MODULE 1PLAYSHEET

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BECAUSE SELF-WORTHDOESN’T HAVE A SIZE.

MODULE 8TRANSCRIPT

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Hello Untameable!!!

Welcome to Module 8!

This module is all about getting in touch with our instinctual needs and desires.

In this module, we’re going to be talking about:

• How to intuitively nourish your body with food and movement without triggering the diet brain.

I can’t wait to hear about your mission successes and chat with you on our coaching call.

Being untamed means you trust and honor your body’s instincts. It’s about dropping the societal rules and tuning into what feels best for you. That’s why in this next part, we’re going to talk about health and how to intuitively take care of your health without going batshit.

Let’s talk about health.

An important piece of self-worth is self-care, which is about honoring your physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It’s about trusting your body’s instincts and treating yourself with kindness, respect and compassion. ALL of these things support health because health encompasses our overall well-being. This can happen in many different ways, but I want to talk about this as it relates to eating and movement.

First, let’s talk about three concepts to help you makeover your relationship to health…

#1) Health does not equal thinness.

We’ve been brainwashed to think that health equals thinness. This is always a real source of confusion for ex-dieters. If you’ve always done “healthy” things in the pursuit of thinness, it takes a bit of reframing to redefine your relationship with eating and movement. If you feel like your diet brain is still something you struggle with, then I encourage you to listen to this part, but skip the missions and loop back around once you’ve gotten to a place of food neutrality and body trust.

Sidenote: Food neutrality is when you perceive all food as just food and there are no moral associations (i.e. labeling food or eating behaviors as “good” or “bad”). You give yourself full permission to eat what you want. You know you can have it anytime you want and you trust your body’s instincts. It’s about being free of the “shoulds” associated with eating. Weight is not a factor in your decision-making. This is body trust. Again, if you don’t feel like you have body trust, then I encourage you to listen to this part, but skip the missions.

Module EIGHT: Untamed Instincts

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As a society we’ve been brainwashed to think that if you’re not losing weight or dieting, you are unhealthy. Often women with a diet mentality believe that if you are not dieting or trying to lose weight, then you live on the other side of the spectrum thinking, “Why on earth would I eat broccoli and step foot in a gym if I’m not trying to lose weight?!?!?”

We’ve lost touch with what feels good for us in the pursuit of thinness.

Diet culture has done a disservice to our health by blending weight and health—not to mention ignoring the whole mental health side of it, but we’ll get to that. We’ve been told that weight is a measure of our worthiness and well-being, so if you’re not “watching your weight” you are inherently an unhealthy, bad person. You know by now that this is buuuullllshit!

In order to get in touch with what actually makes us feel good, we have to take weight loss out of the equation. Our desire for weight loss overrides our body’s instincts and creates a messy relationship with things like food and movement. So the first step in reframing your relationship to health is to take weight out of the equation.

How would your choices around food and movement change if weight was not a factor in your decision? Be really honest with yourself as to whether weight is playing a part and kindly ask it to take a hike.

#2) Health is not an obligation.

What often gets left out of the “health” conversation is the fact that your health is your prerogative. Of course I support and encourage you to tend to your health if that’s what you want, but much like your body is your business, your health is your business. You are the boss of your body. Everyone is entitled to bodily autonomy and we need to respect that. We all get freedom of choice in this matter and health is not a measure of our worth.

Being the boss of your body means that only you can determine what forms of self-care feel best for you—that includes food and movement. You get to make the choices you want to make.

#3) Health is multi-faceted and not entirely within our control.

To have this conversation on health we need to recognize that health is multi-faceted.

In the nutrition and fitness world, health is often viewed in a vacuum. Physical health and dare I say, body size, is paramount and as long as your body fat is low and your intestinal lining is not compromised it doesn’t matter if you are skipping social events and losing sleep googling and stressing over the fat grams that might be in your peanut butter.

Health is a function of our genetics, environment, individual circumstances, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Some of this is in our control and some of this is not.

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The physical part of this – the one that most people put all their focus on - is only one fraction of the puzzle and I see lots of people sacrificing their emotional and spiritual well-being in the pursuit of the physical, which ultimately makes us less healthy.

Waking up every morning hating your body, obsessing over food, not having a life outside of nutrition podcasts and meal prep and declining sex because you are too exhausted from going for a run is likely not healthy. Psychological stress has the same effect on the body as physical stress and only you can decide whether your “healthy habits” are actually making you bat-shit.

We are so concerned about food and exercise, yet how often are doctors asking about what we’re doing for our mental and spiritual well-being everyday? Did you know that loneliness kills more people than cigarettes? Health is so much bigger than the nutrients we eat and the number of steps that we walk in a day.

I encourage you to start looking at health through a broader lens and always ask yourself how it’s working for you—only you can be the boss of your body.

Lastly, we are all going to die at some point so thinking that you can control your destiny in life only takes you away from enjoying the present. Chillax and do the best you can. I don’t believe they’ve discovered perfection as the magic pill for eternal life.

If you haven’t already, I encourage everyone to read Health At Every Size to expand your knowledge on this stuff and to start challenging any beliefs you have on health that may have led you astray.

This brings us to your next mission.

Mission: Redefining Health

Step #1: Using the playsheet for this module, answer the prompts about your relationship to health to uncover any limiting beliefs that might be making eating and movement messy for you.

Pause the audio here and complete this mission in the playsheet before moving on.

Next, we’re going to talk about how to make changes to eating or movement without going bat-shit…

There is no “right” way to take care of yourself.

Taking care of you is only something you can decide on and it changes on an everyday basis. For example, sometimes taking care of myself means eating a bowl of ice cream for no other reason than it’s delicious. Sometimes it means eating ice cream because I’m stressed and using it to cope. Sometimes it means I have a salad for lunch because that’s what I feel like eating. Sometimes it means going to the gym and sometimes it means staying on the couch all day. Sometimes it means eating something I don’t really like or that makes me bloated because there are no other options available and I will not go hungry. Sometimes it means ordering take-out because life is too busy for me to cook and minimizing stress is my priority. Sometimes it means going to a farmer’s market to buy fresh vegetables and spending an hour cooking a new recipe.

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Sometimes it means taking time off from an activity that I love because my knee is hurting. Sometimes it means working through knee pain in order to do a hike that I’ve been dreaming about for months.

As you can see, it’s not black and white. It’s all about choosing what you need in that moment and withholding any type of judgment. And note that what is best for you may not always “feel” the best physically, be “the best” for your health or be “the best” in someone else’s eyes. I encourage you think about making choices with your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being in mind, knowing that sometimes you need to sacrifice one to honor another. Or that sometimes none of these are honored because you are not perfect. Ultimately, you have full control to do whatever you want and be OK with it. How freeing is that?

If you have a hard time deciding what to do, go to your gut instinct. Ask yourself, what do I feel like right now? You can play around with using the voice of compassion visualization to guide you, but try not to over-think it. Woo-woo speak, I know—but it’s true.

What do you feel like right now is the simple question that will get you connected with your body’s instincts and help guide your decisions. This goes way beyond food and movement. You’ll find that as you move along the spectrum to feeling fully untamed, you become more aware of your intuition and trust that it can guide your actions.

As it relates to food, hopefully by now you’ve dropped all the “should’s” and your inner perfectionist has toned down a bit. To figure out what works for you, get curious with how different things make you feel to learn what works for you. I will repeat myself again and say that what is best for you may not always “feel” the best physically, be “the best” for your health or be “the best” in someone else’s eyes. Play around with different foods, avoid trying to be “consistent” (more on this in a bit) and stay curious.

The question you can use to guide your instincts is, “What do I feel like right now?” Sometimes what you feel like might not be a particular food, rather it might be comfort or something fast or something warm or something that makes me feel energized. Let this question guide your choices.

Yes, eating is that simple. There is no other how-to associated with eating other than you are a grown-ass woman that is the boss of your body.

Finding movement that doesn’t feel like punishment.

Exercise is such a loaded term in our culture. What do you think of when you hear the word exercise?

Conversely, what do you think of when you hear the term movement?

Which word feels kinder? I’m assuming you’re thinking that movement does. That’s why I encourage you to drop the word exercise in favor of the word movement or play. I think you’ll find this opens your mind to a much kinder and expansive way to think about fitness.

If you’ve had a disordered relationship with exercise in the past, then it can feel hard to figure out what you like or want to do.

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Here are a few suggestions to help you discover what to do:

#1 – You have permission to stop and/or do nothing.Movement is not an obligation. If you don’t want to do anything, then don’t! If you start to do something and you’re not feeling it, you have permission to stop. It doesn’t need to be all or nothing.

#2 – Brainstorm all the different ways you can move. There are so many ways to move your body that are less traditional. Here are a few: Jumping rope, trampoline, playing with a hula hoop, throwing a Frisbee, going for a walk for pleasure, dancing around your kitchen, picking up your child or fur-child, pole dancing, burlesque, leisurely cruising around on a bike, skateboarding, playing around in a pool, having sex, gardening, axe throwing, doing housework, etc.

Be mindful of whether you are looking at movement through a restrictive lens and blow up that box to see that there are lots of other options. Especially that sex one—that one is good.

#3 – Incorporate your values.Our values are the things that light us up. They make life feel more fulfilling and we can use them as a guideline to determine what forms of movement we want to do. For example, if your values are fun, nature and being connected with other people, then take that into consideration when you’re thinking about what you want to do. If these are things that you value, then it’s no wonder running on a treadmill feels like torture!

#4 – Embrace the grey.Women with a diet brain typically think about things in a very black and white manner. For example, if you can’t walk for 30 minutes, then why even bother going outside. If you ate food that you didn’t really want, you think you’re doing this whole “eating what you want” thing wrong. If you can’t journal “perfectly”, then you’re not doing it at all. Sound familiar?

I like to refer to these as The Three Amigos of perfection: “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not doing this right” and “why bother.”

As much as we want to honor our physical, emotional and spiritual needs as it relates to choices for our health, it’s not going to be anywhere close to perfect or consistent. Be mindful of anything that feels like a “should” or a rule. Do the best you can and aim to live in the grey! This applies to eating too.

#5 – Get curious with how things are making you feel.When we’re taking direction from our doppelgänger’s “should’s”, we lose sight of what actually feels good for us. Be curious and play around with different things to discover what forms of movement work for you.

#6 - Focus on improving what you want to improve, not weight.Weight loss is a poor predictor of health and performance. Yes, some people may lose weight while improving their health, but that’s not always the case. You have a better chance of being healthy by focusing on the behaviors that are related to the area you want to improve.

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It’s common for us to think weight loss is the cure and solution for everything. For example, we blame our joint pain on our weight or we blame our slow running on our weight. And so we remain trapped in weight loss mode. We focus on a possible side effect that is not really in our control rather than taking steps to improve the thing that we actually want to improve.

If you suffer from joint pain, treat the pain via mobility, stretching, working with a practitioner, etc. If you want to be a better runner, then practice running. If you want to have more energy, then start to notice what foods make you feel more energetic versus sluggish.

Again, take weight out of the equation and ask yourself, how would I approach this now?

This brings us to our last mission in this module…

Mission: Rediscovering Movement

Step #1: Using the playsheet for this module, answer the prompts about movement to redefine your relationship to it.

Step #2: Make a plan to try a new form of movement this week for fun and if you don’t want to, that’s OK too.

Remember, there is no “right” way to move your body or take care of yourself. You get to choose what is best for you!!!

I can’t wait to hear about your mission experiences in the Facebook group and chat with you on our group call!

Rock on and I’ll see you in Module 9!