I’m begging you!!! Please stop exercising, stop dieting, stop looking outside yourself for the answers. Let’s start moving in our environment together filled with wonder and curiosity. Let’s start nourishing ourselves with real food; grown and raised by humans we know and love.

Let our movement be part of the process of acquiring nourishment for our bodies. Let’s put our hand on our hearts and ask ourselves what we need, what we desire and what is the best way to get there.

This builds trust in ourselves. It makes us self reliant. We should be, right?! We have incredible bodies with infinite amounts of inner intelligence. They will guide us. They will serve us. This will happen with great ease when we tune in and allow our bodies to guide us! 

I know this is true because I am a living example of what not to do and what to do. I learned the hard way. I was taught that my body should be manipulated to look and feel the way it should be. I was put on my first diet when I was 9 years old. I would be sent to school with four slices of Cracker Barrel cheese, four Saltines and apple slices because that was the lunch on the meal plan for the diet de jour. I remember coming home after school and binging on fruity pebbles, because, well I was hungry. 

I also vividly remember my mom describing her body: “thunder thighs,” describing the ideal type as, “120 lb. dripping wet with a brick in her hand.” What kind of fucked up society do we live in that that is the ideal?! These ideas were the foundation for the disordered eating that consumed my life for decades.

When I was young it was easy for my body to bounce back from the restriction and over exercising. As I became a young adult and my life style shifted, I could no longer keep up with that ideal. I failed at controlling my body or so I thought that I had failed. I couldn’t seem to free myself from the hold of those ideals. 

It would be many years before I would realize that I had only failed to recognize and listen to the inner intelligence that my body was screaming at me. I went to therapy to get the reel of thoughts of inadequacy out my mind, but it wasn’t until I happened upon the Minnesota Starvation Study (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/10/hunger) did a light bulb go off in my head. 

After learning about the effects of starvation/restriction on healthy men it was obvious that it was the initial diet at 9 that began my obsession with food. I am not unique in this. The men in that study also became obsessed with food, many developed eating disorders and all would be changed forever. 

So, what does all this mean? Contrary to what the diet and fitness industry have promoted, the answers to your health problems do not lie in the pages of a written “perfect diet” or “best workout for your body.” How can anyone know what you need but you. I have this radical idea that if we learn to trust ourselves that we can tune in an all the answers are there, inside of  each of us. 

When we move our bodies in our environments in ways that not only feel great to us but also help us interact with our community and environment, we create meaning to that movement, unlike walking daily on a treadmill, ticking off calories but really going no where. When we listen to the signals that our bodies give us when we move and eat, we start to learn what food gives us energy and what food makes us feel sluggish. 

We can write our own map, we can see for ourselves what movement and food feels good in our bodies. This way means more feeling, more tuning in, yes, more discomfort, yes, more opportunity to experience and adjust so that we can create then environment that allows us to thrive.