When I look back at all of the work I have done over the years, it all comes back to the lightbulb moment where strength training helped me stop focusing on using exercise solely as a tool to make my body smaller. Strength training was the #1 thing that helped me make a shift in my life to having a better relationship with exercise, and in turn, my body and mind.

Key Takeaways

If You Want To Improve Your Relationship With Exercise Through Strength Training, You Should:

1. Let go of the preconceived notions you have around functional fitness and strength training
2. Try and focus on the benefits of strength training that have nothing to do with making your body smaller
3. Stop making your worth conditional and start shifting how you

Finding the Freedom To Have Fun With Exercise

Having a free, fun, and filling relationship with movement can be a life-changing topic for some folks. I am feeling a sense in the community of people ready to get started or get started again on moving their body and improving their relationship with exercise.

While the way you relate to your body is a constantly evolving notion, strength training can help heal your dysfunctional relationship with exercise and give you the freedom to shift how you relate to exercise and your body. By giving yourself the space to enjoy exercise, you can stop being preoccupied with the notions diet culture has been feeding you and start breaking down the walls around you.

The Many Benefits of Strength Training

Lots of people view those who are interested in strength training or functional fitness as ‘meatheads’ or bodybuilders. This couldn't be further from the truth, as strength training has so many benefits, including improving your bone mineral density and blood glucose control, increasing your energy and metabolism, giving your more balance and stability, and enhancing your mood while decreasing your anxiety.

In addition to those fact-based benefits, strength training can help you stop viewing your worth as conditional and help you focus on what your body can do rather than how to make it smaller.

Are you ready to have a better relationship with exercise? Have you ever considered or experienced the many benefits of strength training? Share your experience with me in the comments on the episode page.

In This Episode

• Addressing the stereotypes that have come to surround functional fitness (4:36)
• Why strength training was critical on my journey to improving my relationship with food (9:41)
• The benefits of strength training and what to do if you feel called to get back to the weights (18:50)
• How strength training can act as a stepping stone to the way you relate to yourself and your body (22:15)
• Practical ways to improve your overall health through strength training and implement it into your daily life (26:23)

Quotes

“Functional movement is not just about competing at an elite level. If that’s your jam, that’s cool with me. If it’s not your jam, you might think ‘well functional movement, functional strength training, isn’t for me’. And I am here to tell you that that could be further from the truth.” (6:17)

“For me, exercise for so long was a way to shrink my body, control the size of my body, and try to become smaller. And that was the only thing that I really got out of exercise or the only reason I approached exercise.” (11:35)

“For me, strength training, in general, was the thing, the stepping stone, that allowed me to get on a better path with how I related to exercise, and then by default, my body.” (17:13)

“When I think back to all of the work I have done over the years, it always comes back to that. To that moment or that period of time where I learned to focus for once in my fucking life, on something else other than shrinking my body.” (24:47)

“You don't have to be a bodybuilder, you don't need to be a competitive level lifter to get the benefits of this, and you don't have to squat 400 pounds.” (29:47)

Featured on the Show

Food Freedom Mini-Course

Made Strong Program

The 5 Main Movement Patterns of Functional Movement Reel

Shit That People Say To Women About Strength Training Reel

Strength Workout Mini-Course

Steph Gaudreau Website

Check out the full show notes here!

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