In this episode, I’m breaking down the importance of surrendering to the wisdom of our bodies, how NOT doing this often manifests with dieting, health, and body image, and how to start changing this pattern. This is a must listen!
I cover:
Episode 62: How I healed from chronic stress & manage it today
Feedback? Questions? Comments? Head on over to Instagram and let me know in my DMs!
FREE TRAINING
COURSES
Follow me on Tiktok: @jessiemgolden
Subscribe to my Youtube channel
In this episode, I’m breaking down the importance of surrendering to the wisdom of our bodies, how NOT doing this often manifests with dieting, health, and body image, and how to start changing this pattern. This is a must listen!
I cover:
Episode 62: How I healed from chronic stress & manage it today
Feedback? Questions? Comments? Head on over to Instagram and let me know in my DMs!
FREE TRAINING
COURSES
Follow me on Tiktok: @jessiemgolden
Subscribe to my Youtube channel
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Jesse Golden podcast. We are talking about a very important topic today. The art of surrender with your body. And I was inspired to create this episode after a conversation with some friends the other night about we were talking about how we've all had our own issues with health, with body image, with our weight, what have you.
And it wasn't until we had the moments of true surrender and just. Giving it up. That things started to shift. And this is something that is easy to talk about, but when it comes to conceptually embodying this, it can be a little bit more challenging. So I'm going to do my best to allow you to understand what that actually means.
When I talk about surrendering. And why that is so important, because a big part of this is getting your brain on board. As to why letting go of the reigns and surrendering that control is actually the best thing for you. So hopefully we can have a mountain of proof here as to why that actually makes sense for you to surrender [00:01:00] rather than to grip harder for control. So firstly, we have been taught in our society in Western cultures that our bodies are stupid things that need to be micromanaged. That we just need to throw medicine at it through supplements audit.
And we see this on both the allopathic side of medicine, and we see this on the functional medicine side too. I've been a victim of both when it comes to, Hey, your body doesn't know anything. Let's treat it like this silly, stupid thing. And of course, allopathic medicine is beautiful when, I mean we've eradicated. Disease through medicine.
It's such an important thing in emergency surgeries. And particularly when I look into pregnancy and birth for women, I mean, it's incredible. I love Western medicine for so many reasons. And I neglected Western medicine for a long time and kind of rejected it as. Oh, so mainstream and it's just corrupt.
And so I went to the other end of the spectrum. It was holistic, everything, functional, everything, and I got [00:02:00] screwed. For lack of a better word on that end of the spectrum as well with spending tons of money on all these tests and supplements and yada yada, and nothing helps because this piece was missing.
And this is what I think is missing so often from both. And you can use both functional or whatever. Eastern functional and Western allopathic medicine both have their time in place. And if you use them with this information, in my opinion, at their core. It can be a beautiful synergy and it's about choosing, picking and choosing when which method makes the most sense. And oftentimes it's a combination, but. Our bodies are so goddamn brilliant.
They hold so much wisdom and we have so much hubris. As humans to act like we know better than this. Truly our existence is magical. It is magic. We don't know where we came from. We don't know how this, any wisdom and [00:03:00] ourselves and the night. Permeates into organs and then it expands into the whole ecosystem of the human body. It's a wisdom that we are only learning about. Where as this wisdom has been around for millennia. And we were trying to catch up and learn about this wisdom.
And how does it know what to do? It's geared towards health and survival. It's such a beautiful thing. Does it get it wrong sometimes? Yes. That's when the. Medicine or the alternative approaches come into play. But so often we just need to take our hands off the wheel and recognize that we are silly, silly little creatures. That don't have a damn clue what our bodies actually are doing. Our job is to give them the environment in which to thrive so they can heal themselves. Our bodies are self-regulating organisms.
They don't need us to be in there and say, Hey, beat your heart right now. Hey, expand lungs, pump this blood. No, they do all of that on their own. All of that on their own. When we are second, even [00:04:00] this reframe was really helpful for me. Oftentimes, we let's say we get a really bad cold or the flu. By the time we recognize the symptoms we're in the healing phase.
So the stuffy nose and the inflammation. We're in the healing phase. And I always viewed that as, oh, I'm in the sick phase when no, our body's already beaten. Once we got over the fevery phase, right. When our body's really fighting off. The the germ or the micro organism, whatever it is. Then we're in the healing phase and we need to respect that rather than viewing. Oh, just get this over with as quickly as possible. Or if there's swelling and inflammation in the body, I now take a step step back and say, ah, My body's healing something rather than trying to make this go away.
Chronic inflammation of course, is something you want to pay attention to, but acute inflammation. Nobody's doing something right now. It's healing. If I'm having a lot of bloating, for some reason, probably some healing going on there. When we have an injury. I used to roll my ankle, sprain it all the damn time when I was in high [00:05:00] school. It would smell like a balloon. And the old rhetoric, which is not true anymore, was to just ice it and make it all go away.
There's a time and a place for that, depending on the circumstance, of course. But. The body's doing its job. It's shuttling nutrients to that area so that it can heal. And there's such wisdom in all of this. If we just observe nature and say, maybe nature knows what it's doing. I just need to let it do its thing. Which means that we need to get rid of our timelines and our ego needs to get out of the way, which we're going to talk about here.
Why that can be so hard to do. And what this often comes down to is a lack of self-trust or excuse me, a lack of trust in nature. We're so disconnected from the wisdom of nature. We walk around with all these magical trees and just looking at animals, the instincts of everything in nature, and we're so disconnected from it in Western cultures.
Oftentimes. And there's a lack of trust. [00:06:00] In the wisdom of the body. And this leads to us when we don't have trust. And this applies to so many areas of life. And what do we do? We control. We grew up super tightly. We micromanage, we mother, we hover. And it puts us in this desperate energy, this lack energy.
If I'm not safe. Because when you don't trust something, you feel like you're not safe. Therefore you control. It's a very human thing to do.
Coupled with, so we have this lack of trust that leads to needing to control. Lack of respect for nature's wisdom. Again, the hubris of humans that no, I know better. I just, God forbid the body knows anything. No, I know. Better. And oftentimes low self-worth. We're so uncomfortable with sitting with feeling bloated, puffy, having extra weight or skin flaring up, whatever it is. And because we're coming from that low self-worth state, we panic. And we can't sit with the discomfort. Of not looking perfect. And so then we get back into [00:07:00] that control mode, because again, it feels unsafe.
So we control. And we make things worse every single time. So how this can show up in dieting and fitness. Pushing the body too far. I did this with CrossFit. Where I just did not respect the boundaries of my body. It wasn't aware of the rest and recovery that was necessary. Just totally disregarded it.
I did it back in my low carb dieting days. Again, did not even cross my mind. The impact of removing essentially. A whole macronutrient from a young growing woman's body.
And I can tell you it was not good. I mean, we see this. If you have huge calorie, deficit's. Particularly, if you're doing a lot of intense exercise, you have a lot of stressors. You don't have a ton of weight to lose those huge calorie. Deficit's. There will be a price to pay because your body's not stupid. Removing all carps.
See this all the time. Just works well for some in the population for sure. [00:08:00] Not denying that. And certainly for a shorter period of time. For a lot of women. Particularly those of reproductive age. It doesn't work well. And rather than thinking, huh? How is this going to interact with my body's wisdom? We get in our head and say, no, I know what's best. I know better than my body and I'm going to override my body.
No, you won't. Your body will, when I promise you.
Too low fat for hormonal health. This is really not the trend that we've seen in the last, last decade. At least it's been lower carb. Versus lower fat, but still you see this and more bodybuilding type of circles and back in. I think more of the nineties before Atkins came on the scene, definitely more low fat.
Some are only focusing on macros and they're not focusing on their health.
So if it fits your macros, this blew up or people perceived this incorrectly to be, oh, I can just eat [00:09:00] cupcakes as long as I'm staying within my macros. Yeah, of course you can lose weight that way, but you are. Completely disregarding the needs of your body. And again, there's no free lunch. You will pay for that decision. Too focused on clean eating again, this idea that our bodies are these. Super fragile, stupid little things.
Of course, we want to give our bodies as much. As much love and care and nutrition as possible, but taking it to the extreme, believing that our bodies are not resilient and they can't handle some aspartame and a diet soda when the amount of aspartame that is required. To have a negative impact on the body is astronomical is ridiculous. Meanwhile people are doing crazy shit to their bodies, injecting our bodies with all kinds of stuff, which I do to Botox.
Hello. But it just does not add up and you can take it to the extreme of. Oh, my gosh, my body can't handle anything. Yeah. Kim, how the hell do you think we survive this far? Your body can handle a [00:10:00] lot, but let's not push it so far. It's about finding this balance. So I'm talking about the extremes here. You don't need to be eating a hundred percent clean or your body's going to die. You're okay.
The vast majority of the time when I see women come to me and they are in that orthorexic super obsessive, really focused on clean eating and they start eating more processed foods. They actually become much healthier. Because of the stress they're able to show their brain. Oh, we're not dying. There's not something massively dangerous about eating these foods.
And that sends calming signals to the body that can not be overlooked.
Expecting to see results too quickly. Huge for both building muscle. Anything fitness related dieting. The body has its own rhythm. And if you're going to push your body too far with expecting results tomorrow. W, what do you think the impact of that is? You have to think about the impact, your choices with all things, health, diet, and [00:11:00] fitness, actually having the wisdom of your body and its primary objective is to keep you safe and alive.
It's just arrived. And if it feels like that is threatened, it will push back. It will push back and brilliant. Brilliant. So you can thank your body. And view it as a teammate, rather than this pain in the ass thing that you have to micromanage. And yes, this might run counter to how you want to look in the moment.
That's usually the case is it's nine times out of 10. It's about how you look and how you feel. And I've been there in both situations where I felt so awful and I just wanted to feel normal. And I felt like if I just force my body to do the right thing, It doesn't know. I know. I was completely wrong.
And I've also been in the situation where I felt so uncomfortable because I was heavier. And I just kept dieting because I was so desperate to get the weight off and it made things 10 times worse.
Take your hands off the wheel. We see this in health. When it [00:12:00] comes to tons of supplements, let's just overload the body with supplements again, because it just needs to be bombarded. With a hundred more things, right. Chances are that is not the case. You need to take your hand into the cookie jar. You need to go relax, take a bath. And enjoy your life. And stop thinking obsessive early about micromanaging your health. Your body knows what to do with the self-regulating organism, give it the environment in which to thrive, and it will. Trying to micromanage the healing process. Let it go. Just to let it go.
If you think about this was really helpful for me, when I was struggling with my chronic mysterious health symptoms. Is, I would think of things that my body heals on its own without any input from me. For example. If I have an injury, let's say I was hit by a car in 2020, and I have a lingering neck energy. Well at lingering. Neck injury. There's nothing I can do [00:13:00] and said, okay, body, why don't you have blood flow here?
And then you can move this muscle here and then this tendon here, and I'm just throwing shit out. Cause I have no idea how the healing process works. Right. And that's the whole point. I'm not sitting here telling my body how to heal my neck. It's my job to say, okay. Do I need to take my hand. Off the wheel here.
Do I need to give my body more rest? Is that going to give it the appropriate environment in which to thrive? And the interesting thing is I learned when it comes to the nervous system and pain injuries, health issues, all closely tied. Oftentimes with pain, there's not actually a true injury anymore. But the nervous system is sending off signals of pain because of the way we're associating.
And we behave. In accordance with that. So for example, I recently worked with. A physical therapist who did some programming for me to help me with my, my neck and my trops, since that injury. And I chose it was barbell medicine. For [00:14:00] those interested, you can just Google barbell medicine and you can find their services. But the reason I chose them is because they take this. Uh, approach to pain where it's bio-psycho-social.
So we were talking a lot in the intro session about. My perception of this injury, my perception of pain. What do I do? How do I respond when I feel. A. Flare, so to speak when it comes to this area and turns out with working with this guy with a PT. Whatever I would feel fair with, let them know and say, Hey. Do you think I should take a couple days off or do you think I should continue?
And he said, let's continue. Just go lighter and slower. And I did,
and it went away so much more quickly than having this fear based approach of, oh my gosh, panic. I need to panic and micromanage this. Having that sense of trust was so important.
And just saying, my body knows what to do. I'm not going to freak out. I'm not going to panic. I'm going to engage in this intelligently. [00:15:00] And if I truly feel like this is making it worse, I stop. But having the sense of ease when it comes to our healing process is so, so, so important. And just question. Is there a possibility. That my body is healing quite fine on its own.
And all I have to do is go about my life without adding additional stress to this. That's all you have to do. Imagine. When that is the case, this is how I healed my insomnia. I felt like I had to micromanage my sleep. And was I having insomnia for an acute period? Yes. My blood sugar swings were so intense because my nervous system was a mess. But I prolonged that for months. Because I felt like I had to micromanage my sleep and then finally it dawned on me.
I was like, wait a minute. I fell asleep just fine for 30 years on my own. And then all of a sudden, I. Developed this belief that I have to tell my body how to sleep. That's insane. So I just sat with it that night. I said, okay. [00:16:00] Well, if I can't really force my body to sleep, which like, I don't know how to say, Hey body, go to sleep.
I don't fucking know. So I just sat there and said, okay, well, if I can't control it, I don't know how to tell it to sleep. All I can do is give it the right environment to feel safe. And then my body will go to sleep when it's ready. And sure enough that night I slept. And that is what I use. Anytime.
I feel any type of health issues. When I get a cold, I don't fucking know how to heal a coal. I don't know what my body is doing on the cellular level. None of us do. But we sit back, we rest, we drink the fluids. We let it do its thing. And it heals when it's ready to heal. So apply the same logic when you're struggling with acne, when you're struggling with any other lingering health issues that seem confusing to you.
If you're getting too neurotic and trying to control the process, consider. Maybe you don't know shit. And maybe your, maybe your body does. And maybe the actual missing ingredient is used. Stop. Stressing [00:17:00] about it because your body's not able to heal in that state. Go live your life, focus on other things and trust your body with full certainty that it will heal on its own. It knows what to do.
Just give it the environment and a big missing thing that I just, another tangent here. That I can offer you, is that if you're used to pushing your body, I work with so many high achievers, probably because I am one of them. Where we start to feel a little bit better, and then we put our foot on the gas too much. Consider what led you to this in the first place?
Oftentimes it was that high achieving energy of just pushing, pushing, pushing. So when we heal. Going right back to what we were doing before. We'll probably put us right back in this situation. We were in. So consider maybe the way I need to live my life going forward is a step down. Unless I just want to keep repeating the cycle of pushing my body too far. And then we go down, I freak out. [00:18:00]
I panic, I finally surrender it heals, and then I do it again. Maybe. If you need to completely change the way you are interacting with your body, when it comes to its capacity. That's all saying that I have a whole other podcast episode on that, about how I healed my chronic health issues related to stress that you can check out and I'll link in the show notes.
Adding more stress.
I think I've covered that. Pretty extensively here. Uh, tons of medicine, right of, oh my gosh, let me just throw more and more and more medicine on it. And is there a time and a place for that? Yes. Is it often. I would say no. And the obsessive focus on fixing it. Surrender. How good does it feel when you know, someone comes in and it's like, Hey. I'm going to take this whole project after your plate and I'm going to handle it. And, you know, you. It's the type of person where you're like, okay, they are going to handle it. I feel so nourishing to your body and your soul. Finally, oh my God.
You're really going to take this off my plate. [00:19:00] Thank you. Your body's trying to do that for you. You have this ally built into you? That you just get to surrender to and say, oh, phew, this brilliant mother nature that I inhabit. This organism. Wonderful. It's going to take care of me. All I have to do is get the fuck out of the way and treat it well. Voila.
Let that be. You're getting late. We also see this as body image, inability to sit with your current weight. And I know this can be a struggle. And this is why when it comes to relationship with food, body image is a big part of it because your sense of self-worth is closely tied to this. If you panic, if you gain weight. It brings up a big emotional response.
That is a big indication to me that too much of your identity is wrapped up in the way that you look.
Your sense of self should not be that dependent. On your appearance. Otherwise it's kinda be a fucking struggle throughout life, because guess what? None of this is going to be around forever. [00:20:00] Especially as women, we are taught that our soul value is the way that we look youthful. To be super lean, our bodies and I get it. It's fun to focus on it, but it's not fun to have your entire identity wrapped up in it where you don't feel like you're a worthwhile person, unless you look a certain way that is called conditional. Self-worth and self-respect we want unconditional self-worth and self-respect the most powerful woman in the room.
In my opinion is not the woman who looks the best. It's the woman who's content with herself, regardless of the way she looks. That is true power. So consider if you were not there, then this could be a beautiful opportunity. If you're sitting at a higher weight. To flex those muscles. And just say, I'm going to show the fuck up in life, regardless of the way that I look. And I'm going to lead with who I am as a person.
Of course, enjoy your appearance dress in whatever way makes you feel good. Do your hair and makeup. All that shit. But take it with a grain of salt because guys. All of this is [00:21:00] so superficial. At the end of the day, and we're all going to be gone at some point in the future. Anyway. So to take it too seriously is such a painful way to live.
It really, really is. And this was something that I. I really had to focus on when I was working on my relationship with food in my early mid twenties. And it was so helpful when I gained those 30 pounds in. 2018. All the way, sat it that way. Through the end of 2020. Because I was fine with it. Did I love having those 30 pounds on me?
No. But did I let it impact the way that I lived? No. The only time I cried and had an emotional reaction was when I shared a photo of myself. On social media and it was kind of like this revealing of, Hey guys, this is where, this is what I look like. And all of my glory. And I don't think anyone has to do this post to half naked photo on social media. But it was very cathartic for me because [00:22:00] I felt like there was still an element of me that was holding on to shame.
Not because of the way my body looked just as a general person, but because of my business. I felt like a fraud. And I felt like no, one's going to want to work with me. If I'm a health coach and I gained 30 pounds as a result of these health issues. And. Revealing that, you know what they say that. Shame thrives in the dark. And you have to bring it to light.
And that's when it heals revealing, that was such an emotional release for me. I cried after that, which was so unexpected. But sure enough, after that, that was my final act of surrender. And my body was ready to lose weight after that. When I finally revealed, I felt like a fraud because they had gained that weight.
But in the meantime, The year and a half, almost two years. I was sitting at that higher weight I showed up and I lived my fucking life. I bet. I think I went up three pants sizes, maybe, maybe even more three to four. And I just [00:23:00] wore whatever was comfortable. I showed up and didn't shy away. I didn't. Hide my body and act and secure.
I showed up as the same fucking Jessie that I always have been. And I truly attribute that to the work that I did when I was healing my relationship with food, my body image. Because I set out at that point, I said, I will not be a victim to the way my body looks for the rest of my fucking life. That's not a life that I want to live. And so I actively practice deconditioning my sense of self from the way that my body looked and it paid off because Lord knows I'm going to be going through other phases like that in the future 100%. If who knows if I will have children in the future, that will certainly play a part.
If there's other illnesses injuries, as I age, it will happen to all of us for one reason or another. And we can either set ourselves up for a lifetime of yo-yoing where we feel on top of the world. When we look the way we want. And we feel like we're in the pits of hell when we don't. No fucking thank you.
That feels. Just [00:24:00] anxiety inducing. Because we know that our sense of confidence is conditional. Based on the way that we look and we are just. 2015 pounds away from our self-esteem crumbling. No, thank you. I will take a hard pass. The body might need to stay at maintenance calorie intake. Recognize this again, your body has more wisdom. Going into a calorie deficit is a form of stress for a lot of people.
For some people, we need you to be in a calorie deficit and actually to improve your health depending on your health status and your body fat percentage. But for a lot of women, Going into a niche, an additional calorie deficit might be an additional form of stress that your nervous system cannot handle right now. Your body knows best, and guess what's going to happen.
If you try and challenge that it will bark back and your body will win. I promise you.
If you're making decisions from a place of desperation, when it comes to body image, I talk about this all the time on social media. You're [00:25:00] desperate energy to change your body is the very thing. Repelling your fat loss results.
Think of it in dating. If you show up. On the dating market and you are desperate to find somebody, it is repelling energy. It brings up the scarcity, this fight or flight, this fear based energy. And it puts your whole mind and body. And a state of survival, of lack of safety. And your systems are not going to work properly. Your metabolism is not going to function, function properly.
Your nervous system is going to feel like there's danger.
I already covered this, but too much, very identities focused on your appearance. And you can really use this as an opportunity to build true. Self-worth. There's oftentimes not a lot you can do. If your current weight is dictated by health issues, nervous system related issues. If like me going into a calorie deficit will make things a lot worse. So if you can't do anything about it at that point in time, and this is, [00:26:00] this is a very niche portion of the population, but. If regardless, I challenge you, whether you can do something about it or you can't to sit at that current weight. Set it, I was still 15 pounds heavier than I am now when I was in New York in 2021. And I lost about 15 ish pounds prior to that, before I moved.
And. I, like I said, I still had 15 to go, but I intentionally said, Nope. From, I think I made that decision in April may race that I'm intentionally going to push my calorie, intake up, see how high I can get my maintenance. And sit at this weight all throughout summer, the season, when everyone says you should be losing weight, I said, Nope, I'm intentionally not losing weight this summer. Making sure that I'm eating. At maintenance, seeing how high I can get my maintenance. To prepare myself for fat loss down the road to take care of my body.
Make sure my nervous system is safe during this time of stress, my metabolism, et cetera. And [00:27:00] it paid off massively. So I, in my opinion, when it comes to weight and your desperation and the lack of surrender, the biggest thing there is your self worth. You have to dig into the self worth. And I know it feels scary. Because your sense of safety that your brain. Remember, it's just your monkey brain that has this belief that you're not safe in the world.
Unless you look this way. Otherwise you're going to lose access to love, safety and belonging. This is what your primal brain thinks. And you can say, thank you so much for thinking that brain. I love you for that, but that is not true. It's just a story. And I'm going to show you. And the way you show your brain is by showing up anyway. Truly, truly, truly this work is so goddamn important. So in summary. We know so much less than our billion bodies do. Consider that the very act of safety that you're seeking comes from surrendering control to your body. And you're not just surrendering to, to nothing.
You're [00:28:00] surrendering to this. Organism that is so wise and no, so much. And your job is to take your hands off the wheel. Give it the environment to thrive for your brain, which is your nervous system and your body. Let them do their thing. Let them heal. They're self-regulating, it's a self-regulating organism. The human body. And then when it's time, then you can make changes and you can make those changes intelligently.
Otherwise you're gonna end up right back in the same. Position. So I really hope this was helpful in some way. I, this was a sermon basically for younger me who has been really lacked surrender when it came to dieting and fitness, when it came to health, when it came to body image and. Surrendering and learning to trust was such a big piece of the puzzle in all of these areas.
And it's a big thing that we cover inside of food, freedom evolution. So if this speaks to you in any way, building the self-worth the sense of connection, the sense of trust in yourself and in your body. Then I would absolutely [00:29:00] recommend checking out that course, which is linked in the show notes below.
And I will see you guys in the next one.