The Gym, Recovery and Me

For the longest time, I felt embarrassed by my body. When I was younger, I was very skinny and very small. As I began to drink more and more, I started to gain weight. Now, I wasn't exactly skinny anymore but I also had absolutely no muscle. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't fat either. I was skinny fat. Not overweight, but definitely not in shape.

I wouldn't like wearing tight t-shirts. I wouldn't like going out in t-shirts at all honestly. I was always walking around in sweatshirts. Sweatpants too. I didn't want any of my skin to be showing. No matter what the weather is outside. This became apparent to me when i was in treatment. I was in treatment in Florida, in the middle of the summer. It must have been 35 degrees and sunny every single day and yet, I would continue to show up in sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

I was embarrassed of my small arms and my flappy thighs.

I was never really into fitness. There were a couple months here and there where I would weight train or run, but I never really got into it. I also never cared about what I ate. Truthfully, I treated my body like shit in basically every way possible. Of course, I was ashamed of it.

That all changed when I got to treatment. I learned that getting abstinent was not going to solve all of my problems, but that it was a necessary step in order to take care of the rest of the things.

It's no secret, exercise makes us, humans, feel better. When I was in my active addiction, my dad always stressed this to me. "Get up and go for a walk he would say." It's not that I didn't believe that it would make me feel better, it's that I couldn't even get off my couch let alone getting outside and walking around the block. That was, unless I had motivation to, such as walking to my drug dealers car across the street. I wanted to feel better, but I wasn't willing to do anything differently. The drugs had its hooks so deep into me that the only thing I wanted was that. I couldn't stop using. And because I couldn't stop using, I couldn't get out of the loop.

Well, after my first week in treatment, being back on a somewhat regular sleep schedule and having detoxed, I was finally ready to go to the gym. I was fortunate enough to be in a center that had a full gym and a personal trainer on site for an hour a day, 5 times per week.

One of the barriers that held me back from actually enjoying weight training my whole life is that whenever I would go to the gym, I would have no idea what I was doing. Since there was a trainer there, it was much easier for me. She showed me the correct forms for different lifts, how each day should be split up and a few exercises that I could do on each day. She basically showed me how to train properly. Something that I never knew how to do.

While there, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the process. I fell in love with the gains. I fell in love with showing up for myself. I fell in love with the self-validation that came with it. I fell in love with pushing myself.

I knew from this moment on that working out would become a massive part of my recovery. I also knew that it wasn't going to be as easy without having a personal trainer to hold me accountable to getting my reps in and showing up. When I left treatment, I made it a priority to be disciplined in showing up to the gym, showing up for myself. At first, it wasn't easy. There were many days that I didn't want to go. Many days where I wanted to just stay in bed or sit on the couch and watch TV. I also remembered how it felt when I did show up for myself; the validation, the progress, the endorphins. And so, this desire to stay in bed or stay watching TV was trumped by all of the good feelings that going to the gym was giving me.

While at the beginning, I had to actively remind myself of these things, as I continued to go and continued to feel good, it just became second nature. What was once a struggle eventually became second nature.

Learning how to work out was everything for me. Getting abstinent and allowing me to show up for myself was everything for me. Exercise has helped me gain my self-esteem back, my confidence. It has helped me bring discipline into other areas of my life. The gym has become a massive component of my recovery and of who I am. I am so grateful for the people who continued to push me to workout at the beginning and I am so grateful for myself for continuing to show up as well. I couldn't imagine being in recovery without the gym.

While that is a scary thought, I also know that I have set myself up so that if that ever did become the case, I would find my way through it. At the beginning though, I am not sure I could have learned all of the things I've learned if it were not for the gym.

I said I was grateful for a couple of things before, however, I did not mention the gym itself because saying I am grateful for the gym would be a massive understatement.

At the beginning, the gym was about wanting to look different and not feeling okay in my body. While still, there is an aspect to going that is about gaining muscle and liking the way I look, the most important part of it is that it makes me feel good and so I continue to do it. My relationship to myself, to the way I look, to my body has changed dramatically over my time that I've been training.

One of the coolest reflections I've had about the gym is how much fear I had about showing up and being small or only pushing a little bit of weight or about being judged by others. Now, I am able to see how that is the beauty of it all. Everyone that shows up to the gym is at a different point in their journey. Some have been going for years, some for months and some only for a few days. The thing that they all have in common though is that today, they decided to show up for themselves. Those people who are at the gym for their first time, decided to show up for themselves. That's not something to judge. That is something to celebrate. That is something to be inspired by. That is something to respect.