Jillian Michaels DVD’s. She was actually a role model of mine and I aspired to be like her. So a year after getting my job at the gym, I signed up for a personal training course.

Two months after completing my personal training course, I started working at another gym as a personal trainer (the first gym I worked at didn’t hire any trainers). I also became a fitness instructor with the help of my amazing boss five months after starting my job at this new gym. Exercise was a huge part of my life, and I loved it.

A few months before starting my job as a personal trainer, I started following a lot of body image accounts on social media and I slowly started working on my body image issues. A year later, I found Intuitive Eating, the Health At Every Size movement and the Anti-Diet movement. After a lot of time reading, researching and self-work, I stopped dieting for good (even though I told myself I wasn’t dieting before) and slowly started working on healing my relationship with food, exercise and my body.

For some reason, I always focused more on my relationship with my body and food and I always kind of put my relationship with exercise aside until I found myself not wanting to workout anymore. Working out had become completely unappealing to me and I only realized why a few weeks ago. I only ever knew how to workout for the purpose of burning calories and changing my body — even at 12 years old. So when I stopped dieting and stopped wanting to change my body, exercise lost its interest for me. Especially resistance training as I associated it the most to dieting and body composition goals. It used to be my favorite way to move but I quickly started dreading it.

I never really associated my distaste towards exercise with my new outlook on dieting. I always assumed I was being “lazy” or “unmotivated” and frankly it left me feeling like a fraud. How could a personal trainer not want to workout anymore? How can I encourage my clients to move if I don’t feel like moving?

That guilt made the process of healing my relationship with exercise a lot harder. It probably would of been a smoother ride, if I had allowed myself full permission to rest and only move if I wanted to instead of feeling guilty and sometimes forcing myself to exercise, which absolutely did not make working out more appealing to me.

After a while, I gave myself permission to not move. When I finally felt like moving, I got too excited and started setting performance goals right away. I always loved setting performance goals, they were always my favorite goals to strive for. However, at this point, it was too soon and it made me want to move even less than before. As they say, I took one step forward and two steps back. I did this a few times. When I felt like moving, I would set yet another performance goal and I would take a couple of steps back.

In January this year I set a goal of doing a pistol squat and I accomplished that goal. My next plan was to perfect technique but I quickly lost interest. It’s still something I plan on working on eventually, but it’s clearly wasn’t a good time in this part of my journey with exercise.

Last week, I set a running goal for myself because the nice weather has inspired me to run again. I used to love running, I was in track and field in high school running mid-distances and running once or twice a week regularly. That’s until I signed up for a half-marathon 3 years ago, and running became a chore. I didn’t train properly for the race and the experience didn’t leave me wanting more. I stopped running completely after that and would only go on runs on rare occasions.

This time, I am taking a different approach. I am setting a very small goal for myself and I am listening to my body. If I don’t feel like running, I’m not running. I want to start setting performance goals and loving the process like I used to. I want to love exercise again.

I actually started doing exercises I used to label as “not intense enough” (and typically avoided for that reason) like yoga and walking and exploring new ways to move my body without any pressure to move if I don’t want to. I am listening to my body. I move when I want, how I want. No pressure whatsoever. It has tremendously improved my relationship with exercise. This is a big step in the right direction. I find exercise enjoyable now.

I still need to tread carefully with my fitness goals, be patient with myself and continue to listen to my body. This is a lengthy process full of ups and downs but it’s so worth it.

I actually was inspired to write this article after making an Instagram post that shed light on my relationship with exercise. I realized that a lot of people went through or were going through something similar. Funny enough, I never really saw anyone talk about their experience with exercise after jumping on the anti-diet bandwagon except a couple of posts that actually allowed me to put words to what I was going through. By sharing more posts about my relationship with exercise and my journey as it continues as well as sharing this article, I’m hoping to make people realize that they are not alone if they are having a hard time with movement after they stop dieting. It doesn’t make you a failure.

From personal experience, I can tell you that once you stop putting pressure on yourself to move, your body tends to naturally tell you that it wants to move.

You don’t have to set performance goals or any fitness goals if you don’t want to but you can if that’s your jam! Taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking your car further away are great ways to stay active. You can also explore different ways to move your body whether that’s pilates, kickboxing, hiking, yoga, dancing, etc. Let’s find the joy in moving – while also acknowledging that movement won’t always be fun but we may choose to do it because it’ll make us feel good after. Moving your body should come from a place of self-respect and self-care. It shouldn’t come from a place of self-hate.

If you’re working on your own relationship with exercise, I am sending so much love your way and I hope you will treat yourself with kindness through all these ups and downs. You’re not alone!