Julie is sure she’s got it figured out this time. A new diet plan, a new gym membership, and a head full of steam. But this isn’t the first time Julie had it all figured out. Over the last five years, she’s figured it out at least a dozen times. She figured it out with the keto diet, the Mediterranean diet, the paleo diet, the low carb diet, and the South Beach diet. She figured it out when she went vegetarian, then pescetarian, then flexitarian. And she definitely figured it out when she joined WW International, Nutrisystem, and Noom. Yet, despite all that figuring out, Julie’s still carrying the extra twenty pounds that have been hanging around since her first year in college, her cholesterol and blood sugar levels are still too high, and her energy level is somewhere between a three-toed sloth and a decorative rock.
At IMS we train the tools, techniques and strategies for managing our thoughts, emotions, and actions in the key aspects of life. We define those aspects as: Career/Finance (Money), Health and Vitality (Body), and Relationships (well…Relationships). I hesitate to prioritize any of these aspects over the others but, let’s face it, money and relationships don’t amount to a whole lot if we’re sick or dead. Money can come and go. We are in multiple relationships throughout our lives. But we only get one body.
We're all programmed with beliefs around the body. Most of them, we didn't choose; we inherited or absorbed them from the people around us. Whether you grew up in a household of fitness fanatics or couch potatoes, you were handed down beliefs about the body that you carry around with you today, even if you don’t realize it. And a person’s history and their beliefs around the body don’t always align in the way you might assume they would. I’ve worked with clients who were raised on a steady diet of Frosted Flakes and Ding Dongs but have the most aligned relationship with health I’ve ever seen, and I’ve worked with people whose parents handed out carrot sticks on Halloween but have beliefs around health and the body that are leading them in the opposite direction from where they want to go. It’s not so much about your experience with health and fitness as it is about the emotions that were transmitted to you from your parents, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, anyone of influence when you were growing up.
Julie grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in what most of us would recognize as an average middle-class American family. The diet in the home was typical of the time. Julie never left for school without first having a hearty breakfast. Eggs and toast, or pancakes, or maybe French toast on mornings when mom was feeling especially fancy. She ate cafeteria lunch and afternoon snacks when she got home from school. Mom always cooked dinner, a protein, a vegetable, a starch. And Julie finished every night with some Oreos or Jell-O pudding pops while she watched Blossom and Saved By The Bell: The College Years. When her soccer team won a game, they would go out for pizza. When she brought home an A on her biology test, she got McDonalds for dinner. When a boyfriend broke up with her, or a bully made fun of her, or a teacher got mad at her, mom always made it better with a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies or a trip to the candy store.
When Julie left home to go to college, she brought with her beliefs around food that, consciously, she didn’t even know she had. Three big meals a day, snacks in between, sweets to chase away the blues, and all of it based on our old favorite: the food pyramid. Which, back in the 90’s, suggested we should be eating enough starch and grains to feed a small country. But keeping up those habits is hard to do when you live in a dorm room the size of a shoebox and your food budget is somewhere around three dollars a day. For Julie, it meant a lot of cereal, toast, ramen, and Kraft mac and cheese. Oh, and beer. A lot of beer. College, right? Because, for Julie, it wasn’t about what she was putting in her body, but about when and how much. So when she graduated four years later, she took with her those extra twenty pounds and zero habits around exercise or physical fitness.
Julie thought she was doing the healthy thing. Her belief matrix around food told her, still tells her, she needs to have breakfast, lunch and dinner (snacks in between) every day, regardless of what those meals are actually made up of. If she misses a meal or a snack or if she doesn’t consume the starches, grains, or carbohydrates she’s used to, her nervous system rears up and flashes a warning signal: THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG HERE!!! When her conscious mind says, let’s try something new so we feel healthy and vibrant, her nervous system says, HEY, NOT SO FAST!!! Because the nervous system isn’t interested in things like health and fitness; it’s interested in maintaining the status quo. Even if the status quo is sending us to an early grave.
We all have our belief systems around the body, around food, around health and fitness, and what creates those beliefs is different for everybody. But because health plays such a huge role in our quality of life, it’s crucial that we have a relationship with our bodies that will move us toward the vision we hold for our life. To do that, we need to first get clear on some basic principles around health and fitness: We only get one body. What we put into it matters. Getting it moving and exercising is crucial to our wellbeing. Any ideas or stories about the body or health and fitness beyond those simple realities is pure emotional patterning that was imprinted on you in childhood.
The good news is, it doesn’t matter what those emotional patterns are because you have the ability to change them, to evolve them. I’ve put together a Belief Matrix around the body based on beliefs that have served me very well. It goes something like this: I must prioritize the wellbeing of the body so I can do everything else. I can do nothing without the body - the body comes first. When I know what to do to feel amazing, and I do it, I get what I deserve. I love to move my body everyday! It's easy to eat well because I get to answer to feeling amazing! I must provide the body with the best fuel available so I perform at my best. High quality food and supplements => high quality performance.
These are the principles and ideas that guide me in my beliefs around the body. And I’m not suggesting that just writing down that list and putting it under a magnet on the fridge means you’re going to wake up tomorrow full of vim and vigor with rock hard abs. It’s going to take work and intention. You can use the ideas in my Belief Matrix above or you can create your own. Or better yet, let's do it together at a Power Series Weekend Intensive! When you attend a program, you’ll have the time to dive deep into your emotions and beliefs around the body. Learn to explore them, understand them, where they come from. Train yourself to recognize when those patterns are presenting themselves and then shift to the patterns of your own design. We can help you to develop a new belief matrix around the body and guide you through the process of implementing it. Click HERE to learn more about the Power Series and sign up today!