It all counts

Stop trying to be amazing at exercise all the time.

(Psst she’s doing Kegels)

I posted these Notes the other day and they have 500+ likes¹, so I suppose they struck a chord. Let me quickly elaborate for all of you.

We’re squarely in New Year, New Me/Resolution time, and that can engender a lot of pressure especially in the exercise realm. I’m not anti-New Year’s Resolutions at all — I like a good fresh start — but I know from personal experience they fail when 1) they’re not S.M.A.R.T. enough² and 2) people are too Go Hard or Go Home about them.

I posted the first Note up there because I’m willing to bet a lot of people want to exercise more in 2025 (this is almost always a top American resolution per every outlet that polls about it) and I’m also willing to bet a lot of them are feeling like they have to buy a bunch of exercise clothes and gear and memberships and jump into a routine full-force and immediately prove to themselves that they are now An Exerciser.

Chill. Calm down. I’ve been a certified group fitness instructor and competitive powerlifter who lost a third of my body weight a decade ago in large part from the strength training, cardio, and yoga I still do multiple times per week, but I’ll still tell you: You don’t have to do all that to be An Exerciser. You do not have to do the shit I do or anyone does. You can just do something, anything, just a little bit, and it all counts. Stop trying to win at exercise every time you do it. Just, as Nike tells us, do it.

I put on my husband’s ugly old tee shirt and staggered, tired and bloated from the holidays, over to the gym the other day to watch a few episodes of UnREAL³ on my phone while walking on the treadmill because I didn’t feel like doing anything else. Love doesn’t even begin to cover my relationship to exercise and yet I still go into Who Cares mode every now and then. I still intend to go lift weights and then decide not to because I’m over it sometimes. Whatever. It’s fine. I walked. It counts!

I’m not, of course, saying that the bare minimum is necessarily ideal — if you want to accomplish certain things re: exercise you’ll have to do more difficult work and have more structure, and those will help you realize all kinds of incredible things about yourself and your abilities in and out of the gym.

But on Who Cares days, and especially if you’re just dipping your toes into the exercise waters again or for the first time, please do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Do not let the 75 Hard freaks make you feel like that’s what exercise is. Get off of fitness social media, honestly, at least for January. If the very idea of exercise stresses you out, just take it back to basics and think of the word movement instead. That’s all it is. Just rebrand it. There are no rules. Whatever works.

I just know that the more freaked out and ashamed and overwhelmed people are about exercise, the less likely they are to do it. I don’t want that for any of you, because I want you to find the same holistic joy and self actualization I found in it all those years ago. To that end, if you kind of have to half-ass it at first or every now and then, you have my blessing and my respect. Do what you can, when you can. If you do, it’ll feel simple and chill and even fun, and then who knows — maybe you’ll surprise yourself and want to take things to the next level. I’ll see you there when I finish UnREAL.

1. One like on Substack Notes = 1,000 likes on other social media, FYI.

2. “I’m going to exercise more now!” is not a S.M.A.R.T. resolution. “I’m going to sign up for a month-long trial at an indoor cycling studio in my neighborhood, with a friend who will go on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 a.m. with me for accountability purposes, to see how I like it and if I’ll continue to do it” is a S.M.A.R.T. resolution.

3. This show is SO crazy lmao