« Stop exercising »: the advice I followed for too long
If you have ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease and you're searching "getting back into exercise", you're probably standing exactly where I stood a few years ago: caught between wanting to move and the fear that it will trigger a flare.
Back then, after two episodes where a limb locked up for days with no warning, my gastroenterologist mentioned seeing a rheumatologist. I never went. I just stopped exercising. It was simpler. And I paid for it: not in flares, but in years spent feeling weaker, more and more of a spectator in my own body.
I won't tell you here how I ended up back in a boxing ring a year after a hospital stay — that story is in the book. What I want to share is what I actually do today to move without it backfiring.
I stopped trusting my body's verdict on the same day
The lesson that served me best: how a session affected me isn't judged during the session, or right after. In the moment, adrenaline lies. The real verdict lands the next morning, sometimes the one after.
So I made myself a stupid little rule: the day after a slightly harder session, I check three things without dramatizing — how tired I feel on waking, my gut, and whether I want to do it again. If all three are fine, I can push again. If even one is off, I ease off for two or three days. It's not science, it's just that I stopped discovering the damage by living through it.
On the "not great" days, I still move, just tiny
It used to be binary: full session or couch. Now, on a tired day, I no longer ask "do I do my session?" but "what's the smallest thing I can do without regretting it?" Often it's a walk, ten minutes of mobility work, nothing photogenic. What matters isn't the session, it's not breaking the chain.
Because the real trap with a chronic illness isn't doing too much on one day. It's stopping completely during a flare… and never starting again.
Exercise isn't there for my "overall health"
That phrase never got me off the couch. What does is something else entirely: after years of the illness diminishing you, finding a place where effort produces a visible result is priceless. You hand a bit of slack back to a body that had been deciding everything on its own.
I also dropped the idea of the perfect session. Three times a week of something moderate and regular gives me far more than the heroic Sunday session that flattens me until Wednesday. Consistency beats intensity, every single time.
Looking back…
"Stop exercising" can be good advice in the moment. The problem is when "in the moment" lasts three years. Getting back to it isn't ticking a wellness box: it's refusing to let the illness decide what your body is allowed to do. As long as you go at your own pace, adapted to how you feel that day, and light enough to repeat tomorrow.
Important: this is my experience, not medical advice. Ulcerative colitis varies enormously from person to person. Don't resume or intensify physical activity without talking to your doctor — especially during a flare.
My full journey — from diagnosis to a life without medication — is told on my journey page, and in full in the book UC: Living Without Medication.