Apparently, I’m Going to Need a Body for This

Somewhere along the way, the reason I exercise changed.

For a very long time, exercise was at least partly about what it could change about my body. What I weighed. How my clothes fit. Whether I looked fit. Whether I could get back to whatever number I had decided was the correct number at that particular point in my life.

And just so we’re clear, I have not reached some enlightened stage of womanhood where I no longer care what I look like.

I have not.

I still like my jeans to fit. I still prefer certain angles in photographs. I still have opinions about what happens when I accidentally open the front-facing camera from below.

Apparently menopause does not automatically come with spiritual transcendence.

But looks aren’t the main reason I exercise anymore.

I exercise because I have a lot I still want to do.

And, somewhat inconveniently, I’m going to need a body for all of it.

I want to travel. I want to walk around cities I’ve never seen before without planning my day around where I can sit down. I want to work in my yard and push a wheelbarrow across my two acres, wrestling plants into places where they will almost certainly die despite my best efforts.

I have a very large dog who has shown absolutely no indication that he intends to become smaller or more reasonable.

I want to move furniture because I’ve suddenly decided at 8:30 on a Tuesday night that the room would obviously work better the other way around.

I want to get down on the floor and, more importantly, get back up.

I want ordinary physical things to remain ordinary for as long as possible.

And I think that’s the part I didn’t understand when I was younger.

Back then, exercise itself was often the goal. Run faster. Lift more. Burn calories. Change something about my body.

Now the workout isn’t really the point.

The life outside the workout is the point.

That’s also why I’ve become a little wary of the idea that every bit of physical activity needs to be turned into exercise.

Carrying a laundry basket downstairs isn’t my workout. Washing my car isn’t my workout. Pushing a wheelbarrow isn’t my strength program. Walking around my house doing things does not mean I can announce that I’ve exercised for the day and retire to the couch with a sense of athletic accomplishment.

Those are things I want my body to be able to do.

They’re not the workout. They’re what I’m working out for.

So yes, I exercise.

Sometimes I lift weights. Sometimes I row. I walk. I do things that deliberately ask more of my body than getting from the kitchen to the laundry room.

Not because I think any of it gives me some magical insurance policy against getting older.

It doesn’t.

Bodies change. People get sick. Genetics are real. Luck is real. Life can rearrange the best-laid plans without bothering to check whether we’ve been doing our squats.

I know that.

But I also don’t need a guarantee before something becomes worth doing.

I’m 56. If I’m lucky enough to get another few decades in this body, I’d quite like to be able to use it.

And lately that has made exercise feel less like something I do to my body and more like something I do for my life.

That’s a surprisingly big difference.

It also means I’m less interested in doing everything perfectly.

I have a job. I have a house. I have two acres. I have animals. I have people I love. I have responsibilities and deadlines and laundry and days when everything takes approximately three times longer than it should.

I do not have three hours every morning to optimize myself.

I would love to wake after eight uninterrupted hours of sleep, meditate, journal, take a long walk at sunrise, complete a perfectly periodized strength program, eat 37 grams of protein and then spend two hours applying serums in ascending molecular weight.

Unfortunately, I have a job, a house, two acres and a puppy with the judgment of a drunk toddler.

So I’m figuring out what taking care of myself looks like inside an actual life.

Some days there’s a proper workout. Some days there’s a walk. Some days I have more time and energy than others.

The goal isn’t to perform healthy aging correctly.

The goal is to keep participating in my own life.

I don’t know exactly what 70 will look like. Or 76. Or 86, if I’m lucky enough to see it.

But I know what I want tomorrow to look like.

I want to keep doing things.

And apparently, I’m going to need a body for that.