The Exercise People May Have Had a Point

I started exercising for my body. Or at least that’s how I thought about it for most of my life. Weight. Strength. Clothes. Fitness. All the usual reasons.

Last week I wrote about how that has changed as I’ve gotten older. These days, I’m much more interested in whether my body can keep doing the things I want it to do than whether it occupies exactly the right amount of space in a pair of jeans. I still care about the jeans. We covered this. Enlightenment remains elusive.

But lately I’ve noticed something else. I feel better when I move, and I don’t just mean physically. My head feels better. This is somewhat irritating because exercise people have been telling us this forever, and I generally prefer discovering things independently and then acting as though nobody mentioned them before. But here we are.

If my brain is running seventeen tabs at once, a walk helps. If I’ve been sitting at my desk too long and everything suddenly feels more complicated than it probably is, moving helps. If I’m restless or wound up or I’ve spent too much time staring at the same problem, getting outside with Baloo often changes something. Not everything. I do not return from a walk as a serene woodland woman with all of life’s problems resolved. Usually I return with a large muddy dog and at least one new thing stuck to my shoe. But the volume in my head often comes down.

And that has made me think about movement differently too. For years, I treated exercise as something primarily physical: muscles, heart, lungs, weight, strength. Now I’m becoming much more interested in what moving my body does to the part of me that lives between my ears. Because apparently the body and the brain did not agree to operate as separate departments simply because I found that organizational structure more convenient.

I notice it most with walking. There is something about moving forward while my brain is trying to untangle itself that seems to help. Sometimes I listen to something. Sometimes I think. Sometimes I don’t think about anything particularly useful. And sometimes Baloo stops every eleven feet to investigate something that died sometime during the previous administration. It is not exactly meditation. But I come back different—a little clearer, a little less trapped inside whatever I was thinking about before I left.

I’m starting to realize that this may be another reason I want movement to stay part of my life. Last week, I wrote that the ordinary physical things I do aren’t the workout; they’re what I’m working out for. Maybe there’s a mental version of that too. Maybe the workout isn’t just helping me carry the groceries, push the wheelbarrow or walk all day somewhere I’ve never been. Maybe it’s also helping me live inside my own head a little better.

I’m not turning this into another thing I have to optimize. I am not adding “achieve perfect mental clarity” to the morning checklist somewhere between protein and sunscreen. Some days I exercise properly. Some days I walk. Some days life goes completely sideways and the carefully constructed wellness plan becomes: put shoes on and go outside before you lose your mind. That one counts too.

I’m increasingly convinced that taking care of myself in this part of life is going to be less about finding one perfect routine and more about noticing what actually helps. Movement helps me.

Annoyingly, the exercise people may have had a point.