Chasing Numbers

This one might make some of you uncomfortable. Good. Stay with it.

I started my workout today on the treadmill. Nothing unusual there.

But then I stopped at seven minutes and something seconds in.

Not ten minutes.

Not fifteen.

Not a round, satisfying, socially acceptable number. Just, I'm ready to lift now. A Forrest Gump moment, if you will. I just stopped.

I also left my phone at home, no distractions, no chasing calories, or how long I worked out for. Gosh, it was so relaxing.

Younger me would have noticed the discomfort of that. The mild internal protest that it wasn't enough, that I hadn't hit a target, that I'd somehow cheated the session. Which told me everything I needed to know about how conditioned we are to chase a number rather than listen to a body.

The same thing happens on the hills. I live in Christchurch, where the Port Hills sit right on the edge of the city, and some days I head out for a walk with no fixed plan. Sometimes, halfway up, my body says that's enough, and I turn around. Just like that. Younger me would never have allowed it. Turning back before the top would have felt like failure, like quitting, like not being the kind of person who finishes things. But now? There's simply no reason not to turn around if you're done. And the interesting counterpart is this: some days I reach the top and want to keep going, and the walk stretches out longer than I'd planned. It all balances out somewhere in the roundabouts. The average effort isn't less, it's just honest. Calibrated to what was actually available that day, rather than what I decided in advance I should complete.

What even is the number for?

We chase numbers everywhere. The scale. The calorie tracker. The rep count. The weight on the bar. The minutes on the treadmill. And I want to ask, genuinely, what are we expecting to find when we get there?

A number is a data point stripped of context. It doesn't know what phase of your cycle you're in. It doesn't know you slept badly, or that you're three weeks into a stressful period, or that your body is actually running on empty and asking you, loudly, if you'd listen, for something different today. We've mistaken measurement for understanding. And in doing so, we've outsourced our body literacy to a screen.

This applies whether you're chasing a number on the scale, a calorie target, or a personal best on the squat rack. The premise is the same: that there is a magical endpoint, and when you reach it, something meaningful will have occurred. But bodies don't work in endpoints. They work in ongoing, fluctuating, deeply contextual feedback loops.

The neuroscience of doing it differently

Here's what's interesting. Rigidity isn't just psychologically limiting, it's neurologically limiting too.

When you do the same thing in the same order at the same intensity every single session, your brain stops having to actually engage. The neural pathways are well-worn, the motor patterns are automated, and the cognitive load drops close to zero. This is efficient in some contexts. In training, it's a ceiling.

Novelty, doing something slightly differently, stopping when you feel ready rather than when the timer says so, increasing load based on how your body feels today rather than what a spreadsheet says, activates the brain's prediction error system. When what happens doesn't match what was expected, the brain has to update. That's learning. That's neuroplasticity in real time. And in the context of resistance training specifically, variability in stimulus is one of the drivers of continued adaptation. The muscle, like the brain, stops responding to the same input delivered the same way indefinitely.

The menstrual cycle makes this even clearer. Strength output, perceived exertion, recovery capacity, and even injury risk shift meaningfully across cycle phases. A body in the follicular phase has different resources available than a body in the luteal phase, which often genuinely needs more food, more rest, and a softer session. A rigid programme treats this biological variation as noise to override. But it's a signal. It's your body communicating, if you're willing to listen.

Neuroplasticity, recovery, and learning to move safely

This is where I want to speak directly to something I see clinically, because it matters enormously and doesn't get discussed with enough nuance.

In eating disorder recovery, movement is one of the most complex territories to navigate. Exercise behaviours in eating disorders are often rigid, rule-bound, and driven by compulsion rather than choice, characterised by an inability to rest, profound distress when a session is missed or cut short, and movement used as compensation rather than expression. The rules look like discipline from the outside. Neurologically, they're deeply grooved pathways, well-worn tracks that the brain defaults to automatically, without conscious engagement, because they've been reinforced thousands of times.

Compulsive exercise in eating disorders is one of the most under-discussed and under-treated features of the illness — and one of the hardest to shift.

This is where neuroplasticity becomes not just an interesting concept but a clinical one.

The brain retains the capacity to form new neural pathways throughout life. But new pathways require new inputs, and in the context of recovery, that means practising movement that is flexible, responsive, and genuinely optional in a way that compulsive exercise never is. Turning around halfway up a hill when your body says it's done. Stopping on the treadmill at seven minutes something. Doing fewer sets because today that's what's available. These aren't small acts. They're repetitions of a new pattern, one where the body's signal is the authority, not the rule.

Interoception, the brain's ability to sense and interpret internal body states, is measurably disrupted in anorexia. The hunger and fullness signals are distorted. The fatigue signals are overridden. The capacity to distinguish genuine physical need from cognitive noise is compromised. Safe, flexible movement in recovery is, in part, an interoceptive rehabilitation. Each time someone moves in a way that is responsive to how they actually feel, rather than what a rule dictates, they are practising the skill of listening to their body. That skill generalises. It doesn't stay in the gym.

The goal isn't the absence of movement. Movement is genuinely good for recovery_, for

mood, for bone density, for the embodied sense of being capable and alive in a physical self. The goal is movement that a person could freely choose not to do, that varies with how they feel, that isn't contingent on food intake or organised around compensation. Joyful movement, even when joy looks like a quiet walk that turns around halfway, is neurologically the opposite of compulsive movement, even when the behaviour on the surface looks similar. The difference is the internal experience, and the internal experience is everything.

Getting comfortable in the uncomfortable

Stopping at seven minutes felt uncomfortable. Not physically, I felt ready. Cognitively. The discomfort was the gap between what I did and what I thought I should do.

That gap is interesting. And sitting in it, rather than immediately resolving it by hitting a number, is where the real work is.

Cognitive flexibility, the ability to tolerate ambiguity, update rules, and respond to what's actually happening rather than what's planned, is a trainable skill, just like a muscle. And like a muscle, it requires load. The load here is discomfort. Doing things slightly differently. Stopping when your body says stop. Eating more on the days you're hungrier. Resting when you need to rather than when the programme permits.

This isn't chaos. Routine is useful; it reduces friction and gets things done. But routine to the measurement, every single day without variation, isn't discipline. It's rigidity. And rigidity, in bodies and in brains, is the opposite of resilience.

A different question

Someone recently asked me what my goals in the gym were. They kept steering toward weight loss, waiting for me to say the word. I didn't, because it isn't. My goal is to feel fit, strong, and able-bodied. To move well. To feel capable in my body.

That's not a number. You can't track it on an app. And it turns out, it's also much harder to chase, because it requires you to actually feel it, rather than measure it.

Maybe that's the point.