"Listening To Your Body" is a Scam

In this episode I’m breaking down why “just listen to your body” is not always the empowering advice people think it is. If your body has adapted to under-eating, inconsistency, random workouts, low structure, or years of dieting, it may not actually know how to give you clear signals yet.

We’re talking about why structure, discipline, and discernment have to come before intuition. Because listening to your body is something you earn by first teaching your body what consistency, fueling, training, recovery, and stability actually feel like.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Listening to your body is the biggest scam that will keep you stuck and hold you back because your body doesn't know what the fuck it needs until you give it what it needs. Welcome back to the embodiment lab. My name is Addy, and we have approximately 15 minutes to pump this episode out because I am in a rush and today has completely just is flown by. And I have to get this podcast episode out. And this is a topic that I am so freaking incredibly passionate about. Because to be honest, this is something that I used to believe. And it makes sense. It really does. We're talking about listening to your body and hunger cues and appetite and all of that. So I used to believe this. Listening to your body, it makes sense, right? Because, you know, my belief is that God created your body the way that it is, it has cues, all of the things, and you're supposed to listen to those cues. You have specific cravings. What do those cravings mean? You should probably figure out what your body needs in order to satisfy that craving. You should eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full, drink water, you know, listen to your cravings. Give your body rest when it needs rest. All of this. And while there is still some truth to it, it's not something that you need to listen to or rely on when you are first starting out your fitness journey, or even before you've really mastered your nutrition and really truly understand what your body needs in order to respond, right? Because here's the thing if I were to listen to my body, I would probably wake up and I would not eat for a couple hours. I would probably eat a stack of pancakes, and then I wouldn't eat for another several hours. And then I would probably eat a bag of hot Cheetos. And then maybe a cupcake. And then maybe I would have a handful of candy. And then I would go to sleep and I'd wake up and I would do the same shit over and over again. If I were to listen to my body when I'm in my luteal phase, and I'm feeling really tired, and the weight of the world is on my shoulders, and I feel like I'm carrying around a weighted blanket, and I do not want to go to the gym. Listening to my body would say, Yeah, girl, just stay home. It's okay. You need the rest. When in reality, no, you don't. You need to go to the gym because movement will make you feel better. And you need to learn how to have the discipline to say, you know what? No, we're gonna go to the gym, we're gonna do the damn thing anyways. And pushing yourself to get through that workout is actually a lot more beneficial for your resilience and for your mental toughness than sitting on the couch and leaning into, yeah, it's okay. It's all right. Take the rest. Your body doesn't know what it needs until you give it what it needs. Then you train your body to know how to cue you into giving it what it needs. So let's take hunger, for example. Your body is something that is very highly adaptive. And if you willy-nilly just go through your life, eat whatever you want, eat whenever you want, you listen to, okay, I'm kind of hungry right now, I'm kind of not hungry right now, you end up eating very inconsistently because the baseline is you're supposed to be eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right? Those are your core meals. But what happens is a lot of us are skipping one, two, maybe even all of those meals. A lot of us are even eating once a day, twice a day. And so your body is getting inconsistently fed. You're not consuming the same amount of food every single day. You're not eating at the same times every day. Your body doesn't know what to expect. And so it adapts to that. It slows your metabolism down, as we know. But what also happens is a few other things. Your hunger cues will also start to disappear. You won't feel as hungry. Your digestion will slow down because your digestive system produces these enzymes that help to break down food and digest food. And if your body isn't getting enough, if it's getting less food, it will slow down the production of those enzymes to where it's not making as many because it doesn't have as much food to break down. So it's not necessary. So it will slow down that production. And then when you do eat more or a normal amount, what's considered normal, it doesn't feel normal to your body and it doesn't have the tools and resources to break down that food in your digestive system. And so then it sits in your digestive system for longer, causing the scale to fluctuate. It makes digestion less efficient. So that causes bloating and inflammation and discomfort. And so when you think, okay, I ate this food, I ate this much, and yep, I'm bloated, I gained weight, I gained fat, you're continuing to confirm in your brain, you're continuing to confirm to yourself, yep, if I eat this food, if I eat this much, then I gain fat. When in reality, your body is just responding to the fact that it's not used to consuming that amount or that specific food. And it's literally unprepared to handle it. And so that's how it responds. So that's when you live in a constant state of bloating and inflammation. That's when it feels very difficult to lose fat. This is also when, like I hear this all the time. I'm just not that hungry. No, I'm not hungry when I wake up in the morning. Yeah, that's because you've trained your body to do so. Probably unintentionally, definitely unintentionally, because as human beings, we tend to just kind of let life happen to us. And these things happen by accident. But then that leads us to a spot where we are trying to lean out, we are trying to lose fat, we are trying to build muscle, we're trying to do all of these things. And we don't know how to adequately fuel your body. And so there creates a lot of fear around food, but that fear is just coming from a lack of knowledge. That fear is coming from, hey, I have no idea how the heck to fuel my body. And anytime that I try to, it responds in this way. That's because you've trained your body to do that. What your body likes is consistency. It likes consuming the same amount of food. It likes trusting that there is food coming. It likes trusting that it's going to get fed and nourished. And when it gets that, all of your systems can function peacefully in harmony. Your digestion will regulate. It will become more efficient. It will become easier for you to break down food. Your hunger cues will regulate. It will be easier to eat at those times. Your metabolism will increase. You'll be able to burn more fat. You'll be able to burn more calories. You'll also have the resources in your body to be able to build muscle, which also increases your metabolism. All of these things work together and it makes your body function so much more efficiently. And so when you're listening to your body and you're waking up and deciding, I'm not really hungry, I'm just not going to eat, you're doing your body more harm than good because you're continuing to confirm the pattern that is inconsistent. So this is where you have to have mental discernment and mental discipline and build up the resilience in your lifestyle to be able to wake up and be like, you know what, I'm not really hungry right now, but I'm going to eat breakfast because it is time for me to eat breakfast. And maybe it's something small, but hey, starting to implement breakfast into your day is starting to teach your body to expect food at that time. And so it may not happen tomorrow, may not happen the next day, may not even happen next week. But eventually your body will begin to handle breakfast better and you won't feel so bloated. You won't feel so stuffed. You won't feel so uncomfortable. And you'll actually start to wake up feeling hungry for that breakfast. The same thing goes for lunch and for snacks and for dinner. And you start to train your body, hey, I'm getting fed. I'm gonna feed you, I'm gonna give you food. And so it starts to pick up and adapt. Because remember, again, your body is adaptive, it will adapt to that, it will upregulate, and soon your body will be functioning the way that it was literally created to function. But unfortunately, this is the part that can be very uncomfortable for a lot of people because in training your body to eat more food, eat more regularly, eat more consistently, it feels uncomfortable. You're gonna have to eat when you're not hungry. You're gonna have to eat and feel a little bloated. You're gonna feel kind of gross sometimes. But that's part of the process. Unfortunately, you can't get through to the other side where you do feel good eating the amount of food that your body needs until you go through the discomfort. Going through that discomfort also helps you to build up resilience and be able to have more discipline over time so that you can stick with it longer. Having that resilience is important for when you do deal with the stresses of everyday life that make it difficult to stick to your fitness journey. Building up that resilience is what helps you to stay consistent. And that is a very important skill to develop through a fitness journey, which is exactly why a fitness journey is not something that is meant to be a quick fix. It's a lifestyle change. It is something that is hard, it's challenging, it's difficult, but it is something that your body wants, it needs. And if you want to be lean and toned and muscular and you want to feel fit and confident and strong in your body, that is a skill that you're gonna have to develop. Is anytime that you get sick or you go out of town or life gets busy and maybe you miss a workout or your meals kind of fall through the cracks, learning how to not let that take you down and make you feel guilty and shitty over it, but learning how to be resilient and pick back up as soon as you can. Challenge yourself to see how quickly you can get right back into the routine without overcorrecting. Because when you build a body that expects to be fed and it's treated very well and it's taken care of and it's nourished and it's strong, that is a body that rewards you and makes you feel so good in it. But it's also a body that responds very quickly. A body that isn't getting what it needs responds very slowly and very painfully and uncomfortably. But the goal is to push past that discomfort for as long as you can so that you can get to the point where you feel comfortable in your body, and your body responds very fast so that you're able to do what you want with your body. You want to build muscle, you want to lean out, you want to do whatever you want. You have to be able to, you have to earn that right. And earning that right means going through the phase of discomfort and being uncomfortable for a little bit. I know somebody needed to hear this today because this is the stage of rebuilding your metabolism and of your fitness journey that is not pretty. It is the part that's kind of emotional, it's stressful, but it is a very necessary part and you're very strong for going through it. And it's very necessary for your body and for your mental health and for your brain and for all of the things. Going through it makes you mentally tougher and it makes you physically stronger as well. So I hope this was helpful. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I hope that it gave you some insight as to what is happening in your body. And I will talk to you in the next one. Bye.