We’ve all seen those charts that come out around the holidays and during summer that show how many of this exercise or that exercise you’d need to do to burn off that thanksgiving feast or everything you just ate at a summer BBQ.

When you look at it this way, exercise is a form of punishment, not a form of nourishment. It gives you the mentality that you have to earn or work of every single item of food that you put it your mouth.

Exercise is not punishment!

Moving your body should never be done as a punishment for the nutrient you put into your body.

And, you do not have to earn your food. Food is essential to life to keep us alive and healthy. That’s it.

If you, like many others have fallen into this idea that you must earn the foods you eat, or that exercise is a way of punishing yourself for eating these foods, it’s never too late to change your mentality so that you can live your life to the healthiest and fullest extent.

Here are some ideas you can practice:

1. Continue about your everyday life, following whatever way of healthy eating works for you, and move your body in whatever way works for you.
2. Stop obsessing over every calorie that goes into your body on a day like thanksgiving, or the day that family BBQ comes, and be grateful that you have an abundance of food provided to you to nourish your body. There are more important things in the world, then every single calorie you burn off in the gym. This can help not only change you mentality of exercise as punishment, but free your mental health as well.

Another major component to changing the way you view exercise is making sure you are partaking in physical activity for healthy reasons; both mentally and physically.

Healthy reasons to exercise:

• To get stronger
• To relieve stress
• To do something you enjoy
• To do something that makes you feel good
• To see what you and your body are capable of
• To improve your over health and lifestyle

Unhealthy reasons to exercise:

• Punishment
• ‘earning’ calories or food items
• Because you over indulge
• To look better
• To be skinnier

Working on making sure you are working out for the healthy reasons will definitely be a change, but if you continuously work on it, you will truly see how much better your workouts become, how much more enjoyable and nutritious food will become, as well as how you truly feel better within yourself.

|Laugh loud, Smile bright|

Nicole