Ep. 26 Why Working Out Consistently Is Hard | It's Not About Discipline, It's About Nervous System Regulation

If you've tried and quit every workout routine you've ever started, this isn't a discipline problem. It's a nervous system regulation problem. 

I share the honest story of every movement format that didn't work for my body - including a spin class that ended disgustingly - and what I finally figured out about why. We get into what cortisol actually does, the difference between discomfort that grows you and discomfort that drains you, and why the thing that finally stuck looks nothing like what the fitness industry told me it should. 

Softness isn't weakness. It's strategy.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey, I'm Leslie Turner. I'm a mom, a somatic practitioner, and an intuitive coach. This is the intuitive drop. Short conversations about emotional truth, the nervous system, and living from your intuition in real life without losing your mind along the way. Let's drop in. Hi friends. Welcome to another episode of The Intuitive Drop. I want to tell you about a time that I puked on a bench in a public gym. I was midway through a spin class in a dark room, loud music, the instructor was yelling, strangers everywhere. It was my first time. And my body revolted. I stumbled out of the class, made it to a bench outside, took a couple deep breaths, and puked everywhere. In the gym, in front of everybody. To say I was mortified is a bit of an understatement. And I told myself the thing that I think most of us say, I'm just not a gym person, or I need to toughen up. But what I didn't know then, and what I want to talk about right now, is that my body wasn't being overly dramatic. It was being accurate. So for the last three years, the thing that moved my body consistently wasn't a gym, a class, or a trainer. It was just walking around the woods outside near my house. I was not tracking anything. I did not have specific goals or metrics. It was just me and the trees, whatever I was thinking about that day. And it worked. I loved it. I did it because I wanted to, not because it was specifically scheduled or I had paid for it. Then this past winter happened. The snow got very deep, like really deep on the trails. I tried snowshoeing out there and ended up sitting in a snowbank, sweating my butt off. And the effort was just way more than the joy of it. And so at some point in the winter, I just stopped wanting to be cold, as you do. Totally rational response to a Canadian winter environment. So there I was in January with kind of a gap in my movement routine and a body that was not really interested in doing much. But this wasn't the first time I was trying to fill that gap with something more structured. I hired a trainer who I had known through other circles and I genuinely loved. And I went to her gym with her. And every single time, no matter how motivated I felt going in, my heart rate would spike the moment I walked through the door before I'd done anything, before she had me on a treadmill. Part way through a session, my heart rate got so elevated that I had to excuse myself. I ended up in the bathroom with what I can only think was a full adrenaline response. My body treated that environment like it was a threat. And it wasn't from her. She's wonderful, but because my nervous system had already decided what that gym environment means ever since the spin class, walking into a gym setting signals my body that we need to go and it responds accordingly. We did try and switch my sessions to my deck at my house in the summer, which genuinely helped. I didn't get that huge spike, but you know, costs and logistics made it unsustainable. So then I tried following along with other workout videos and instructors doing online uh weightlifting kind of stuff. And the thing that nobody warns you about is with that format is that without anyone checking your form, you will compensate in ways that your body's not meant to. And you then you try and keep up. You push to match what you're seeing on the screen. And of course, I injured my shoulder and I had to take two months off. And suddenly the consistency I had been building just evaporated. Now, I don't want this to sound like avoid all discomfort and never push yourself, because that's not what I'm saying. I actually did a whole episode on this early on in my podcasting career called An Existential Crisis Over Boots. I'll link it in the show notes. But the short version is this: not all discomfort is created equal. There's discomfort that stretches you, and there's the discomfort that drains you. Growth lives in that first one, and your nervous system pulling the fire alarm, that's the second one. Your body knows the difference, even when your brain is still trying to convince you to push through. Now, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, that's real. That's where the growth happens. But every single session that you're white knuckling, you're dreading the night before, your body's wanting to exit the building is not growth discomfort. That's a threat response. And there's a very big, meaningful difference between those two things. Growth discomfort, you can kind of see it as effort. Your lungs are burning when you're going up a hill. Your muscles are working, you're doing something hard, but feeling very capable on the other side. Maybe you're a little shaky, but you are grounded. The threat discomfort feels like your body's trying to leave. Your heart rate is spiking before you've even moved. You're wanting to disappear. You're puking on a bench. That's not effort. That's that's that fire alarm. And the answer to your fire alarm is not to stand there to try and get used to the heat. The threat response also doesn't mean, though, that your environment is off limits forever. It might mean just not yet. It might mean your nervous system needs to build trust with your body with something gentler before it can tolerate the kind of stimulation without going into overdrive. That's that's not your body being weak. Let me just say that. The other piece to this is cortisol. So let's talk about cortisol because I think most of us have heard the word and kind of know that on some level it's bad, um, but it's not fully connected to what is happening in the body. So cortisol, well, let me get inerdic here for a second, is your primary stress hormone. Your body releases it when there is a perceived threat. It could be a threat of a deadline, a hard conversation, a dark spin class with a yelling instructor or a bank balance that's stressing you out. Your body does not distinguish between those things. Stress is stress. The signal is still the same. But in short bursts, cortisol is actually really useful. It gets you up in the morning, it gets you moving, sharpens your focus, helps you respond to what's in front of you. The problem is when it becomes chronic, when that signal never fully turns off. Chronically elevated cortisol tells your body to hold on to fat, particularly around your midsection and your hips and uh actually the back of your arms. It disrupts your hormones. It drives that systemic inflammation, which means that you are going to have more joint pain, you are going to have a slower recovery, poor sleep, and an immune system that's working overtime. It tanks your energy, even when you're technically doing all of the healthy things. So if you are already running high cortisol, as most of the women I work with are, because they're running businesses, raising kids, managing everything, doing it all, and you add a workout format that your nervous system reads as threatening, you are actually not lowering your cortisol. You're adding to it. You are pouring more into a bucket that's already full. And that's not a net positive for your health. It just looks like one on the calendar. Now, movement is genuinely good for regulating the nervous system. Exercise does lower cortisol when it's the right kind, at the right intensity, in the right environment for your body. Only you will know this. The key word, though, is regulation. Movement that regulates you is medicine. Movement that dysregulates you is just more stress, more pressure, wearing cute workout clothes. So back to January. I was cold, it was cold outside, I was not walking, not going to a gym, and I thought there's gotta be a way to increase my movement, increase my step count, maybe something on YouTube. Free, flexible, no commute, no obligation to show up at a specific time. And then I found this one guy, Get Fit with Rick. He had step workouts and not like step-on-a-platform workouts, more just dance-based step cardio things with knee-ups punches, little dance moves, fast walking sequences. And yeah, I know it might have looked ridiculous from the outside, but I love it. And the difference about doing a YouTube video versus gym exercise, doing it at home is I show up whenever I want. I pause it when I need to. I show up in any specific clothing that I want. Sometimes that is not a good look for me. Um, pausing it is actually kind of important because uh apparently my body likes to handle its business in the morning, and that's fine. That's fine because no one else is watching or keeping track of this. No one is pushing me to go harder necessarily, except for Rick. No one is there to compare myself to. That's kind of key for me specifically. If I modify something or I do it wrong or I need to take a break, the stakes are zero. My heart rate only goes up when I'm actually working out, not because the room is overstimulating or because someone else's energy is raising mine. This is not an optimized fitness program. I'm probably someone at my age specifically who should be doing more weighted work, especially with perimenopause in the picture. I know that. I know that. I'm not pretending that this is a complete picture of what my body needs forever. But right now, I am not in chronic pain. And that is a huge win for me. I am moving consistently, I'm not getting injured. And for where my nervous system is, this is exactly the type of movement I need. I started in January. Now I got sick in April. Tyson got sicker after that. So there were stretches where I didn't do much at all. This is not a perfect record. I'm not trying to keep a perfect record, but it's the most consistent I've been with intentional movement in a really, really long time. And I didn't get here by pushing through anything. I got here by finally listening to me. What I didn't anticipate is that I started craving this. And I just noticed that I hadn't done it in a few days, and I actually wanted to. My body started asking for it. And now it's spring and the trails are clear again, and I'm finding I have to remind myself almost to go outside because the indoor workouts have become something I look forward to. And that's the tell. That's the signal I want you to pay attention to. When movement becomes something your body pulls towards instead of something you push yourself into, something has shifted. And I don't think that shift comes from discipline or habit stacking or finding the right accountability partner. I think it comes from finding a format that your nervous system can actually receive, one where your body feels safe enough to work hard. And that's something worth naming. The enjoyment as a health metric. And I mean that seriously, not as like a consolation prize to doing the work. Enjoyment is a regulated state. When you're genuinely enjoying something, your nervous system is not in threat mode. You are present. You are in your body, you are getting the actual benefits of movement rather than just the stress of it. Joy is not the lazy version of health. For a lot of people, especially people running on high cortisol already, it might be the most efficient entry point into regulation that exists. So if you've tried and quit, tried and quit, tried and got injured, tried and dreaded every session and white-knuckled through it anyway, I want you to consider something. The problem might not be your commitment. It might not be your discipline. It might not be that you're lazy or you don't want it bad enough. Don't believe that rhetoric. It might be that the format or the environment or the pressure is costing your nervous system more than the movement is giving back. And your body has been telling you every single time you just didn't have a language for it yet. Find the thing your body will actually do, the thing it pulls towards, and protect that movement. Don't let anyone, including the very convincing voice in your own head, tell you that it doesn't count. Even if it's a step workout on YouTube with a guy named Rick, even if it's a walk in the woods, even if it looks nothing like what you thought fitness was supposed to be. We'll see you next time. If this episode landed for you, if you recognize yourself in any part of the story, what you're experiencing is a nervous system pattern. And that's exactly the kind of thing I work with. If you're ready to understand what your body has actually been trying to tell you in fitness, in business, across your whole life, the intuitive circle is where we do that work together. Twice a month, virtual, small group of women learning to trust what their body already knows. The link will be in the show notes. And if you want to go deeper one on one, my Sear session might be your next step. That link is there too.