Your Body Won't Heal Until...

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right but your body still isn't responding — eating healthy, taking supplements, working out — and nothing is working, this episode will completely change the way you think about healing.

Most women try to fix gut issues, hormone imbalances, fatigue, and stubborn weight by stacking more supplements, more protocols, and more discipline. But the body doesn't heal because you push it harder. It heals when...

In this episode, we're breaking down one of the most overlooked foundations of root-cause healing. 

Topics covered:

• What the nervous system is actually doing (and why it matters for your gut, hormones, and metabolism)
• The survival hierarchy your body always follows
• Why your symptoms are your body communicating — not betraying you
• Why more supplements, more workouts, and more restriction can keep you stuck
• The four foundations of physiological safety

Connect with Kenzie on Instagram: @kenzie.gracefit

Interested in working together? find out more by clicking here - https://rebuiltrootsco.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Rooted Conversations Podcast. I'm Kenzie. It is your root cause big sister, and today's episode is one that I think is gonna hit really hard for a lot of you. And honestly, in the best way. Because today we're actually talking about something that almost no one in the wellness space is talking about, and it's why your body won't heal until it feels safe. And I know that might sound like a little woo-woo at first because safe, like, what does that even mean? You know? But stay with me because by the end of the episode, I promise you're going to look at your body and your symptoms in a completely different way. So let me paint you a picture. You're eating healthy food, you're taking the supplements, you're doing the workouts, and you're probably doing more for your health than 90% of the people around you. And yet, your stomach is bloated, your energy is tanked, your hormones are still a mess in the scale. She hasn't moved in months. And at some point, you're starting to ask yourself, is this mean that something is wrong with me? Or am I just broken? And here's what I want you to know and want you to hear. So if you have a pen and paper or even open up notes on your phone, write this down somewhere if you can. It's understanding that your body is not failing you. It is literally designed to protect you. So your body is not failing you, it is protecting you. And that's the reason that you need to understand uh is that your body is designed to actually protect you. It's protecting you because it doesn't feel safe. And what I want you to walk away with from this entire episode is that you cannot out-supplement a nervous system that feels like it's under threat. So listen to that one again. You cannot out-supplement a nervous system that feels like it's under threat. Okay? So let's get into it. What is safety in the body? What does that actually mean? So, first things first, when I say safety, I'm not talking about whether you logically know that you're safe, okay? I'm not talking about whether you're sitting in a comfortable house in a safe neighborhood. Your brain can know all of that and your body can still be running on full ass survival mode. And here's a simple way to think about it. If you imagine your nervous system, it's like a house alarm. Its one job is to detect threats and protect the house. And really, it has a really it does a really, really good job at doing this. And here's the thing: sometimes the alarm system is so sensitive that it goes off when there's actually no burglar. Maybe it's triggered by the wind or a squirrel on the roof, or you opening your own front door too fast. That is your nervous system at work and it does the same thing in the same way. It's constantly scanning your environment. It's asking, am I under threat? Do I have enough food? Is stress constant or temporary? Is my output exceeding my input? Is this environment predictable? And based off all those signals, it makes a decision, a very important decision. So, do we digest food right now? Do we produce hormones? Do we burn energy? Do we store energy? Do we repair tissues? Or do we lock it down? So the thing to understand with this is that your body doesn't know the difference between a lion chasing you in the wild and a stressful Monday morning where you skipped breakfast, had three back-to-back meetings, chugged coffee until noon, to your nervous system. Stress is stress. Threat is a threat. And so the alarm systems are gonna keep going off. And when the alarm system is going off, then nothing else in the house is going to work right. If we go back to that analogy and we think about what is happening in your house when the fire alarm or the alarm system is going off, literally nothing else is happening. It is just blaring and it's loud and everyone's panicking. And that's literally like a symbolic, it's a symbolism to what's happening when in your body when it does not feel safe. And so when we talk about why this actually happens and why the alarm system in your body starts to go off and starts to be triggered, if you think about your body like a phone with limited battery, then when the battery is full, your phone is doing everything, right? So we see apps running, screens at full brightness, Bluetooth is on, all of it. But we know all of our phones, especially for those of us who have iPhones, what happens when your battery is dropping to 15%, 30%? It asks you if you want to go into low power mode. It starts shutting off features that are not essential to your phone battery, your phone survival. So it closes background apps, it dims screens, it is no longer background refreshing, and it prioritizes only what is absolutely necessary to actually keep running. So your body does the same thing. When your nervous system actually perceives stress or threat, whether that's emotional stress, physical stress, undereating, overexercising, poor sleep, toxic relationships, constant pressure, then your body shifts into what I call a little bit of protection mode. And in protection mode, it just means that there's certain systems that get deprioritized. This is not to say that a calorie deficit doesn't work, because you know, this is a topic for another day, but it's important to understand because I do believe that survival mode and protection mode gets thrown around quite a bit. And we then think like, oh, a calorie deficit doesn't work because I'm in survival mode. Like, that's not true. The law of thermodynamics always applies. But when we talk about metabolism and how our body actually works, there's so many different factors that go into that. So when you're in this like so-called protection mode or so-called survival mode, your body deprioritizes fat loss and it deprioritizes things like digestion, hormone production, and it starts to conserve energy. And so there's a hierarchy that your body actually follows. And this is why everything works the way that it does, because it's survival first always. For reproduction, this is optional. We don't need to reproduce if we're running from a lion. Your body literally shuts down ovulation and tanks progesterone before it will let you die. Digestion, also optional. When your body is in a survival mode, it is actually pushing all of the blood to your extremities because it thinks it needs to be on the go and ready to literally run. So it will slow your gut down to a crawl and divert energy away into your heart and your lungs in order to keep that body running. Fat loss, also absolutely optional. Your body will hold on to every single extra calorie if it thinks that resources are scarce. So this is not a malfunction. This is just literally your body doing its job absolutely perfectly. It's designed to keep you alive above anything else. And the problem is that in our today's world, like in the modern world, that we're asking our bodies to look good, perform well, have balanced hormones, great digestion, while also simultaneously giving it every single signal that we are in a state of emergency, that we are literally living off survival. And you actually can't have both. You cannot be in survival and thriving at the same time. So stay with me now. Is this making sense? We cannot be thriving if we are surviving. So we must be thriving. And this is the part that I think is gonna hit home and be most powerful for you today. So one of the biggest frustrations I hear from the women that do work with me is that they feel like their body is working against them. They feel like their body is the problem, like their body is being stubborn or it's broken, or just plain betraying them. And I get it, because when you're bloated every single day, when your cycle's all over the place, and when you can't lose weight no matter what you try, it really does feel like betrayal. It feels like there's something wrong with you. It feels like it must be something that I am doing wrong. But the reframe that I actually want you to sit with is that your symptoms are not your body working against you, they are your body communicating with you. Your body can't talk. The way that it talks is through symptoms. So let me give you a real life example of this. I have had over 500 clients. We'll talk about this one client. I'm gonna call her Sarah. Um, she came to me. She was exhausted, bloated constantly. Her period was irregular. She had gained about 15 pounds in a year despite being in a calorie deficit and working out five days a week. And from the outside, she was doing everything right, you know, calorie deficit, working out, all the things. But when we take a step back and we look at the full picture, her body was under tremendous stress. She was only sleeping five to six hours a night. She was working a high-pressure job. She had a history of chronic dieting, going back to all the way into her teens. And she was doing intense cardio on top of all of this. So, really, her body was saying, I don't feel safe enough to let go of these extra resources. I need to hold on. The bloating was her gut slowing down because digestion is non-essential to the survival mode that her body felt it was in. The irregular period was her body recognizing that reproduction is a luxury. So it's not a necessity right now. The weight, it was her metabolism doing exactly what it's actually designed to do, conserving energy in a perceived state of scarcity. And so these are your body's natural adaptions, your body trying to protect you. And that's exactly what happened to my client, Sarah. And so once we stopped treating her body like it was the enemy, and we started asking it what it actually needed to feel safe, then that's where we really started to see shifts. When we shift out of survival mode, then digestion gets reprioritized. Reproduction gets reprioritized. All of those extras that our body deems as not necessary to survival come back. And so I actually do want to call some of you out on this. Very gently, but directly, because the natural response when your body isn't responding is to do more. And how many of you listening to this have felt that? Do that, catch yourself in that? More supplements, more restriction, stricter meal plans, more workouts, more intensity, more protocols, more, more, more, more. And I understand why. Because even I was there. You know, we've been conditioned to believe that that more willpower, more discipline, and more effort is always the answer. And for some of you, to be honest, it might be. But that's a that's a conversation for another day. We're talking about the people who are already doing enough, but they feel like they need to push through, grind harder, and commit further to the no excuses. But here's what's actually happening when you do that. So when you're adding more inputs to a system that's already in that survival mode, then we got to go back to the house alarm. Imagine the house alarm is already going off, right? And instead of figuring out why the alarm is triggered, you just start throwing more stuff at the house. So more supplements piling up on the counter, more protocols taped to the fridge, more intense workouts happening in the garage. Does any of that turn off the alarm? No. If anything, all of that activity just makes the alarm sounds more chaotic, more loud. The system is already overwhelmed. And that's why I see with so many women who are trying to do all of the right things, like their clean eating, their supplement snacks, their workout routines, and they're still feeling awful. It's because the protocol isn't actually the problem. The order is the problem. And you cannot build a house on a cracked foundation. You actually have to fix the foundation first. And in your body, the foundation is actual safety. And so let's talk about what creates safety. Because you know, you might be here listening, and you're like, okay, gay, I get it. My alarm system is going off. So, like, what does that mean? How do I fix it? Obviously, today I want you walking away with some very applicable, actionable advice to be able to turn off the alarm system in your house. So let's talk about it. Because honestly, it's not complicated, it's just different from what most people are trying to do. So when we talk about safety, it's actually not built through intensity, it's built through consistency. So if we think about children and what it it means for a child to feel safe, typically it's not these grand gestures. It's not the most expensive toys or the biggest birthday parties, it's the small, consistent things like mom and dad showing up, dinner at the same time every night, a bedtime routine, knowing what to expect. Your nervous system is the same way. I know that we're adults, I know that we are in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, but that nervous system safety, it's still the same as it was when we were a little child. It doesn't respond to grand health gestures, it doesn't respond to doing more with more discipline. It responds to pre predict predictability, to regularity, to evidence that resources are available and your environment is stable. So if I were to look at your foundations as your coach, this is what I'd be looking at. Are you having consistent and adequate meals? This means eating enough, eating regularly, and not skipping meals. Honestly, every time you eat a balanced meal, you're just sending signals to your body that, hey, food is available, resources are available, we're not in scarcity, you can relax, you can have enough resources for healthy hair, skin, and nails, for reproduction, for hormone production, for all of it. And under-eating and skipping meals consistently actually does the opposite. It tells your nervous system that resources are limited, which triggers that survival mode. Number one, let's start there because most of you are not eating enough. Number two, consistent and quality sleep. Dude, sleep is literally where your body repairs. It regulates hormones and it resets your nervous system. Two hours of sleep before midnight is worth more than four hours of sleep after midnight for adrenal function, uh, hormonal repair and gut function. So if you are having poor and inconsistent sleep, then your cortisol is going to stay elevated. Your hunger hormones are dysregulated, and your body stays in a low level state of threat. So this one is just like a non-negotiable if you want to be healthy, happy, regulated. It is a foundation. Number three is are we having consistent recovery between workouts? So I know for the high-achieving, hyper-disciplined girly, this is gonna be hard to hear. But more exercise is not always better. Exercise, as great as it is, is actually a stressor on the body. A good stressor, yes, but your body still has to recover from it. And if you are never recovering and recovery is never happening, then that stressor becomes chronic, and chronic stress keeps the alarm going. So movement needs to feel energizing, not depleting. Number four is nervous system regulation. Okay, we need to talk about this one. Things like breath work, gentle walks, time in nature, journaling, reducing decision fatigue, getting off your phone before bed. These are not like silly suggestions. They are life-changing. They are literally changing the signals that your nervous system is receiving and you can regulate and that you are okay. So none of these are like super sexy, but they are the foundations that everything else has to be built on. I know that your favorite TikTok influencers probably not talking about these ones, but trust me, they are the life-changing ones. So when you come in to my one-to-one, this is actually one of the first things I work on with every single woman who comes in because most of them have already arrived trying quote unquote everything: the supplements, the diets, the workout programs. A lot of the times, other coaches and the missing piece almost always is we've never addressed the foundation first. We never ask why your body never felt safe enough to heal in the first place. So when we do that work, when we do that first, we can then use functional lab testing to see what's actually going on inside of the body. Because I'm not gonna say that consistent meals and uh enough food and enough sleep and recovery between workouts is going to solve everything. It's just that we need to start there. And you will notice by starting there, you'll have more energy, less bloating, you'll feel better in your body. And at that point, we'll know that your body is ready for deeper healing. So when we do that work first, and then we add in functional labs to see what's happening inside of your body, then we can build a protocol that prioritizes safety before optimization. And things will start moving for you. It might feel slow at first, but they will move, and then digestion improves, hormone stabilizes, energy comes back, and your body literally stops fighting you and starts working with you. And so that's the difference between just getting handed a protocol and the root cause approach that we have inside of my one-to-one program, because a protocol will just give you a list of things to do, but the root cause approach addresses and asks your asks the question first is why is your body not responding? And then we address that. So if you want to learn a little bit more about working together, then you can check out my Instagram, which is kenzie.gracefit, or you can check out our website, which is Rebuilt Roots Co. And I would love to talk to you a little bit more about what's going on and see if it's a fit. So, all of this being said, I really want you to know that like your body is not broken, it's not working against you. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do, which is protect you. And it will continue to protect itself until it receives the consistent evidence that it is safe to do otherwise, okay? So, yeah, you cannot force your way into healing. You cannot dissiplate your discipline yourself there, you cannot supplement your way there, not until the foundations are in place. Your body will heal when the environment tells it it's safe enough to do so. And that's why we start with safety. So, if this episode resonated with you, then please share it with a woman in your life who feels like she's doing all the things and not seeing the results because she probably needs to hear this too. Follow me on Instagram for more root cause education, and I will see you on the next episode of Rooted Conversations. Until then, take care of yourself, and I mean that literally. Much love.