March 16, 2026
Healing Your Relationship with Exercise: Waiting for Weight Loss Series Episode 12
Today, host Heather Creekmore dives into the topic of exercise—addressing our complicated relationships with movement, why we often see exercise as punishment or penance for our eating habits, and how to shift towards a healthier, more joyful perspective. Heather Creekmore shares personal experiences and practical questions to help listeners honor their bodies, keep priorities straight, and embrace movement that feels both realistic and enjoyable. Whether you love or hate exercise, this episode offers uplifting truth and encouragement for changing how you view fitness, rooted in freedom and grace, not guilt.
**Heather goes LIVE in the community 3/17 at 12:30pm!! Join us for this special event. Details in the commuity at: www.waitingforweightloss.com
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Join the community at waitingforweightloss.com for encouragement and support as you rethink your relationship with exercise! Don’t miss Heather’s live Q&A sessions—check your email for details. Share your thoughts and questions about movement and connect with our coaches for practical help on your journey.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey, their friend Heather Creek more here. Thanks for watching or listening to this Waiting for Weight Loss series on the Compared to You podcast. We are cruising right through all the way to Easter, talking about lots of great stuff in the community. If you haven't joined us in that community yet still open, go join us waiting for weeightloss dot com. And what's really special is tomorrow Tuesday, March seventeenth, at twelve thirty Central. I'm gonna go live in the community, so I will be there to say hey to you and answer any questions you have. So I hope you'll join us Tomorrow, March seventeenth, twelve thirty Central in the community, and if you're on our email list, you'll get investment about that as well. So today we're talking exers bump bump bump. Okay, some of you love exercise like you love it, like you genuinely love it, and some of you genuinely hate it. Ugh, I do it, but I hate it, and those of you love it. Some of you just genuinely love it, and some of you like love it for maybe the reason I loved it, which was I realized that as long as I exercised a certain amount that gave me more freedom freedom quote unquote, and what I ate because I could again I'm quoting this, I could get away with eating different things or eating more as long as I exercise. And that's what our diets have trained us in, right, I mean, even I'm thinking about weight watchers, like if you exercise a certain amount of time, you got extra points to like eat more. Like exercise was always positioned kind of as the counterbalance for food, and so in that way, we very much have culturally learned to view exercise and almost as penance, almost as like a compensation for our food sins quote unquote on that word sins. Exercise is something we end up doing a lot of because we should, not because we can, not because it feels good, but because we have to do it. In fact, to talk to a lot of women every week, and one of their main drivers exercise is all the mean lies they hear shouting at them every single day about how bad they look, how lazy they are, how fat they are, how you know, unsuccessful they are, how shameful they are. And they've come to believe that the only way to fight these lies is to work out, Like if I go work out, then I can at least tell the lie like shut up by exercise to shut up, I did that hard work out, And it's almost this belief system that I can make the lies go away as long as I work hard enough to prove them wrong. But friend, like, we were never instructed to combat the enemy's lies with proving them wrong, right, Like, that's not the solution. We want to exercise from a place of remember our exhales. We want to exercise from a place of our identity already being established, right, our worth already being established, our purpose already being established in Christ. That should be the foundation for exercising. Or maybe you're more comfortable with this word joyful. Right, if exercise sounds of you, what about thinking about it is joyful movement? How can I move my body in a way that would feel good, that would support my health? Right? Because exercise does have great cardiovascular benefits. We need to get stronger. That's a good thing as we age, right, exercise can help us burn off stress. Exercise is good for our bodies. But if we're just doing physical exercise, which is good for our bodies, with a lot of mental trash going on a lot of penance for food sins. Oh, I must shooting all over ourselves around exercise. Then we might actually even be negatively impacting the physical goodness of exercise by all the mental stress and turmoil we've put around it. Now. I don't know about you, but for me, the struggle has looked like what it counts. It only counts if it's this long, or if it's this hard, or used to say it only counts if I'm sweating. Right, maybe you've done all those things too. So one day my youngest son, he was probably three years old at the time, asked if we could go for a walk. And he wasn't planning on walking. He had this electric motorized like lightning McQueen car that went I don't know, maybe twelve miles per hour, and he wanted to take it around the block. Well, I'm twelve miles per hour might have been too generous. It may have been more like five miles per hour. It was very slow, and so as I thought about walking with him beside his lightning A Queen car, I thought, Oh, he has a walk, but it doesn't really count. That's not going to be my exercise for the day. And the unfortunate thing was he was asking me to go for this walk during what I had planned as my exercise time for the day. Perhaps you've been in the similar dilemma, And I said, yes. It was a beautiful spring day, the sun was shining, and I started this walk with my son, going very, very slow, and I was thinking about all the ways I would have to make up for that not being my exercise for the day, Like maybe I could just run to the gym leader. Maybe I could get into workouts the next day. You know what kind of like floor exercises could I do when I got home that would kind of counterbalance and kind of count for something, all of those things that we tend to tell ourselves in our heads when we have a disordered relationship with exercise. And so as I'm walking, I very much heard the Holy Spirit say, Heather, this counts. I was like, what, no, no, no, this doesn't count. And I really heard him whisper again, Hoather, this counts. And that was kind of the beginning of a change for me in my relationship with exercise to recognize Scripture tells us like in Christ, we have freedom, rights for freedom, You set us free. I was in bondage to exercise, to all my rules around to exercise, to trying to make the lives shut up. If I exercised enough, right exercise how to hold on me? I was exercise as slave. And scripture tells us we're not to be a slave to anything or anyone. But Christ and I had made exercise into this thing that it was never intended to be. It's a good thing to strengthen your body, to work your body, but I had made exercise into this way of assessing my own value, assessing my own worth, deciding for myself if I was good or bad based on how much exercise I did. And that was a disordered relationship with exercise. And so from that stay on, I've tried to be more thoughtful about exor sizes that I enjoy and what actually feels good to my body on that day. And so as we think about exercise, that's one of the questions I want you to think about, right, what is your relationship with exercise? Has your relationship with exercise been more of a penance type of relationship where you are exercising to cover your quote unquote food sins, or have you been able to engage in exercise because it genuinely feels good to your body and you enjoy it. I think that's actually the goal. And so every day, as you approach exercise, I would say ask yourself these two questions. Question one is what would feel good to my body today? Right? Because ladies, especially like if you are of a certain age, really any age, I think we all are like this all the time. Right. There are days when you feel great, and there are days when you don't feel so great, and sometimes that connect doors, hormones or other things. Right, but if you wake up and you don't feel so great, that's not the day to go try a new class at the gym, Right, that might be the day to just do something like walking or stretching. But then if you wake up he had a great night's sleep, you feel like you've got lots of energy, man, that might be the day to try something new, find a video online that sounds fun, maybe do more strength work. But make it where you are asking yourself every morning, like what would feel good today? What what's my body asking for today? What would feel good to my body today? And honoring your body in your choice around exercise, because honestly, I think that's how we honor God and our choice around exercise is by listening to the body He created for us with all these signals that it gives us, right and honoring that. And then the second question is what's realistic for what I have today? Right? If you are building your schedule around your exercise, friend, that's a disordered priority. Right. There's nowhere in scripture where you can tell me that the first thing on my to do list, the first priority should be exercise. For Timothy tells us that physical training is of some good. Of course it is. It's great, right, But if your life is exercises on the calendar and then everything else is kind of squishy, that's out of order, my friend. You should look at the priorities that you have for the day as it aligns with God's word, right, Like, oh goodness, I know some of you have. The struggle is real. Right. You can make time for exercise every day, but making time to spend in God's word and prayer, that kind of falls off. Sometimes you gotta switch it, my friend, You gotta switch it. There's no excuse not to. So ask yourself what's reasonable for my day? If I've got a crazy day, just back to back to back. Maybe what's reasonable is just like taking a ten minute like I just got to catch my breath, walk right, or spending ten minutes on the floor doing some bridges or crunches or something that feels good to you, strengthening your core, doing some free weights, whatever feels good to you, right, Or maybe you've got a free afternoon. Hey, that's your time to go spend a little bit more time. Maybe it's a longer hike somewhere, or maybe you can go to an hour long class of the gym if that's something you enjoy. But look at your day and reasonably assess what would work, and remember to keep your priority straight. That's what's most important. Hey, how is your relationship with exercise? Let's talk about it in the community. You can go to Waiting for Me last dot com. Join us there. I can't wait to see you there and hear how you're doing with exercise and maybe how you want your relationship with exercise to change. Our coaches are there and we can help encourage you on that front. To you, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. Bye bye. Compared to podcasts, it's proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. From more great Christian podcast go to lifeaudio dot com.
Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey, their friend Heather Creek more here. Thanks for watching or listening to this Waiting for Weight Loss series on the Compared to You podcast. We are cruising right through all the way to Easter, talking about lots of great stuff in the community. If you haven't joined us in that community yet still open, go join us waiting for weeightloss dot com. And what's really special is tomorrow Tuesday, March seventeenth, at twelve thirty Central. I'm gonna go live in the community, so I will be there to say hey to you and answer any questions you have. So I hope you'll join us Tomorrow, March seventeenth, twelve thirty Central in the community, and if you're on our email list, you'll get investment about that as well. So today we're talking exers bump bump bump. Okay, some of you love exercise like you love it, like you genuinely love it, and some of you genuinely hate it. Ugh, I do it, but I hate it, and those of you love it. Some of you just genuinely love it, and some of you like love it for maybe the reason I loved it, which was I realized that as long as I exercised a certain amount that gave me more freedom freedom quote unquote, and what I ate because I could again I'm quoting this, I could get away with eating different things or eating more as long as I exercise. And that's what our diets have trained us in, right, I mean, even I'm thinking about weight watchers, like if you exercise a certain amount of time, you got extra points to like eat more. Like exercise was always positioned kind of as the counterbalance for food, and so in that way, we very much have culturally learned to view exercise and almost as penance, almost as like a compensation for our food sins quote unquote on that word sins. Exercise is something we end up doing a lot of because we should, not because we can, not because it feels good, but because we have to do it. In fact, to talk to a lot of women every week, and one of their main drivers exercise is all the mean lies they hear shouting at them every single day about how bad they look, how lazy they are, how fat they are, how you know, unsuccessful they are, how shameful they are. And they've come to believe that the only way to fight these lies is to work out, Like if I go work out, then I can at least tell the lie like shut up by exercise to shut up, I did that hard work out, And it's almost this belief system that I can make the lies go away as long as I work hard enough to prove them wrong. But friend, like, we were never instructed to combat the enemy's lies with proving them wrong, right, Like, that's not the solution. We want to exercise from a place of remember our exhales. We want to exercise from a place of our identity already being established, right, our worth already being established, our purpose already being established in Christ. That should be the foundation for exercising. Or maybe you're more comfortable with this word joyful. Right, if exercise sounds of you, what about thinking about it is joyful movement? How can I move my body in a way that would feel good, that would support my health? Right? Because exercise does have great cardiovascular benefits. We need to get stronger. That's a good thing as we age, right, exercise can help us burn off stress. Exercise is good for our bodies. But if we're just doing physical exercise, which is good for our bodies, with a lot of mental trash going on a lot of penance for food sins. Oh, I must shooting all over ourselves around exercise. Then we might actually even be negatively impacting the physical goodness of exercise by all the mental stress and turmoil we've put around it. Now. I don't know about you, but for me, the struggle has looked like what it counts. It only counts if it's this long, or if it's this hard, or used to say it only counts if I'm sweating. Right, maybe you've done all those things too. So one day my youngest son, he was probably three years old at the time, asked if we could go for a walk. And he wasn't planning on walking. He had this electric motorized like lightning McQueen car that went I don't know, maybe twelve miles per hour, and he wanted to take it around the block. Well, I'm twelve miles per hour might have been too generous. It may have been more like five miles per hour. It was very slow, and so as I thought about walking with him beside his lightning A Queen car, I thought, Oh, he has a walk, but it doesn't really count. That's not going to be my exercise for the day. And the unfortunate thing was he was asking me to go for this walk during what I had planned as my exercise time for the day. Perhaps you've been in the similar dilemma, And I said, yes. It was a beautiful spring day, the sun was shining, and I started this walk with my son, going very, very slow, and I was thinking about all the ways I would have to make up for that not being my exercise for the day, Like maybe I could just run to the gym leader. Maybe I could get into workouts the next day. You know what kind of like floor exercises could I do when I got home that would kind of counterbalance and kind of count for something, all of those things that we tend to tell ourselves in our heads when we have a disordered relationship with exercise. And so as I'm walking, I very much heard the Holy Spirit say, Heather, this counts. I was like, what, no, no, no, this doesn't count. And I really heard him whisper again, Hoather, this counts. And that was kind of the beginning of a change for me in my relationship with exercise to recognize Scripture tells us like in Christ, we have freedom, rights for freedom, You set us free. I was in bondage to exercise, to all my rules around to exercise, to trying to make the lives shut up. If I exercised enough, right exercise how to hold on me? I was exercise as slave. And scripture tells us we're not to be a slave to anything or anyone. But Christ and I had made exercise into this thing that it was never intended to be. It's a good thing to strengthen your body, to work your body, but I had made exercise into this way of assessing my own value, assessing my own worth, deciding for myself if I was good or bad based on how much exercise I did. And that was a disordered relationship with exercise. And so from that stay on, I've tried to be more thoughtful about exor sizes that I enjoy and what actually feels good to my body on that day. And so as we think about exercise, that's one of the questions I want you to think about, right, what is your relationship with exercise? Has your relationship with exercise been more of a penance type of relationship where you are exercising to cover your quote unquote food sins, or have you been able to engage in exercise because it genuinely feels good to your body and you enjoy it. I think that's actually the goal. And so every day, as you approach exercise, I would say ask yourself these two questions. Question one is what would feel good to my body today? Right? Because ladies, especially like if you are of a certain age, really any age, I think we all are like this all the time. Right. There are days when you feel great, and there are days when you don't feel so great, and sometimes that connect doors, hormones or other things. Right, but if you wake up and you don't feel so great, that's not the day to go try a new class at the gym, Right, that might be the day to just do something like walking or stretching. But then if you wake up he had a great night's sleep, you feel like you've got lots of energy, man, that might be the day to try something new, find a video online that sounds fun, maybe do more strength work. But make it where you are asking yourself every morning, like what would feel good today? What what's my body asking for today? What would feel good to my body today? And honoring your body in your choice around exercise, because honestly, I think that's how we honor God and our choice around exercise is by listening to the body He created for us with all these signals that it gives us, right and honoring that. And then the second question is what's realistic for what I have today? Right? If you are building your schedule around your exercise, friend, that's a disordered priority. Right. There's nowhere in scripture where you can tell me that the first thing on my to do list, the first priority should be exercise. For Timothy tells us that physical training is of some good. Of course it is. It's great, right, But if your life is exercises on the calendar and then everything else is kind of squishy, that's out of order, my friend. You should look at the priorities that you have for the day as it aligns with God's word, right, Like, oh goodness, I know some of you have. The struggle is real. Right. You can make time for exercise every day, but making time to spend in God's word and prayer, that kind of falls off. Sometimes you gotta switch it, my friend, You gotta switch it. There's no excuse not to. So ask yourself what's reasonable for my day? If I've got a crazy day, just back to back to back. Maybe what's reasonable is just like taking a ten minute like I just got to catch my breath, walk right, or spending ten minutes on the floor doing some bridges or crunches or something that feels good to you, strengthening your core, doing some free weights, whatever feels good to you, right, Or maybe you've got a free afternoon. Hey, that's your time to go spend a little bit more time. Maybe it's a longer hike somewhere, or maybe you can go to an hour long class of the gym if that's something you enjoy. But look at your day and reasonably assess what would work, and remember to keep your priority straight. That's what's most important. Hey, how is your relationship with exercise? Let's talk about it in the community. You can go to Waiting for Me last dot com. Join us there. I can't wait to see you there and hear how you're doing with exercise and maybe how you want your relationship with exercise to change. Our coaches are there and we can help encourage you on that front. To you, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. Bye bye. Compared to podcasts, it's proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. From more great Christian podcast go to lifeaudio dot com.
