5 Tips To Listen to Your Body
I’ve been talking a bit over on my Instagram lately about how I’ve recently realized how far I’ve come in my health and fitness lifestyle with regards to learning to *actually* listen to my body, and know how to respond to it appropriately.
If you’re like me, in the past when I wanted to lose weight, tone up, or just all around feel better in my body, I’d look to all different sources to tell me what I *should* be doing. How to workout for a toned and leaned body, what foods to eat or eating style gives you the most energy, less bloating, fat loss, etc. But I never learned how to actually LISTEN to my own body and the signals it is constantly giving.
Ways in which I’ve learned over the years how to do so include:
my Holistic Health Coaching Certification classes
Books including:
Podcasts Including:
Did you know that your body actually wants you to be at a really healthy weight?
It wants you to feel full of energy, healthy, in shape, sleeping well, etc. And that weight may or may not be 125, or 150, or whatever your “goal number” may be. How do we even come up with those numbers anyway? Your body’s “homeostasis,” or body weight range is where you feel your best, and is already pre-determined by what constitutes healthy for your body. And it is a range, not one number on the dot.
This number fluctuates!
Depending on how much water you have, how much movement you’ve had, sodium, stress, sleep, and more, your body is constantly re-regulating itself which is a good thing! So, staying at one specific number is not working with your body, but forcing your body to fit into a certain box. Your body was created to be able to tell you exactly what it wants and what it needs in order to be it’s best. This means optimum energy, strength, sleep, mood, hormones, and more.
These are all incredible benefits, and aesthetics is just a cherry on top!
I do want to note that in some cases, for example, bikini competitors, professional athletics, and the like, this does not apply, however, you can see that these are examples of “forcing” your body into a box and require close guidance by professionals. This is not good nor bad, depending on the intention!
How often have you tried to force your body into a specific mold? On the contrary, how often have you tried to work with your body? When you start to work WITH your body you’ll shift from trying to control it, to nourishing your body, trusting it’s signals, learning to respond to it, and ultimately finding your most ideal, healthy balance. Your body will always win. If you’re not listening to your body, it will scream louder and louder, in more uncomfortable ways.
Let’s look at some ways you may NOT being listening to your body, and how it may be trying to get your attention:
Are you regularly bloated?
Consistently groggy?
Your calories are quite low but you’re still not losing weight or fat?
You’re exhausted physically, but still doing HIIT because your workout plan says so?
You’re eating super clean, only to find yourself grazing through the cupboard at night, or going wild on the weekends?
Eating very low carb yet feeling weak, tired, or not sleeping well?
The way we eat and workout plays a major role in our hormone balance, which in turn plays a major role in our body composition, energy, ability to lose fat or gain muscle, and regular healthy body processes. This is an entirely new blog post in itself, but I’ll give you a quick example.
Cortisol is your body’s stress hormone. When there is too much cortisol in the body, your body sees this as a signal that you’re in danger. In order to keep your body “safe” it holds onto body fat as a survival mechanism, specifically in the belly area. Your body, however, does not know the difference between true life threatening stress, and you trying to control your body into looking a certain way. If you are working a high stress job, constantly feeling tired, and regularly workout at a high intensity or for long periods of time, there is a possibility that your body is perceiving this as stress, increasing cortisol, holding onto fat, and causing you to move further from your “goal body” only because it's trying to keep you safe.
Similarly, if you’re eating very low carb and your body is not responding well, you may have brain fog, have difficulty sleeping, irritability, and low energy. In reality, all your body wants it some good healthy carbs!
This is only one example, nutritional deficiencies or intolerances, lack of sleep, stress, and more can cause similar issues.
How to listen to your body
1.Check your mindset.
Is your mindset at a place of trying to heal your body, to support it to feel full of energy and you’re healthiest yet? Or is your mindset of control, trying to overpower your body to achieve your aesthetic goals?
2.Create a Food Diary
Download one here. A food diary can help you begin to make correlations between the foods you eat and the way you feel. Everywhere from energy, bloating, brain fog, full of energy, skin clarity, etc. You want to write down what you ate, how you feel immediately after eating, how satisfied you are, and how you enjoyed the meal. A couple hours later check in with yourself again - are you still satiated? Are you bloated, tired, congested, etc? Writing all of this down will help you see patterns and make adjustments to honor your body’s cues.
3.Learn to do a full body scan.
Download my free meditation here to begin learning how to feel into your body. Learning to understand where in your body you feel discomfort can lead to an incredible amount of growth not only with your physical health, but mental as well. Which leads me to 4 and 5.
4.Ask yourself what you need.
When you go to create a meal, use a quick full body scan to assess how hungry you are, and what your body may need. For example, if you worked out this morning and you’re feeling a bit tired, do you need a healthy carb for more energy? If you’re ravenous, do you need a good serving of protein and fat to keep you full? If you’re feeling a bit *blocked up,* do you need more fiber?
5.Ask your body what movement it needs.
Click here for more about creating a great fitness routine for yourself, and how to know what types of exercises to do. But today, I mean literally ask your body what it needs. Are you full of energy, ready to do a higher intensity workout with some cardio to burn that energy? Are you feeling strong, ready to increase your strength with weights? Are you tight and tired, maybe needing a gentle yoga flow or walk and a stretch? Are you truly sore and need a rest day? Are you stressed, needing a quick pilates or yoga session to de-stress? It is important to first understand what types of movement and exercise you truly enjoy, and secondly being able to ask what your body needs at any given time. A key component to this tip is also honoring your likes and dislikes. If you hate weights, great choose another form or resistance training. If you hate running, wonderful try biking or swimming or walking. There are PLENTY of varieties to exercise and support your body to being it’s healthiest and most fit.
Here are a few people I love to follow who are great at listening to their body’s, and promote true health and wellness lifestyles.
Along with this comes the ability to know when something is truly unbalanced or “wrong” and when to reach out to a doctor for help. This is something I’m currently experiencing and want to spend a bit more time on. I’ll be posting about this topic in the near future, so hold tight, and truly dive into this topic for yourself and assess where you need to make changes to begin listening to your body, and responding to it appropriately!
I’d love to hear what your biggest takeaway is in the comments below!
XO,
Di