The Busy Mama’s Guide to Understanding your body so you can lose weight faster
Mama, I want to ask you a question and I want you to answer with your gut, yes or no don’t overthink it!: Do you listen to your body? Whether you answered yes or no, I am not judging you. There’s no guilt, shame, regret or anything you should feel with that question. Because most of us spend our whole lives ignoring our bodies! We aren’t taught to listen. But we get mad at her when she doesn’t do what we want! Not knowing HOW to listen to your body is one of the biggest reasons it’s taking so long to lose weight.
Chances are the reason your body is holding onto weight is that she’s tried telling you what works and doesn’t work for her but you haven’t been listening. If you want to lose weight, feel good, and truly love your body, then you have to start listening and understanding what your body is telling you!
To lose weight and find peace between your mind and your body, we need to unravel some of the bad habits you’ve learned and replace them with new habits that serve your whole body.
Why you’ve been stuck
As little kids, we are actually pretty good at listening to our bodies. When something hurt we stopped and listened. When we were hungry, we ate. When we were thirsty, we drank. Listening to our bodies was encouraged, in fact, we received praise for it!
But as we get older, we were taught to ignore some of our body’s messages. We started to put our bodies down. We started thinking that we knew better than our bodies.
Our culture taught us that we should ignore hunger cues, in order to be more productive.
Someone told us that carbs were bad for us, so we took away our body's main energy source and then blamed her for not being able to do it all.
We looked at pictures in a magazine and thought we should look like that. We poked at her and tell her she was too fluffy, too short, too whatever. We criticized her and then got upset that she kept breaking out.
We restricted her food, even when she was starving, and then got upset that she wouldn’t lose weight.
We become serious mean girls to our bodies. That mean girl mentality is keeping you stuck!
I’ve talked to hundreds of women who have been fighting their bodies for years. It’s left them broken, frustrated and disconnected, but they don’t know how to fix it.
The first step is to start appreciating your body again. Fill that girl up with love and positivity!
Self-love is like a snowball rolling down the mountain, it starts small but as you continue to encourage, appreciate and pour into yourself, it builds up into a snowball that can’t be stopped! It gains momentum and becomes powerful, vibrant, and unstoppable.
I was reading The High 5 Habit by Mel Robbins this week, and this message stuck out to me.
“Here's the profound insight I gained that I want you to hear: When you think you've messed something up, you start to hate yourself. When you hate yourself, you inevitably do things you hate. Your thoughts create a downward spiral.
I've also learned the opposite is true: When you love yourself, you inevitably do things you love. When you treat yourself with respect, you do respectable things. And when you celebrate yourself, you do things worth celebrating.”
The better you talk about yourself the more you’ll value yourself. The more you value yourself the more you’ll listen to your body. The more you listen, the better relationship you’ll create. And soon you’ll be working together toward a common goal rather than fighting against each other.
Ways your body talks to you
Now that you know to listen to and appreciate your body, you need to learn how your body talks to you!
Unfortunately, our bodies don’t talk to us in ways that we find super helpful. Your body doesn’t say, “Hey Mama! I could use some protein. Will you eat some chicken for me? No, instead, it talks to us through what we call symptoms - things we think we need to suppress.
Your body talks to you by
Gaining weight or inches
Your mood
With headaches
Through bloating
With aches and pains
Because we view these things as irritants or problems to be suppressed, we don’t recognize what our bodies are saying to us!
We need to slow down and listen to the signals our body is sending out. Do you have a headache because you didn’t give her enough water? Did you skip out on sleep? Popping a pill doesn’t fix the problem all the time. It’s another way we’re ignoring her!
For example, you have probably gotten sore after a big workout. Right? That feeling when you can’t sit on the toilet or make it up the stairs because you are so sore. Soreness is a signal that you’ve broken down your muscles and they need to be repaired. Your body is trying to tell you to give it food - especially protein - so that it can repair those muscles!
Instead of looking for a quick fix, stop, listen and then problem solve! If you want to lose weight and feel good in your body, then recognize these feelings and look for the root cause. Then, you can look for the right solution.
How to listen to your body so the weight drops off faster
The only way you’re going to learn to listen to your body is by becoming aware. Awareness is how we change everything. The quickest way to become aware of how your body is talking to you is by writing things down!
All of my clients have a food journal. (I recommend MyFitnessPal because it’s so easy to use.) I also give my clients a spreadsheet where they can track water, sleep, exercise, menstrual cycles and jot down other symptoms they experience.
As we see entries about bloating, headaches, exhaustion, etc., we look at the food journal, sleep habits, exercise, and try to connect the dots.
For example, if you wake up with a headache it could mean a few things. Did you drink enough water? Did you sleep long enough? Did you eat something that bothered you? Where are you in your menstrual cycle?
Maybe you only drank one cup of water but had four cups of coffee. Well, duh you woke up with a headache! Your body is so dehydrated and over-caffeinated! Knowing this will help you make better decisions in the future so you don’t have to keep getting dehydration headaches!
Sometimes the issue isn’t as clear as, drinking more water. Sometimes we’ve ignored an issue for so long that it takes time to unravel and understand it so that we can even become aware.
This is where mindset work comes into play. If you can’t pinpoint an action that is causing bloating, pain, etc, it might not be your food, sleep or exercise that’s the issue. It might be something more along the lines of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm that is causing issues.
All of those things can hinder your weight loss, so you must dive deeper into them and figure out what your body is trying to say.
As you learn to listen to your body and change your habits weight loss will come quicker. The longer you hold onto those habits that aren’t serving you, the longer your mind tries to fight your body, the longer you’ll stay stuck!
You don’t have to feel lost and alone on your health journey. Schedule a free discovery call with me and I’ll help you start listening to your body so that you can lose weight and find peace with your body and mind.
