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How I Developed a Health Relationship with Exercise

by | Jan 22, 2025 | Fitness, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Exercise was my first of many addictions. In my teens, twenties, and even into my early thirties, I would use it as a form of punishment to purge “accidental” calories from the day before. In the last decade or so, my relationship with exercise has evolved. It has gone from being a tool for my harshest critic parts to one of my closest friends. One who stabilizes my mood, increases my energy, keeps me metabolically optimized, and helps anchor all my other health habits for an amplified effect on my health.

My name is Alisa Turner and I’m a certified integrative health coach specializing in nutrition planning, fitness, and overall well-being. If you’re ready for clarity and a sustainable approach to a healthier life, I’m here for you. Contact me!

The journey from critic to friend has been long. Moving from self-loathing toward self-love involved learning to trust myself, which required a lot of reprogramming. This was a slow (sometimes tedious) and non-linear progression away from my tendency to criticize and condemn toward an attitude of curiosity and compassion. I had to excavate, unblock, and then heal many layers of self-limiting beliefs. This took a lot of grace, persistence, trust in the journey, and more than a handful of traditional and non- traditional personal and spiritual growth modalities and mentors.

Even though I’m confident in having a healthy relationship with exercise these days, I also know that childhood programming runs deep, and old habits die hard — so, just like with any addiction, I continue to do the spiritual work rather than risk sliding down that slippery slope again. And since I have been known to overdo even the good things in life, I have some fail-safes.

1. I always have a fitness goal

My first official strength training goal was a pull-up goal. During this process I learned many things about myself, my habits, and my mindset. One of them was that the goal itself helped take the emphasis off calories and punishment and put it on strength and performance, thus building trust and confidence.

2. I took 5 years off traditional cardio (outside of walking)

Not only did this significantly improve my metabolic health markers and body composition, but it also gave my nervous system time to heal, and it supported my brain in creating new neural pathways around the role of exercise. Due to old programming and childhood patterns, it was very hard to get away from calorie management with cardio. On the other hand, my brain hadn’t connected strength training with calories, so this didn’t have the same negative energetic charge to it. Instead, I felt mental calm, presence, balance, and confidence from getting stronger and stronger each week that I was unaccustomed to. And that physical strength naturally translated into emotional strength.

This emotional strength translated into faith and trust in myself (spiritual). In this way, physical strength became its own feedback loop: physical to emotional to spiritual and back again! I found this loop to be invaluable as someone in recovery from eating and alcohol abuse disorders.

3. I have a trainer write my programs

My tendency is to overdo things. 1 hour in the gym can easily become 2 for me because I get to feeling good and I don’t want that feeling to stop which is counter productive for my fitness goals. The effort must be just right (progressive overload) to consistently improve performance without needlessly increasing recovery demands (unable to show up at 100% the next workout.) So, if my trainer gives me 3 sets of 5 or 6 exercises, I do those and no more.

4. I listen to the advice of my WHOOP

I try not to significantly overstrain my recovery demands. This serves many purposes — not only does it keep my time and intensity in a reasonable range, it also means that if I want to work hard, I have to support my recovery. And guess what supports recovery — all the other health habits: SLEEP, STRESS MANAGEMENT, NUTRITION, and
HYDRATION.

For example, in order to strain as hard as I want (or close to it), I have to sleep more than comes naturally to me. This means I have to practice good sleep hygiene habits (and give myself grace when I fall short despite best efforts). Since I struggle with sleep quality, this means I have to meditate and do breath-work. Meditation and breath-work not only give me a better chance at shorter latency, but they also help regulate my nervous system to better manage my stress. Plus, consistently implementing them into my everyday means I’ll have a better chance at pulling out those tools when they’re really needed!

I also need to fuel my body properly to optimize recovery and support my current fitness goal. This means balancing macros (prioritizing protein), hydrating properly (with electrolytes), minimizing processed foods, eating plenty of colorful veggies, and taking my supplements consistently. In order to balance my macros, I need to meal prep. There’s very little chance of anything close to optimized nutrition without prep for me. Restaurant meals and grab n go options don’t come with enough protein, and they typically have way too much fat and carbs for my needs.

You can see how this one simple fitness goal not only helps keep my mindset in check, but it also keeps all my other habits in check. For these reasons, I strongly encourage all my clients to incorporate the type of exercise that is best suited to them and to have some sort of fitness goal.

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