The next stage in the original Intuitive Eating is Body Neutrality. I love this as a concept but for whatever reason, humans have evolved socially to be subjective about bodies. Perhaps it’s a language thing. I could philosophise on this for hours. But either way, it’s a thing. We can’t unlearn the phrases and opinions we have about the way bodies look, but we can learn to listen to our what I’m going to call our “second voice”.
I read a while ago that the first thing that comes to mind when you see someone’s body and have an immediate reaction to it is what you’ve been conditioned to think. It’s what you’ve internalised socially. That’s your first voice. Maybe you stop there and don’t give it a second voice. But if you go beyond that first voice, the second voice you hear is the voice that speaks from what you’ve learned beyond conditioning; what you think from a place of who you are now, what you’ve since learned and what you want to think. And that second voice is the most important.
The script might go like this:
<see self naked in the mirror>
First voice: I hate how I look
Maybe you stop there, but that’s a miserable place to live and you’re reading this blog post for the second voice 😉
Second voice: I know that I’m as physically active as life allows right now, I feed myself well, I’m always trying to get enough sleep. This is how healthy looks on me at this point. My body will always change according to how I look after it, and genetics play a huge role.
You get to choose what that second voice says, and we’re neurologically wired to respond most strongly to the last signal we give to ourselves. In training this looks like – if you finish a session with cardio, your body will mostly remember that signal. If you finish with strength, it’ll mostly remember that signal. That’s the use of your second voice. (Feel free to take this into your workout design too btw)
I’ve found the process of trying to change how you feel about your body, and other peoples’ bodies, easier to internalise the more I understand and appreciate how much of a wild animal our biology still really is. The closer we can get to understanding and respecting what I’m going to call our “feral selves”, the more we can give our bodies what they need without the pressures of society and made-up trends influencing us away from our physical needs. Our bodies land within the boundaries of their natural, genetic, sizes and shapes when they are being given what they need – enough nutrients, movement, and recovery.
Spoiler: you already know everything you need to know
You know much more about this than you think. A great way of thinking about whether something is healthy for your wild self, is to consider whether you learnt it in the context of weight loss. Broadly speaking, if the only benefit of something is weight loss, ignore it. It’s not in the interest of making you feel or be healthier, regardless of whether it changes your weight or not.
- Building muscle, eating when you’re hungry, smashing avocadoes on your toast – ostensibly healthy for the wild human yet none of them are classically associated with weight loss.
- Skipping meals, low fat everything, considering the phrase “too bulky” as something to worry about – touted as weight loss tools yet 100% put barriers in the way of maintaining or increasing health.
You KNOW instinctively what will preserve or increase your health. You know you need to eat a variety of foods to make sure you get access to the widest span of nutrients possible. You know about protein, fruit, veg, complex carbs. You know the foods that make you feel good, that digest well, and give you energy. You know you need to be strong, build muscle and be able to dash up a set of stairs when the situation calls for it. You know you need to relax and get outside more. You know you need to spend more time with people who make you feel good. All of these things absolutely increase our health, without any need for your body to come into it, other than making sure that it’s safe and breathing.
You don’t need me to tell you what your body needs to be healthy and feel good. You already know. We get in our own way when we start to make choices through a lens of punishment. We simply can’t make sensible, educated, best for our wellbeing choices when we’re upset with our body. We need to allow our bodies to just be as they are in the moment, so that we can take care of them as the wild humans that they are.
And here it’s important to remember that the way our body IS in a given moment is exactly how we asked it to be. We give our body signals all the time and it respond to them dynamically. We restrict our body’s energy and it responds by activating mechanisms to preserve fat and make us crave more food. We don’t move it frequently enough and it reduces muscle mass and powers down metabolic capacity. We don’t relax it often enough and it stays in a high stress state, unable to digest well and recover properly. Of course, so many of us struggle with things outside of our control and our body responds to that as well. This isn’t to say that we’re full in control of our body, but I want to make it clear that our body is not our enemy. All it is programmed to do is keep us alive, all it can react to is what’s happening to it. And for a lot of us that means “what we are doing to it”.
I’d like you to take a moment to consider all of this – your body is WILD. It is not domesticated. You already know how to take care of it properly, by removing anything that is associated with punishment. Remember, what is being punished is a normal reaction to the situation your body finds itself in each day. Control what you can control and flood your body with an environment that allows it to thrive – nourished, strong and fit, fresh aired and daylit, well rested and with good people.
You’re a wild woman. Don’t forget it.
Until next time.
