I Discovered Fitness In My 20s—It’s Improved My Life And Made Me Happier
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I’m a little late to the game. As someone who did not grow up in sports, I discovered the life-changing benefits of recreational fitness in my mid-20's. A few years ago, I had no gym experience, couldn't run a mile without wishing actively for death, and would’ve thought a Bulgarian split squat—not that I’d heard of it—was something like a torture device.
I didn’t take fitness seriously, was quick to dismiss its role in overall health and wellness, and assumed that most people who worked out every day were doing it for purely aesthetic reasons. I was a bookworm and a writer, so why would I be interested in throwing around heavy pieces of metal in the gym with a bunch of gym bros?
When I finally committed to a consistent daily exercise routine, I quickly discovered how improving one’s physique is just the tip of the iceberg. The benefits trickled into everything else in my life, and it blew my mind. My confidence, discipline, work performance, time management, daily routine, excitement for the future, self-empowerment, and interests and hobbies all expanded and amplified.
Since then, I've embraced daily exercise wholeheartedly as a cornerstone to a healthy and happy life. Now, I dislike going a single day without working out or moving my body in some active form but I also know the value of recovery, rest, and balance. Now I work out for my mind and place value in treating my body well so that it can serve my mind even better. It’s been a journey I am still on to this day and a relationship that I am still learning from.
How First Discovering Fitness In My 20s Improved My Life
For me, fitness is forever synched with getting my act together across the board. I attribute a great deal of my personal growth over the past several years to my commitment to taking exercise seriously. It has truly been an incredible tool, outlet, and opportunity to take accountability for my future, my health, my choices, and my day-to-day.
In 2020, when Covid made the entire world reevaluate what was important to them, I was in that super-fun early-20s era where nothing made sense, and I just couldn’t seem to get my sh*t together. Feeling stuck and discouraged, I decided to make drastic changes: I moved to Hawaii, threw everything I had assumed out the window, and struck up a rigorous exercise regimen with a ferocity that scared my roommates.
As I took up running, I made the most stereotypical fitness mistakes in the book, such as burn-out, under-fueling, not listening to my body, and prioritizing fitness before more important things and people. The interconnection of body and mind shocked me, and I learned the hard way (several times) how exercise can be either used for the positive or for the negative. I value these lessons in retrospect and what I learned from them, but I've been there, done that, and don't want to do that again. Overall, however, exercising opened me up more and more to what I had been missing out on, and I began to feel and see drastic positive improvements in many areas of life.
““The interconnection of body and mind shocked me, and I learned the hard way (several times) how exercise can be either used for the positive or for the negative.””
I ran my first marathon within my first year of starting to work out, and that rewarding training process hooked me. I started looking at the gym more curiously, and discovered a completely different dimension of fitness: strength training. It was intimidating at first (the gym bros are huge), but I had already learned through running to not be afraid of being bad at something when starting out. More than that, one form of fitness sparked interest in many others, leading me to yoga, boxing, and climbing. I’ve since ran a few road marathons, which then transitioned into trail running, and two years after starting to work out, I ran my first 50K ultramarathon.
It initially shocked me how much knowledge and self-improvement is associated with fitness. The infinite wealth of information on the subject offers the opportunity to stay intellectually engaged, and it’s hard to get bored if you put effort into trying new training techniques to improve. I read a book called Deep Nutrition that forever changed my perspective on food, opened my eyes to the universal impact of what you supply your body with, and launched my appreciation for whole foods, cooking, baking, and recipe-hunting.
But alongside the physical improvements of getting in shape and feeling physically so much better and more comfortable in my skin, there were so many physiological benefits that rapidly and permanently changed me and my mindset. I saw how taking care of myself physically fit like a puzzle piece into a well-rounded, holistic lifestyle.
It was the internal–not the external–transformation of getting in shape that had me hooked.
How Exercising Daily Made Me Better (and Happier)
I began to take my long-term wellness seriously, as opposed to prioritizing short-term goals that were not sustainable or healthy. It wasn’t right away, but eventually, I had deeper, healthier reasons for why I wanted to take care of myself. I want to be the 85 year old lady that's still kicking, still travels, doesn’t need a walker, and still yells at kids to get off the grass. And she sure as hell is not counting how many calories her workout burned that day.
““...I had deeper, healthier reasons for why I wanted to take care of myself. I want to be the 85 year old lady that’s still kicking, still travels, doesn’t need a walker, and still yells at kids to get off the grass.””
Staying in shape helps me demand excellence and high performance from, and for, myself in all areas of life. It showed me that one small good thing leads to another when it comes to taking care of yourself. Investing in any small way, such as going to the gym, will snowball into other aspects of life. I started writing more, I got a good job that allowed me to travel and move freely, and I upgraded my expectations for my lifestyle and future.
I stopped making excuses and “waiting” for life to start. Up until I started exercising, I didn’t think I could change. Expanding my physical abilities and potential expanded my mental capabilities and potential, as it dawned on me that I could define myself and my limitations as I choose. I felt like I had stumbled across a buried treasure that I wasn’t supposed to find: Does everyone else already know about this?, I wondered. I wouldn’t have imagined three years ago, when I was swirling down a mental toilet, that this year I would be running and strongly finishing a 50K in the Utah outback. Making hard work and challenges part of my daily routine built back my self-trust and willpower, put me back in the driver's seat, and allowed me to take charge of my future. It makes me excited to test myself in the unknown—even if part of that is failure.
Working out is something concrete, positive, and action-oriented that I know is good for me and that I can implement immediately in daily life. This daily practice of doing what needs to be done whether or not I feel like it, made me far more action-oriented than I used to be. If I don’t like something about the state of my life, I ask myself, “So, what are you going to do about it?” And then I do it. My self-pity parties are much shorter than they used to be.
Daily exercise keeps me goal-oriented and disciplined. I learned the A B C’s of setting a goal that had seemed impossible to me, and worked through ups and downs to the finish line. Commitment to challenging yourself physically is a daily opportunity to practice a long laundry list of qualities that can always use some work: discipline, perseverance, patience, humility, failure, and self-forgiveness.
I found an outlet for stress, anxiety, and mental relief. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sweat out negative energy and felt better and stronger afterwards. I do indeed have a playlist called “outrun the demons” on Spotify. (Not available for the public.)
I re-learned gratitude. Something as simple as putting one foot in front of the other, or just the simple capabilities of a working body, is pretty cool once you actually remind yourself of it, because it’s not something that lasts forever. I am lucky.
Showing up for myself also helps me to show up for others. Dedicating personal time towards something I like that makes me feel good is a daily action towards my own good that then allows me to be more present for my loved ones around me. Having a healthy relationship with myself helps me have healthy relationships with others; caring for myself helps me to take care of others.
““Having a healthy relationship with myself helps me have healthy relationships with others; caring for myself helps me to take care of others.””
I believe that time spent outside is life’s secret sauce: it nurtures the soul, is essential to overall wellness, and makes a workout 10 times more enjoyable. (Outdoors exercise also probably saves me thousands of dollars in therapy.) I try to take my workouts outside whenever I can—public yoga in the park, stretching on my balcony, trail running and hiking, and other outdoor recreational activities. I look forward to my workouts all the more because it is time spent in nature, with fresh air, wind, sunshine, and the comforting quiet.
And Now…
I switched from being a night owl to a morning person. I became a coffee addict. When I travel, the first thing packed in my suitcase is a set of workout clothes. I accepted my fate as a continual work-in-progress, and I hope that I never stop growing, learning, and changing until the day I die. I understand better how life, energy, interests, and priorities shift naturally with time. Maybe it’s because I’m a two-year-newbie, maybe fitness is a phase, maybe I’ll never run a 50K again. Who knows?
But I do know that I did a little trail run this morning in a beautiful green forest—it rained on me, a sweet old lady had the most cheerful “Good morning” as she passed by, I nearly slipped in the mud and twisted my ankle, and my runner’s high lifted every trace of weight from my shoulders.
In that moment and for the rest of the day, that workout helped literally everything reorient in my mind. Life slides back into place, and I can breathe out a sense of relief. That rush of dopamine is still as addicting as it ever was, my internal drama queen can go back to bed, and my takeaway from that workout is that life is good if you choose so. Exercise helps me choose that.