How to Shift Your Mindset From Punishing Your Body to Honoring Your Body
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If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’ve been talking a lot about shifting our mindset AWAY from punishing our bodies and shifting TO honoring our bodies. But many of you have been asking me, how exactly do you even do that?! Such a great question and that’s why I want to dive into it today!
Here’s a recap…
I remind myself that my body does so much for me.
I remind myself that my body knows what it’s doing
I remind myself that my ultimate goal in life is to be happy
If you’re currently doing workouts that feel like you’re always punishing your body, and are looking to shift your workout routine to workouts that feel like you’re honoring it, SISTER, you have to check out my Movement with Julie app!
I give you workouts that are sustainable, fun, and time-efficient! Plus, when you sign up you get access to the entire Movement with Julie community where you can share your struggles and victories, ask questions, and get the support you need to successfully move forward on your journey of honoring your body! To learn more, click here.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, hey, beautiful human. Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get it. Let's go.
Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast. So grateful that you are here spending some time with me today, wherever you are tuning in. If you've been following me on Instagram, which if you aren't, shameless plug, be sure to follow me, JulieALedbetter, on Instagram. You know that I've been talking a lot about shifting our mindset away from punishing our bodies to honoring our bodies. But many of you have been asking me, "So how exactly do you even do that?" which is such a great question. And that's why I want to dive into that today.
But before I do, I have to share this super sweet review. It comes from 2Homegirls. She says, "The calm I receive. I don't remember how I came along this podcast, but every day I'm so thankful for finding you. Not only do you help with my health and fitness journey, you're truly a calm to me with my mindset on how to take on life. Well, when listening to you, I'm always shaking my head or saying, 'Yep, you're right.' I have not listened to all of your podcasts, but I know that they are there for when I need some Julie time. Keep up the great work that you do for everyone. You are such a blessing to so many. Thank you for being you."
Thank you so much for this review. I appreciate every single one of the reviews. If you haven't already rated and reviewed the podcast, it does help us spread the message of Embrace Your Real. So if you could scooch over to Apple Podcasts, scroll all the way down, you can click that Rate And Review. It takes less than 30 seconds. And be sure to hit subscribe and that bell so that you get a notification every time a new podcast is uploaded.
All right, so let's dive into how to shift your mindset from punishing your body to honoring your body. I have three steps in today's episode that I want to share with you. Number one, I remind myself that my body does so much for me. My body allows me to move daily. It allows me to breathe. It allows me to hug my husband. It allows me to pick up my babies, my nieces, my nephews. It allows me to crush my workouts. It allows me to go on hikes and enjoy nature with my boys and my family. It allows me to clean my house and go grocery shopping. These are all things that none of us should ever take for granted, ever. If we're capable of moving our body, we are fortunate, period. End of story. Not everyone is fortunate enough to do so, so that's why we must be appreciative of the basic utility of movement.
Once I started focusing more on what my body does for me, the less I honestly even began to care about what my body looks like. My body is meant to be functional. God created me in this body to carry out my purpose. He did not create this body to simply be aesthetically pleasing. So I shift my mindset away from punishing my body by acknowledging, respecting and appreciating my body daily. Literally daily. This is something that I do every single morning when I wake up and I have breath in my lungs and I realize that I have lived to see another day. I genuinely say, "Thank you, Lord, for the gift of life. Thank you for this ability to live out another day." And whenever I'm moving my body, I always take a moment to thank God for giving me the opportunity of basic utility. I talk more about this in Episode 45, body neutrality versus body positivity, why you need to know the difference. So be sure to tune in there. I will link it in the show notes after this episode. You can go ahead and listen to that.
Number two, I remind myself that my body knows what it's doing. You guys, our bodies are so much smarter than we realize it knows what it needs. It knows what to do. We just need to trust that. We need to stop telling our bodies what it needs, and instead, listen to what our body is trying to tell us. I think oftentimes the biggest problems come from us trying to force something because we're not in tune with what our body is saying. We need to stop punishing our bodies and start nourishing our bodies. The weight we want to lose will naturally take care of itself, making it completely pointless to punish our bodies.
Honestly, this was me for a decade plus my life. I used to force my body to be something other than it was by punishing it daily, by speaking to it harshly, by making myself do hours on hours of cardio. But sister, I'm telling you that nothing good in life is forced, and that goes for so many other areas of our life. Nothing good in life should be forced.
That's why we need to quit going on fad diets, quit working out for hours a day, quit depriving ourselves of the food that we need or becoming a hermit because we're afraid to go out to eat or we're afraid to drink something because we think that it's going to make us fat. We need to just do things that make us healthier, aka honoring your body with movement, nourishing your body with what it needs, speaking to it lovingly and do all these things that make you happy. If you do this consistently, even if you do it imperfectly, but you're doing it consistently, it will lead to changing your body composition and the weight will take care of itself. Trust that your body knows what it's doing, period.
And number three, I remind myself that the ultimate goal in life is to be happy. So spending hours a day on the elliptical didn't make me happy. Starving myself didn't make me happy. Never having energy didn't make me happy. Having constant brain fog didn't make me happy. Skipping out on social events in fear of eating too much didn't make me happy. Having my life revolve around weight loss, or the workouts that I felt like I had to do, didn't make me happy. So what's the point of it all if I'm not even happy?
Let me ask you this. Do you remember the last time that you actually felt good, when you truly felt happy and you truly felt energized in your body? Most of us, if we're being honest, would probably say no. We don't remember the last time we felt that. I feel my happiest when I feel good, and let's be real. Who feels good when they're punishing their body? No one. Punishment never leads to any positive feelings. So once you start prioritizing feeling good, you realize that you are actually searching for feeling good in your body, not feeling smaller in your body.
Because once you feel good, you realize that trying to fit into a certain size or look a certain way doesn't actually really matter. What makes you feel good? You have to start paying attention to that. You have to start being self-aware enough to know what makes you feel good. And when you don't feel good, think about what you did and didn't do. And when you do feel good, again, think about what you did and didn't do. You have to build that self-awareness so that you can start making decisions that align with how it will make you feel.
I actually talked way more in depth about becoming more self-aware. So if you're like, "I love this concept of being aware of what does and doesn't bring me joy," be sure to tune in to episode 107. I will link it in the show notes below. Seven ways to become more self-aware. But I really go in depth on that topic, so be sure to tune in there.
Let me recap the three steps. Number one, I remind myself that my body does so much for me. Number two, I remind myself that my body knows what it's doing. And number three, I remind myself that my ultimate goal in life is to be happy. So there you have it. Those are the three steps on how to truly shift your mindset to honoring your body.
I also wanted to mention if you're currently doing workouts that you feel like are punishing your body, or you're just not looking forward to them and you're wanting to shift your workout routine to something that makes you feel happy and like you're honoring it, you have to check out my Movement With Julie app. Inside this app, I give you five brand new workouts every single week that release at Sunday at 12:00 PM Mountain Standard Time. This is an incredible opportunity for you to have workouts that are sustainable, fun, and time-efficient. Plus, when you sign up, you get access to an entire Movement With Julie community where you can share your struggles, victories, ask questions, and get the support that you need to successfully move forward.
To learn more about this, you can click the show notes below, or you can go to www.movementwithjulie.com/info. Again, that's www.movementwithjulie.com/info, and you can learn all about the Movement With Julie app and sign up there.
I hope that this episode encouraged you, inspired you, gave you something to think about this week. If you have somebody in your life that you feel like would really benefit from this on how to shift your mindset from punishing your body to honoring your body, be sure to copy this link. You can text it to them. You can post it up on your Instagram story. Tag me, Julie Ledbetter, tag Embrace Your Real. We love connecting with our listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right, sister. That's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the Gram, be sure to do so, JulieALedbetter, Yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real, because you're worth it.