These women seem to have it all. They always stay fit, they get enough sleep, they have time for self care, they eat well. The list goes on. What are their secrets?
They may surprise you.
They know that fit doesn’t mean skinny.
Diet culture is a term that’s getting thrown around a lot lately, but what it really refers to is the socially ingrained idea that one should prioritize being thin, no matter the cost.
This can lead to general body dissatisfaction, self-objectification, and even poor mental health. It creates a dangerous cycle where we abandon our bodies and stop listening to them, doing whatever it takes to make them skinnier. It wrecks our relationship with food and movement, so we lose connection to our body’s cues that tell us what to eat and how good it feels to move.
Women who always stay fit are diet culture dropouts. Their focus is on creating a body that they enjoy living in. And it’s true that oftentimes side effects of this might be weight loss or muscle growth. But the important thing is that weight loss and muscle growth are not the why.
When you change the why, or the reason that you’re doing something, it changes everything. And when your why for exercise stops being to lose weight, and starts being to make your body feel good, you’ve won half the battle.
Perfect diets, cultural ideals of what it means to be “fit”, and sticking to a rigid workout schedule with no room for real life to happen in between is a recipe for failure.
Women who always stay fit know this and they don’t waste precious mental energy beating themselves up when life happens. Kids get sick. Work calendars get filled. Family obligations pile up during free time. And maybe you don’t have time to get the workout in that you’d planned. Or you’re chained to your desk more than usual one day and you don’t get your steps in. Or the family really wants a pizza night and you decide to lean into it.
These women have abandoned the mindset that any of these things mean they need to “get back on track”, or “start again on Monday”. They already are on track, and there is nothing to “start again”. They’re living their lives, with all its unexpected curve balls, and taking care of their health as well as they can.
Sometimes that means plenty of time and space for physical activity and cooking nutritious meals; sometimes it doesn’t. But they don’t get hung up on doing it perfectly all the time.
And no, I’m not talking about meditation or yoga (although those can be good ideas, too).
You can waste years on exercises you think you’re doing correctly, when actually you’re recruiting all the wrong muscles to do them. This makes things like poor posture even worse, and teaches your secondary movers to be stronger, while letting those target muscles off the hook.
You have to slow down, focus on exercise execution, and very likely reduce the weight you’re lifting for a while to make sure the right muscles are firing during an exercise, and that you have your posture on point.
Women who always stay fit keep this front of mind when they exercise so they aren’t leaving any exercise benefits on the table. Who wants to invest the time in a work out when you’re only getting half of what you could out of it?
They know that eating sufficient calories to fuel their bodies is the bedrock of muscular growth and performance.
Since women who always stay fit are focused on creating a body they love to live in, instead of shrinking their bodies to be as thin as possible, they don’t deny themselves anything. Ever. This makes it easier to enjoy any foods they want without ever feeling out of control. They’ve created a positive relationship with their bodies so they can eat things like cupcakes, cookies, and pasta, and stop when they’ve had their fill.
I’m not saying this one is easy. Especially after years, maybe even decades, of struggling with disordered eating habits. Many women have been convinced that they should always be on a diet, they should always be trying to lose ten more pounds, they should avoid carbs, or fats, or all processed foods. Headline after headline over the years yank people around, trumpeting the latest and greatest information about diet and nutrition.
A lot of that information is contradictory, riddled with inaccuracy or limitations, and may only apply to a small percentage of the population.
Healing a relationship with food takes time because there’s lots of unlearning to do, and lots of mindset shifts that need to happen. But it is totally possible, and it’s crucial to building a body you love to live in.
It’s not a punishment or a way to “earn” food.
Women who always stay fit have stopped thinking about exercise as just one more thing they need to check off their list for the day to say they’ve done it. They exercise for the joy of moving their bodies, experiencing how good it feels to reactivate long-asleep muscles, and experience the satisfaction and invigoration of mobilizing their joints.
This means that physical activity becomes something they want to do, something they look forward to doing. It also plugs right into the healthy mentality that fuels a positive relationship with their bcodies and with how they fuel it.
They find joy in whatever form of movement works for them. They know that they can lift weights without having to follow a bodybuilding program. They can run without training for a 5k. They can do HIIT workouts without the goal of losing weight.
So many fitness programs are targeting a specific goal, and that’s okay if you’re someone who is actively pursuing one of those goals. But if you’re just a person who wants a fit body that feels amazing year round, you may not need that level of intensity. Instead, you might be needing programs that are designed to awaken your body by targeting muscles suffering from disuse atrophy. In fact, you may need to do this anyway before pursuing any of those other goals, because the truth is that you won’t see much benefit from any workout if you haven’t corrected your muscle recruitment order and postural issues.
Start focusing on these 5 secrets, and you’ll be that much closer to your fittest body yet.
