HOW EXERCISE SAVED ME
I love exercise. I love it because it makes me feel good, I love it because it helps me focus and I love it even more because it helped me get through some of the hardest times in my life, including being a single parent.
I have always been into sport and exercise, but that doesn’t mean i’ve always done it. I’ve played sport since I was only little and began going to the gym with my mum in my early teens until a trainer at the gym we went to let me do an exercise that really injured me and I grew up saying I’d become a trainer just so I could be better than that one that had no idea what he was doing.
I stopped playing sport when I finished high school and had fallen deep into my battle with depression. I actually went straight from school to study personal training and ended up working at the college I studied at just so I could be surrounded by health and fitness, but as a 17 year old working 7 days a week and when the work culture became toxic, I had to get out for my own sake and I fell into my partying ways to cope (not the right word considering I wasn’t coping at all and made attempts to take my own life during this time) with my mental illness.
Goodbye active lifestyle, unless you call dancing on the podiums with gosh knows how many double blacks under my belt “active”.
When I fell pregnant with Madi many years later, I was in the midst of a very hidden eating disorder that I shook the minute I found out that I had another life in my tummy, so I went and got a footlong sub and made myself change my ways (It wasn’t as easy as this but I was in so much shock being pregnant and I had terrible all day nausea so I had to eat).
Once she was born, I knew I couldn’t go back to that disordered way of life, so I joined a gym and trained at ridiculous times of morning when Madi was still asleep and there was no one in the gym and it became a lifestyle.
Fast forward a year and I did my first and only fitness competition with the help of my wonderful coach (shoutout to Joey Cantlin) that taught me so much about macros and food nutrients, unlike my fellow competitors who I knew came out of their comps with horribly disordered eating, hormone imbalances and body dismorphia. It was incredibly sad to see and after my experiences with my own eating disorder, I was so grateful to have had a positive experience when it came to my prep. I was so healthy that I fell pregnant within the next month or two. I know, I was shocked too.
After having Max, I got the okay to begin training again and I think that had a lot to do with me exercising up until the day I went into labour, but unfortunately fell deep into post-natal depression pretty quickly. I then became a single parent and I had to work my shit out and find things that made me happy so I could be the best mum I could be, even while struggling with all the elements.
That’s when I joined the gym right down from my new place and the kids played in the creche a couple of times a week. We lived in the middle of town so we didn’t need to drive much and honestly, I found my feet quicker than I thought I would, purely because of the therapy of exercising and having an active lifestyle with the kids. I think back now and know that it was one of the hardest times of my life but I learnt so much about myself from it and it’s exactly why I became a personal trainer.
Working in a gym and as a trainer over the years has always been the most rewarding career and it’s for so many reasons. Of course yes, I love exercise for my own reasons, but I’ve also seen and met amazing people going through such rough shit that instantly get a mindset boost when they finish their workout.
I’ve seen:
a mother going through court to protect her children from a predator build herself into the most powerful and strong version of herself both physically and mentally
an alcoholic kick their addiction and change their life
a single father that purely came to the gym to be around the amazing culture because he felt alone
many anxiety ridden mothers that are scared to be judged because they think that they’re unfit and just want some time to themselves leave their sessions smiling, laughing and self motivated to exercise on their own
And that’s just to name a few.
I know that so often one of the biggest reasons people don’t begin an exercise program or join a gym whether it be a group fitness or normal, is because they’re scared of what other people in that gym will think, but once you take that first step, it’s pretty epic.
Plus, most of the time no one is really paying attention to you because they’re there for their own reasons, just like you!
Exercise to me these days is about having that time to myself to have a healthy distraction from my anxiety or overstimulation as a busy parent. It helps me focus on what I’m doing at that exact moment, which is moving my body and lifting heavy shit.
It’s the first thing that I do when Coop goes down for his nap and by golly I’ll tell you what, I prioritise my 20-30 minute workout over work or house duties because it puts me in an epic mood, gives me more energy for the day and helps my productivity later on. Coop took so long to get into a nap routine that I could somewhat predict that I went so long without consistent exercise and I felt like a big bag of dicks when I was not active. I was not coping with anything as well as I knew I could and that’s why it takes precedence over everything else when he has his morning nap.
I’m very aware these days when my mental health is sliding down the slope, so making sure I prioritise what helps me is a big help so I can prevent it from getting worse.
Then there are days when I simply CBF, which is totally cool too. If I choose to not workout, I can only blame myself if I’m a bit of an overstimulated raging bish later on that day.
As someone that has experienced depression and anxiety since a young age, one thing that never got prescribed to me was exercise. I would like to think that if I could go back to when I was in the depths of it and I prioritised my physical health (on top of my then medication and therapy), that maybe things would have been different.
All I know for now is that if I keep up with this active lifestyle and all the amazing things I’ve learnt over the years to help my own mental health, I can keep living my best life and use my past and my now career to help others do the same.