I’ve done a lot of reflecting this morning on the various phobias that once ran my fitness life, and how far I’ve come. Not to pat myself on the back and grace my mind with a bouquet of flowers (I did that already), but to pull together the content for this awesome piece I am SO excited to share with you.
I know that many women struggle with fears in the food and fitness industry.
The amount of time, energy, and body-brain space it takes up is absurd (sorry not sorry posing my opinion here). I can speak to this because it reflects the intimate conversations I’ve had with hundreds of women.
I liken the way that phobias take up your precious energy in such hungry ghost-like fashion to having dozens of apps open on your phone all day, every day. Bit by bit, milliwatt by milliwatt, the potential energy of that piece of technology is drained.
Similarly, when you have a phobia — in this context a fitness phobia, but really any phobia…bit by bit, calorie by calorie, hz by hz, your potential energy is drained. Your magic sucked out of the present moment and into a tube of withering wisdom you can never get back.
THIS…THIS, is why I am so passionate and intent on helping you lead a freer, more expressed, more enjoyed life, my friends. To not let the little hungry fear spongers interrupt your magnificent life, moment to moment to moment!
Before I dive in to the specific fitness phobias I am going to help you demolish, I want to give a little background lesson on Fear itself.
What is Fear?
Fear is one of the primary human emotions (some say there are 5, others say there are 8). It entails anxiety, apprehension, nervousness, dread, fright, and panic. As I’ve taught in pervious posts, emotions that stick around for more than a few days become a mood; if that moods sticks around for weeks, it becomes a temperament; and if that temperament sticks around for months, it becomes a personality (your personal reality).
Fear that is acute — a momentary flinch, heart palpitation, nauseousness, etc. (any duration less than a day) has a much different texture and impact than fear that is chronic. When it last days, weeks, months, even years, that’s when you hear people saying “I have a fear of (fill in the blank).” That is when you’ve identified and blended with the fear, considering youself someone who is “just afraid of (fill in the blank) and that’s that.” That is when the fear has begun running the show of your life instead of vice-versa. That is also when, it is time to break through it.
The moment you notice you identify with a fear — that it’s been living in you for so long you forgot about it, that is the moment that you break through it.
Perfect timing.
In today’s article, I will be highlighting five of the most common fitness phobias I’ve observed, experienced, or seen my clients experience and overcome. Most of the phobias I’ll cover fit into ‘chronic fears’…they’ve become part of your personal reality and your subconscious behaviors of thinking, feeling, and acting (all under the radar of your awareness). My hope is that you will recognize that at least one of these phobias is running your life so that you can take your power back!
Once I’ve laid ’em out, I will dish out the magic formula. Be patient and read up. Let’s dive in!
According to Verywellmind.com, the top 10 most common phobias in general are:
Spiders
Snakes
Heights
Flying
Dogs
Thunder and Lightning
Injections
Social Interactions
Places that are Hard to Escape/Crowded Spaces
Germs, Dirt, and Other Contaminants
None of these are directly in The Most Common Fitness Phobias, but some (especially 8 and 9) are thematically related.
MOST COMMON FITNESS PHOBIAS I SEE IN WOMEN
Just like we have attachment styles in relationships with other human beings, we have attachment styles in relationships with foods. When the phobia takes over, it leads to chronic bracing (fear in its somatic form), which leads to avoidant, ambivalent, fearful and insecure relationships to essential nutrients in your life. My goal is to get you to feeling like you have a secure relationship with each of the things on this list!
Fear #1: Fear of Carbohydrates.
Damn, even as I typed the word out I felt a little tingle in my fingertips.
It’s insane how manipulative associations from long ago can run rampant in your nervous system. They can take a while to shake all the way out.
What The Fear Contains:
The common anticipatory shock women brace for when it comes to ingesting carbohydrates include:
getting bloated
gaining weight, specifically fat in undesired areas
becoming high-glycemic/diabetic
feeling brain fog
uncontrollably eating (knocking over a domino for binge eating)
How You Act Out The Fear:
This insecurity can show up as:
sometimes eating oatmeal (toast, cereal, fill in the blank), sometimes not, but not sure if it’s right for you
completely cutting out carbs because they are the demon
after completely cutting out carbs because they are the demon, binge eating carbs
The yo-yo’ing and confused foundation is a problem.
Fear #2: Fear of Getting Bulky and/or Hypermasculine From Resistance Training.
Oh boy! I could throw a tantrum over this one, but I won’t. I will cooly deliver the truth about how resistance training works in the female body!
When I was a young basketball player (ages 8–15ish), I had a lot of insecurity about “getting too bulky” from lifting weights, not matching the criteria of sexy or appealing to the opposite sex, or not looking like my friends.
That shit is long gone.
What The Fear Contains:
Most women fear that lifting weights, heavy bands, and just moving heavy shit in various ways will ultimately make them:
look “manly”
not fit into their clothes the way they like to
feel too big for their partner, friend group, tribes, society
strong but not sexy
testosterone-driven/agro
How You Act Out The Fear:
This leads aversion of resistance training (essentially, doing cardio — especially types that don’t involve a strength pump…i.e. no arms on the elliptical) and the malnutrition of the body in these ways:
never learning and practicing the very vital seven basic human movement patterns
diminished bone density and higher risk for injury
a weakened immune system
sluggish metabolism
faster aging
The avoidance of resistance training is a problem.
Fear #3: Fear Of It Not Working.
This fear is one of those that falls into the Chinese Finger Trap of letting fallacies and myths run your life. Like eating carbohydrates and lifting weights. If you intractably decide that these things will not work for you or even worse will make your life worse before trying, nothing will change.
Fear of “it not working” is really a masked way of saying “I am afraid of change, but I want change.” This fear keeps you paralyzed when you desrve to move forward. Listen, you have to try something new if you want something new. Otherwise, you are acting out the old Einstein quote: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Whether the goal is to change your body composition, become stronger, have a higher VO2max, or just be a consistent exerciser, and you aren’t willing to try any of the actions that could lead to these, YOU are in the way of YOU.
What The Fear Contains:
This is a human thing, not just a woman thing. And its HUGE. Fear of Change. When it comes time to really enact change, Fear will say things like:
“But I don’t know what I’m going to feel like.”
“But I don’t know what I’m going to look like.”
“But I don’t know if I will be good at it.”
“But this might be uncomfortable.”
and the classic…
“But I’m scared!”
Yo, it is brave to admit all of these things and it is comforting to recognize that we all experience them, no matter the changes we seek to make. But when they run your life, you become paralyzed in the routine of…
How You Act Out The Fear:
You do nothing different
You become more fearful
This is a vicious feedback loop that is a problem.
Fear #4: Fear of Injury and/or Re-injury.
Like any fucking fear — as described in #3, you can sit on the sidelines and think that keeps you safe or you can get in the game and reap the rewards of the experience. Once I dive into my formula, you’ll feel much better — but for now, let’s look at…
What The Fear Contains:
Breaking a bone
Tearing a muscle
Hearing weird sounds in your joints
Being criticized on your form (emotional injury for the highly sensitive)
Being wrongfully judged for something you are insecure about (i.e. not hinging as deeply as cued, because you have a fear of bending over long-stored from some incident that happened years and years ago but the trainer isn’t aware of that part of your body’s score)
How You Act Out The Fear:
Avoid the movements that seem higher-injury risk
Stop performing a movement at the first tittle of a sound in any joint
Stop exercising altogether
Do the movements you fear hurt you with an overprotective body and brain
Stay in PT forever
Fear #5: Fear of It Working.
Yeah, I know…what?!
It’s a fear. It’s been called achievemephobia.
It’s one of the stranger aspects of being human…being afraid of actually succeeding, growing, expanding, overcoming.
But, it’s not so different than fear of it not working.
What you are preemptively, and not necessarily, bracing for is the Unknown.
Only in this case, you probably have a sense of what it will look, feel, and taste like.
It’s important to remain completely open to the Unknown (blackness) during transformation, because you can unintentionally limit the robustness of your success. Just be present and let the greatest outcome unfold.
Now, back to…
What The Fear Contains:
“But my friends might be jealous of me.”
“But my family might criticize me for how much time I’m spending working out.”
“But my friends might make fun of how healthy I am eating.”
“But I don’t know if I will be able to sustain it.”
“But I won’t feel like myself anymore!”
These are all real possibilities. I’d say that those are not the friends and family you need to be spending time with if they don’t support your healthy changes. And, you won’t feel like yourself anymore, because you are becoming somebody new.
How You Act Out The Fear:
Decide it’s more comfortable to stay the same than to try succeeding
Become more and more fearful of changing
Alright, thank you for patiently reading.
Now we are on to the formula.
Notice that all of these phobias are either based on past experiences or hearsay. Not the present moment.
So the formula is to bring you into the present moment based on real information that pertains to your body specifically. That means you are acting on bio-individual knowledge and with a brain ready for change. Period.
The 3-Step Formula To Break Thru These 5 Fitness Phobias
Step 1: Educate.
In this initial step, your job is to look the phobia dead in the eyes and see it for what it really amounts to. Does it have the power to harm you or haunt you in the way you’ve been thinking it does? For example, do you know for certain that carbohydrates will make you bloated, gain weight, and have brain fog? Do you know for certain that you will hurt yourself if you return to the activities you love doing after healing from an injury? Do you know for certain that your friends will be or express jealousy towards you for being in awesome shape?
I’ll bet your answer across the question board is a big-ass NO.
This puts into perspective how much we can let Fear run our lives.
The objective of step #1 is to learn the way these things actually work.
It will require a combo of debunking myths with your own research/the education of a coach/expert, and diving into #2 to collect some objective n of 1 data.
In the case of fearing the ingestion of carbohydrates, you may want to learn their purpose and necessity in your diet. Especially if you are a high-intensity training athlete, you will need carbs to go full-tilt. And a reduced amount of carbs over a prolonged period of time in women specifically, can really contribute to hormonal, nervous system, and mood dysfunction — everyday ways of being that far surpass your training performance.
Step 2: Expose.
In this secondary step, your job is to begin to add in or cut out the thing that you were afraid of.
In the carb example, you’d add carbs in small chunks at a time to show yourself: a) you ain’t gonna die, b) you’ll probably feel and think and move better, c) you trust your body’s innate intelligence.
The bit by bit approach is called graded exposure. Herein, you don’t jump to an all-carb diet — rather add 10g, 20g, 30g (totally just an example to illustrate the gradual increase). Its opposite, flooding, is probably not a good idea if you have a deeply ingrained fear you are working with.
In the Fear of It Working example, you show yourself what you are capable of and what — for instance, a lifting program is capable of doing for you, and note/absorb the small victories along the way. This graded exposure is a dynamic flow of you succeeding and you being comfortable with succeeding.
Step 3: Engrain.
In this final step, your job is to formulate a habit of doing the thing you used to be scared of. Yes, you will go from being afraid of it/being identified with the fear to being detached from it, observing it, and forgetting about it because you’ve replaced old, nonsense-based fears with new actions based on true science and how things truly impact your individual body.
In the example of the Fear of Getting Bulky, you form a habit of following the strength training program over 12-weeks for example.
In the example of the Fear of It Not Working, you do the one action or set of actions (i.e. daily or bi-daily runs to increase your cardiovascular efficiency) you have stubbornly decided will make no difference, ahead of ever trying. You bust through your know-it-all-ness — really a clever disguise for Fear, and do the program day after day after day.
When it comes to step #3, I feel it takes 3 months at minimum to really earn your stars from me and create a conscious effort to a subconscious habit in all the realms of your fitness and health lifestyle.
That’s why I opt clients in for a minimum of 3 months of work with me.
If you are interested in coaching with me for 3 months or longer, view my packages here or better yet just email me at abbymarokotraining@gmail.com to get started today.
You are bigger than your Fears!
In Blessings,
Coach Abby
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.