Being an Exercise Researcher Taught Me to Rethink My Own Fitness

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with exercise. That is until I started researching how powerful it really isWhen I was about 6 years old, my father would take me on morning runs on the side of a busy road in my hometown of L’Aquila, Italy. He thought that I shared my grandmother’s genetics angrandfather’s destiny for cardiovascular diseaseMy father thought that if I started exercise and a controlled diet early enough, I’d have a fighting chanccounterbalancing my genetic destiny. This is how my love and hate relationship with exercise started, and how I became a people pleaser.

I spent most of my adult life chasing perfectionism, trying to be the best at things, and aiming to please any and every man that crossed my path. My perceived self-worth has always been intertwined with my physical appearance and strengtThis endless chase of perfectionism led me down many dark roadAt 16, I was on the verge of an eating disorder. During young adulthood, I had multiple sport injuries. I was plagued by the unrelenting feeling of not being enough. And then I hit rock bottom.

filadendron/Getty ImagBack pain changed my ideas on exercWhile I was writing my PhD dissertation, I spent countless hours sitting and stressing about how good or bad my work wasAt the same time, I was balancing graduate school with being a new mom, and my time for training was limiteI somehow found time to escape to the mountains on the weekends to snowboard, and lived out the classic weekend warrior approach to lifAnd then the pain started. A sharp, terrible pain in my back that would cause my body to tilt on its side.

The first time it got bad, I was out of commission for about 2 months with what felt like never-ending physiotherapy sessionsWhen the pain iimmediately reverted to adventure-seeking, and for the next few years, I went back and forth between relief and pain. As time went on, the pain became significantly more severe and more frequentI played this push-pull game with pain until the last time — the time when I was stuck, tilted sideways, for about 3 months. The physiotherapy sessions would not work anymore, nor the acupuncture, chiropractor, massage, or pain medication I ended up lying on the floor for weeks unable to walk. Several emergency department visits and milligrams of anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, and opioids later, I finally received an emergency L4-L5 microdiscectomy.

I was told to not exercise for 3 months after surgery. And this time I listened. I let my body relax, I did not check the scale or mirror too often, anbattled any feelings of guilt that would arisI let myself heal fully and completely for the first time ever. Only at this point did my relationship with exercise change. I started to think of exercise as a medicine, not as a means to an unattainable goal