Creating Your Own Joyful, Intuitive Movement Practice
Has there ever been a time that you moved your body in a way that felt good? Maybe it was playing tag as a kid, going on a hike in college with friends, running around the backyard with your kids, that yoga class you took at a brewery a few years back, or that fitness class where the instructor played all your favorite songs and you got in a good sweat session.
In diet culture, exercise is often used as a means for body manipulation - to work off all those calories you ate or ensure that your body size doesn’t change. Exercise can also be used as punishment and something you should do if you want to be ‘healthy’. (Remember, there are so many social determinants of health, even though diet culture would like you to believe that exercise is one of the only 3, along with eating healthy and getting enough sleep!).
Movement and exercise can be enjoyable and used for more than body manipulation. They can be used for play, self-care, for heart health benefits, and more. Today, we are talking about intuitive, joyful movement, including what it is, how it’s different than diet culture fitness, and how you can start practicing it!
Joyful, Intuitive Movement 101
There is no one set definition of joyful, intuitive movement, but similar to Intuitive Eating, it focuses on tuning in and connecting with your body when it comes to the type and duration of movement or exercises your body wants. Joyful, intuitive movement aims to remove guilt, shame, rules, punishment, and body manipulation and replace it with pleasure, joy, intuition, and freedom. It comes from a place of self-care rather than self-control.
The cool thing about joyful, intuitive movement is that it is unique to you and can look like whatever feels joyful and supportive to you and your body. The best part is that it's for ALL BODIES. All sizes. All shapes. All abilities.
The Difference Between Diet Culture Fitness and Joyful, Intuitive Movement
Two big differences between joyful, intuitive movement and diet culture fitness are your mindset and intention. With joyful, intuitive movement there is a shift in WHY you move your body, how you move it, and how the movement makes you feel.
Joyful, Intuitive Movement
tuning into your body and what it needs
lack of guilt + shame
workout because it feels good + is fun
workout as a form of self-care
Diet Culture Fitness
never missing a Monday
you only regret the workouts you miss
crush your goals
no excuses
workout to eat what you want
burn calories
workout until you puke
no pain, no gain
workout to lose weight
workout to get the body you want/to fit into old clothes
lack of rest days/rest days met with guilt + shame
Exercise versus Movement
One component of joyful, intuitive movement is understanding the difference between exercise and movement. I like to think of movement as those things you do on a daily basis to move your body, like walking, mobility, and stretching. Exercise tends to be a bit more structured and the intention might be to raise your heart rate. Understanding the difference between exercise and movement and how they can work together is a key concept for embracing and creating your own intuitive movement practice.
Barriers to Creating Your Own Joyful, Intuitive Movement Practice
#1: The pursuit of intentional weight loss
With intuitive eating, the first step is to be aware that the pursuit of intentional weight loss will make intuitive eating incredibly difficult. That’s because the pursuit is counterintuitive to the intuitive eating process. It’s okay to still have the desire to lose weight and live in a smaller body and is actually very common.
The same is true with your intuitive movement practice. Workouts alone will not likely produce long term-weight loss results, especially not without an excess of rules and rigidity. Putting the pursuit of weight loss on the back burner will aid in helping you feel more comfortable testing out movement and exercise options that feel good and supportive.
#2: Focusing on rigidity and rules.
Approaching exercise and joyful, intuitive movement with rules and rigidity do not leave space for exploration, increasing interoceptive awareness, or understanding what you prefer and enjoy. Without rules and rigidity, you can be more open to figuring out how many days per week, what type of movement, and the duration that feels best for YOU. It also allows you to observe what changes need to be made based on your season of life, including how sickness, stress, and travel play a role in how you approach and engage with movement and exercise.
You might be really uncomfortable with the lack of structure that ditching rules and rigidity might provide. Explore why structure is important to you and consider planning for 1 rest or unstructured workout day each week, then increase as you feel more comfortable.
#3: Lack of rest days or fear of rest days.
Magic happens when you rest. Take lifting weights, for example, you are literally tearing down your muscles. You need rest in order to build those muscles back up stronger. The same goes for you. More is not always better. And rest is always necessary. If taking rest days are difficult for you, explore why. And as with ditching rules and rigidity, start with 1-2 rest days and see how you feel. It’s important to have a couple of rest days per week that include full-on rest from intense movement. To start, maybe you test out going on a walk or doing light stretching, then increasing as you feel more comfortable.
How to Create Your Own Joyful, Intuitive Movement Practice
Creating your own joyful, intuitive movement practice can be really fun and rewarding. It can also be really difficult and uncomfortable. Utilize the journaling prompts below, explore push-back, and consider discussing how you feel with your mental health provider or coach.
#1: Get Curious.
Start off by checking in on some of the journaling prompts below to see what new insights about exercise and working out you gain!
Why is working out/moving your body important to you?
Do you have goals you are working toward? What are they?
What diet culture rules are playing on repeat in your head that are keeping you stuck? Are these rules actually true? Who told you that? What happens if you break the rule?
A lot of times, we will read or hear these different fitness rules, assume it’s a universal truth and therefore true for us. Part of this process is finding what’s true for you and that might not include all those rules you’ve been following. It’s also really important to be aware of the rules /stories you are believing about working out and moving, and how those keep you from fully embracing joyful, intuitive movement.
#2: Do What You Enjoy
Next, figure out what you actually enjoy. When working with clients that leave diet culture fitness, some do a complete overhaul of their movement routine, switching cardio for lifting or HIIT workouts for yoga sessions. If you enjoy what you are doing already, but need to do some work around your mindset + rigidity, keep doing what you enjoy. If you DO NOT enjoy what you are doing, now is a great time to change it up. Regardless of where you fall, take some time to answer the journal prompts below and take a peek at possible movement options!
What activities do you enjoy?
What activities make you happy?
What activities are you interested in trying out?
What do you have access to?
#3: Check Your Schedule
In diet culture, maybe you worked out every single day, for 60+ minutes. Whatever your diet culture schedule was, consider tweaking it up. It's okay if your schedule isn't consistent to start and/or if it has no structured workout days with shorter amounts of movement a few days per week. The goal here is to find a way to fit exercise/movement into your life rather than scheduling your life around fitness. Remember, this is about YOU and needs to work for YOU.
#3: Observe, Test, and Tweak.
Add your selected activities to your schedule and enjoy. It is possible that old diet culture stories/rules will pop up before/during/after your workout/movement session. It's okay and normal.
It's important to tune into how you feel with the different movements/workouts you do and test out. If things do not feel okay, it's totally cool to stop and move on to another activity, another day. Sometimes a workout or activity sounds great, but once you get started, you realize you aren’t feeling it. If you want to do something else, go for it. If you don’t want to do the workout, don’t do it. You are in charge. Have fun. Play with things. Test stuff out. Take the pressure off. And do not be afraid to tweak.
OPTIONAL: Consider using a paper movement tracker.
If tracking things is triggering, please feel free to skip this step. A paper movement tracker is useful when starting your joyful, intuitive movement journey as a way to keep track of how different forms of movement make you feel. I like to go simple by writing down what type of movement/exercise I did, how the activity felt (great to start, then not so great!), and then how I felt about the activity (it was great for when I’m energized, but I was too tired today to fully enjoy it.). A wrist tracker can be helpful as well, but the aim of the paper tracker is to focus on the feelings.
Final Thoughts
Creating your own joyful, intuitive movement practice is a powerful way to reclaim exercise and movement for yourself after years of doing things by diet culture’s rules. If you wonder whether what you are doing for exercise/movement is enough, know that enough will look different for everyone. If the activity you do makes you feel good, it’s enjoyable and it’s what your body is feeling, that can be enough.
It’s possible that you will experience body grief as you reclaim your relationship with movement and exercise. Know that it’s normal. Check out our previous blog posts to learn more about body grief and how to handle tough body image days.
We hope this post has been helpful and gives you some insights into how to create your own intuitive movement practice!
Collaborative Counseling & Nutrition is an outpatient nutrition and body image counseling center, with locations in Indianapolis and Carmel, that provides compassionate, holistic eating disorder treatment. Through practicing mindfulness, intuition, and Health At Every Size, we are on a mission to help you find a true state of well-being! We take an anti-diet, weight-inclusive approach with all our clients and work to help guide you towards a way of healthy living designed by you, just for you! This post is for education purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for treatment for an eating disorder. If you are looking for a registered dietitian or therapist to assist you on your recovery journey, please reach out today!
