A new client sent me her first check-in a few weeks into her programme. She’d written "Just so you know, in the rest periods I either jogged on the spot or did some chores around the house, to make sure I was always moving."
I asked her why. She explained that she'd been told by a previous coach to never stop moving, to keep her steps up. It had become unsustainable and she'd eventually stopped training altogether. But when she came back to exercise a year later, the rule popped up again, completely unquestioned.
I told her the rest periods aren't just empty space, they were also doing the work. That's when the muscle actually adapts to what you've just asked it to do. The constant movement wasn’t adding anything to the workout and it became something she could keep up for a while, until she couldn't. And what was left afterwards wasn't a habit, it was exhaustion.
This is exactly how diet culture affects our relationship with exercise. Not the obvious kind, not "skinnytok," not "no carbs before marbs." It hides in habits, beliefs and tools that feel neutral, even healthy. Keep your steps up. Never stop moving. Track everything.
"But these things help keep me accountable!" And absolutely, structure and accountability do help, having a framework can make you feel more capable. But there's a difference between structure and diet culture. Structure says: here's a helpful framework. Diet culture says: your worth is tied to whether you follow it. That's the part that isn't neutral, the part that turns rest into something you should feel guilty about.
Letting go of that doesn't mean swinging the other way either. Having no plan, no movement, no thought given to any of it, that's just a different kind of not working. What it actually means is structure without the morality attached to it. Consistency. Noticing how something feels. Building capability, session by session. Still a framework, just not one where a bad week means you've failed.
For my client, that meant learning that rest wasn't the enemy. It wasn't something to fill up or apologise for. It was where the actual adaptation happened. Would you keep up with a programme for the rest of your life if you were completely exhausted at the end of every session?
Because that's what a sustainable programme is, one you could do for the rest of your life.
A healthy relationship with exercise doesn't look like never wanting to skip a session, or always feeling motivated, or doing everything right. It looks like resting without needing to justify it. Choosing a session based on how your body actually feels that day, not on what you think you deserve. Movement that doesn't have to earn anything, not food, not rest, not the right to feel okay about yourself.
It's quieter than people expect. Less about pushing, more about listening. And it's not something you arrive at once and keep forever, it's something you keep coming back to, the way my client is still learning to, one session at a time.
My workbook Strong From Here not only helps to get you started with strength training. It's built to help you unlearn rules like this one, the ones you didn't realise you were still following, and work through whatever's been getting in the way, so what you build actually lasts.