Built on HAES-Fitness Focused on All Bodies: What is a Health at Every Size (HAES) Aligned gym?
You walk into a new gym after spending some time hyping yourself up to step through that door. You are met with a warm, smiling face; someone who is genuinely excited to meet you. You take in the vibe of the space and instantly feel some stress leave your body. “How is this a gym?” you may ask yourself as you are guided by a team member into the studio. ADA accessible bathrooms, a fully stocked shower, equipment that actually looks fun to try. Once you’ve settled into the space, you are introduced to your trainer for your session. They know your name and you begin talking about why you took the brave step of coming into a new gym. Before you know it, you’re fully immersed in the space and feel like you’ve found a community of folks who have similar relationships with their bodies and exercise. How nice it feels to not feel like you have to do this alone!
Maybe it's been a few years since you last explored a regular exercise routine. Maybe your body has been giving you signs that it is needing more movement because it’s been achy. Perhaps the countless amount of weight loss ads and get-fit-quick commercials have been plaguing your mind day after day and you are feeling low in your body image. Regardless of where you are at, walking into a new gym can be scary and really intimidating. That is exactly why My Health Matters Fitness is different.
It has always been part of our ethos to be Health at Every Size or HAES, for short. Countless times, in medical settings, gym settings, public settings, we are thinking about and very aware of our body and how we must look to other people. People are fearful of coming to these spaces because they have been shamed about their appearance, written off, and not taken seriously. I know I certainly would not want to go to spaces that made me feel like this and yet sometimes, we feel like it is our only choice.
You may have tried at home exercise routines on Youtube. Been told by the health care industry that you need to “lose weight” and to go on the next diet or they can’t treat you properly. In my opinion, it’s just another way of them saying “I don’t know what I am doing and don’t want to take the time to educate myself on finding ways to assist you.” And yet, when you come back to the gym or your next doctor’s appointment and don’t have the “results” that they are deeming appropriate, you leave feeling like you are the problem and have failed, when in reality, this whole industry is set up to have you fail time after time without blame of their own. If every body is different, a vague one-size-fits-all recommendation from your healthcare provider to “exercise” and “eat well” will not set you up for success.
In a HAES aligned gym, like ours, whoever comes to us for guidance is not judged by how they look or their current/past routines. You are a person, not a number and deserve to be treated with an open communication style that does not write you off because of what you may or may not have done. A HAES gym is centered around creating an environment that is accessible for ALL bodies, and we mean all bodies. You have seating that is meant to fit you, not making you fit it. You aren’t met with questions about weight loss and getting pinched by calipers and measuring tapes. Your “success” in the gym has nothing to do with how much you’ve lost, but rather how much you’ve gained. Mirrors are intentionally not put in our movement spaces so that our distorted image of ourselves that day is not set in our minds to disrupt the movement wins we’ve achieved. We say how strong someone is rather than mentioning how their body has grown or shrunk. We measure growth by how your relationship with movement has changed. You can shift your focus from the things that don't support you to the areas that bring you joy.
If you leave a space feeling like you’ve failed or aren’t good enough, then that space has failed YOU, you have not failed that space. After I had that realization, I decided to not think about all the time I’ve lost to crappy advice from doctors and other providers. Instead I brought my vision of a HAES aligned movement studio to life and now I get to look forward to a space that is meant to grow with me, not against me and I get to share that with an incredible team and group of community members.
