Growing up in sports, exercise was often communicated in a way that can only be
described as borderline masochistic. Training meant being yelled at, pushed harder, and shamed for falling short. Much of my early understanding of fitness was shaped less by care for my body and more by fear of disappointing a coach. Unfortunately, this is the same story many people bring with them into the gym today.
You look in the mirror and immediately begin to critique your body. The internal
commentary is harsh, filled with contempt, and relentless. From this place of shame, you decide to “do something about it.”
You go to the gym, not to care for yourself, but to punish yourself.
At first, it works. You lose some weight, gain some muscle, and maybe even feel a bit more confident in your skin. But eventually, the progress slows, the scale stalls, and results plateau. When that happens, the old voice returns.
“What you’re doing isn’t working.”
“You’re not trying hard enough.”
“You might as well quit.”
At this point, most people respond in one of two ways. Either they double down, train harder, restrict food more aggressively, and burn themselves out; or they quit altogether, deciding, “This is just who I am, and I’ll never really change.”
A punitive relationship with exercise is where many people begin, but it doesn’t have to be where they stay.
Exercise is not a justification for poor habits, nor is it a sentence handed down for not taking care of yourself. It is meant to be part of a holistic approach to health. Exercise satisfies a need, not something that slams a gavel in the courtroom of your mind.
Why is this Important?
B.F. Skinner, the renowned behavioral psychologist, discovered that while punishment
can decrease unwanted behaviors, it does little to create new, healthy ones.
Punishment may stop something in the short term, but it rarely builds anything sustainable. This is why using the gym as a form of self-punishment eventually backfires. If exercise becomes something we “owe” because we ate poorly, skipped a walk, or indulged, we slowly learn to resent it. The gym becomes a moral scoreboard instead of a place of growth.
A punitive framework forces us into rigid, dichotomous thinking: good versus bad, earned versus unearned. I ate a donut, so I need to work out. I ate chicken and rice, so I can take the day off. While this mindset can produce temporary compliance, over time it becomes exhausting and pressurizing. Eventually, it leads to burnout, and often abandonment altogether.
What works better is understanding health as an integrated whole. Nutrition, sleep,
exercise, stress, and relationships are not separate scorecards but interconnected systems.
Each one influences the others, whether we acknowledge it or not. Long-term health isn’t about balancing our moral account between “good” and “bad” behaviors. It’s about orienting ourselves toward what we should do; consistently, patiently, and with respect for the whole person we are becoming.
Shifting to a Care Model
The first step toward a healthier relationship with exercise is learning to ask better questions.
Here are four that can help reframe your perspective:
• Do I want to work out because I’m excited about what my body is capable of? Or
because I’m terrified of what might happen if I don’t?
• Do I see exercise as something that adds to my life, or as something that steals my energy?
• Do I view exercise as meeting a need, or as a punishment that temporarily justifies my lifestyle? (For example: “I’ll work out Friday so I can go to the bar and feel okay about myself.”)
• Do I judge my workouts by how exhausted or sore I am afterward? If suffering equals success, that’s the punitive model at work again.
Shifting to a care based model of exercise affirms your value as a person. It motivates movement not from fear, “I better, or else,” but from respect. It acknowledges that your body is valuable and meant to move well.
This approach requires acceptance of who you are today. It refuses to hold your present self in contempt while chasing a better future version. It replaces
contempt with dignity. The message changes from “Work out so you don’t get worse” to “Work out because you deserve to be taken care of.”
This shift can make all the difference.
Lee Ramsey has a passion for fitness as a way to help people grow and change into more adaptable, capable and resilient versions of themselves. He is owner of Sanctify Fitness in Covington.