Eight things I’ve learned in my year of ‘lifting heavy’ | Emma Beddington

I didn’t expect to enjoy heaving chunks of metal. But lifting has paid off for me in surprising ways – and shown I can change my life dramatically

I occasionally do self-improvement stuff for work – fell-running, Hula-Hooping, getting up early – and despite sincerely appreciating some of it, and saying I’ll keep it up, I never do. Until a year ago, when I went to a gym to write about lifting heavy weights. This was, to say the least, surprising. I have never enjoyed exercise: I hated it at school, and worked out in my 20s only as an adjunct to an eating disorder. Since then, I’ve mostly walked and done bits of pilates as a dull but necessary investment in my spine. I’ve always been sedentary, a stranger to endorphins.

For some reason, though, I finished writing about lifting heavy weights, shut my laptop and went straight to the gym to lift more. Since then, I have gone three times every week, come rain, shine or Storm Éowyn. Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly from my surprise year of lifting.