The 3 M’s for Honoring Your Body
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This podcast is all about embracing our real, right? Everything I talk about in some way, shape, or form is empowering you to live your most unapologetically, authentic life. And one of the most important things we could ever do when working towards embracing our real is honoring our body. Without honoring our body, we’ll never fully love our body, and without fully loving it, we’ll never be able to embrace it, and without embracing our body, we’ll never be able to embrace our real. Are you following?
So if you are on your journey towards embracing your real, honoring your body is the perfect place to start. But what does that look like and what does that even mean? I actually have three M’s that I follow in my life that help me continue to honor my body and in this episode, I’m going to share them all with you!
If you want to learn more about how you can prioritize your mindset, I dive into how I do that in episode 5: 10 Things I Do Every Morning To Win My Day
If you want to learn more about how you can prioritize movement, check out episode 48: How to Overcome the 7 Most Common Workout Excuses
And if you want to learn more about macros, you can check out my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice 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 back to another episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast. I'm so grateful that you are here spending some time with me today, wherever you're tuning in. We have listeners all over the world. Now, if this is your first time here, I just want to say welcome. I'm so grateful that you are here. If this is your 89th episode and you are a true OG, welcome back. You know that this podcast is all about embracing our real and talking about that. Everything that I share on this podcast in some way, shape or form is encouraging and empowering you to live your most unapologetically, authentic life. And one of the most important things that I believe we could ever do in working towards embracing our real is honoring our body. Without honoring our body, we're never truly able to love our body and without fully loving it, we're not able to embrace it. And if we can't embrace our body, we'll never be able to get to the core of embracing our real.
So if you're on this journey, like many of us are listening towards embracing your real, honoring your body is the perfect place to start. But if you listen to this podcast or if you're on my Instagram a lot, you may hear me talking about honoring my body and honoring your body. But what does that look like? What does that even mean? So today I'm going to be sharing three foundational pieces that I personally go by when it comes to honoring my body that I like to keep in check and I think are important. But before I dive in, I have to share this super sweet quick review, it comes from Daddy's for the Win. "They say necessary positivity, exactly what we all need in such a critical world. Learn to love yourself. Thank you, Julie."
Okay. We're talking about honoring our body. You hear this term a lot. It may be a term that you're like, "Oh, I like that. I want to honor my body. I really want to care for my body." Maybe more than you have in the past or really learn to prioritize it again. But how do you actually do that? I have three different foundational pieces that I personally go by that I think are completely foundational when it comes to this. The first foundational piece is your mindset. Your mindset is so important. I think it's also the one thing that prevents us from truly embracing our real, because if we don't have a healthy mindset, we're not able to get to the place of love and self-respect. And if we want to honor our body, we have to stop believing that our body in and of itself is the problem. But how do we do this? We do this by shifting our mindset, because in reality, our body is not the problem and is never the problem.
It's always our mindset around our body that is the problem. Speaking negatively and believing that our body isn't enough is no way to honor our body. The best way to honor our body is by having a mindset, telling ourselves and reminding ourselves that our body is enough just the way that it is. This doesn't mean we can't change or work to change our body, it simply means we can still love and embrace our body along the way, right? Changing your body and loving or embracing your body don't need to be two separate things that you need to experience at different points of time in your life.
I truly believe that they can and should co-exist together, because if you are wanting to change your body, if you are wanting to really get serious about your goals, I believe the best place to start is your healthy mindset is saying, "I love my body so much that I want to change it. I love myself so much, or I love my family or the roles that I play in my life. I care about those so deeply that I want to be able to show up as the best version of myself. Thus, I want to follow through on my goals of X, Y, and Z." So it really all does start with a healthy mindset. And so when thinking about this large concept of embracing your real and honoring your body, remember that it all starts with the first M of mindset. If you want to learn more about how you can prioritize your mindset, I dive deep into this in episode five, 10 things I do every morning to win my day. So be sure to go check that out, I will link it in the show notes below.
The second foundational piece of honoring your body I believe is movement. You have to move your body. When you move your body, you change your mind. And if you follow me in any way, shape or form, you probably hear me talk about this like a broken record, but I am here to tell you that it's something I constantly have to remind myself of because I can so easily get wrapped up in my excuses or so easily get wrapped up to a place where I forget how important movement is in my life. And you have to, first of all, like I said, come at your goals and come at your honoring your body with movement with a healthy mindset, because you are not moving your body to punish it. I believe so many people, they work out or they force themselves to move their body based on punishment. So, because you ate this or because you're going to eat X, Y, and Z, you need or have to work out because you want to burn off that bad food.
This is not the point of working out period. And when you're on this journey of embracing your real, you have to shift your perspective of movement from something that you need to do because you ate something or you're going to eat something to this healthy perspective of you get to, you have the opportunity to move your body. And because you love your body so much, or because you love the roles that you play in your life and you want to show up as the best version of yourself, you get to move your body and you're going to because you love it so much. So I hope that this perspective shift helps you and serves you. I know for me, when I really started being intentional about reminding myself over and over again, every time I was either getting ready for the gym or getting ready for my workout, I had to force myself. At the beginning, to be honest, I had to force myself to remind myself that I get to, I have the opportunity to, I have breath in my lungs and God has given me another day.
And it is my obligation, my healthy obligation to honor my body with some movement, because I know that it's going to change my mind. So look at movement as an opportunity to celebrate your body of everything that it's capable of doing instead of punishing it. If you want to learn more about how I personally prioritize movement, I dive deep into this in episode 48, how to overcome the seven most common workout excuses. I will also link that in the show notes below, but be sure to check that out. It's so, so important and this mindset shift will serve you and will actually allow you to start enjoying your movement again. And I mean, I can't tell you how many times when I shifted my perspective into, instead of I have to into I get to, I have the opportunity to, I can't tell you how many times I broke down in tears during my workouts, because I was just so thankful for my body.
I don't know something about it, just coming at it with a new perspective, just gives you this fresh outlook on movement. And it also opens up the horizon of what movement looks like. It doesn't always and should not always be a workout. You can be walking, jogging, cooking, cleaning, dancing, like there are so many forms of movement. I never want you to feel like you have to do X, Y, and Z, or you're a failure, because that's just not the case, and that's not realistic, and that's not how life works. So find movement that you love and remember that your journey is going to change. What movement looked like maybe six months or a year or two years ago might be different right now. And that's okay. Give yourself grace, allow yourself to find the joy in what you want to do right now and give yourself that.
Because when we start to punish ourselves or tell ourselves we have to do this, because this is what we've always done, that's not going to serve you long-term. So you need to remember just like life has ebbs and flows, your movement is going to have ebbs and flows and it's going to look different and let that be okay. The third foundational piece of honoring your body, I truly believe is nourishing your body for what it needs. And I'm a huge, huge advocate for this, a big believer in this. If you've been following me for any length of time that I've been counting my macros for the last, I would say eight years. For the better part of eight years, I have really learned how to properly fuel my body and I do that through the tool of macro counting.
Now, what is macro counting? Essentially, macro counting is counting the number of protein, carbs, and fats in your daily intake, according to what your goals are and where you're at. Many people think macro counting is a diet because they're misinformed. Macro counting in and of itself is not a diet, it is a tool to help you understand how to properly fuel your body. And I really feel like this last thing of preventing us from embracing our real is an unhealthy relationship with food. And that's why for me, I've been so dedicated to counting my macros over the last eight or so years, because it's really helped me look at food through an entirely new light. Before I used to think foods were good or bad. I used to think that I couldn't have these foods and I should only have these foods and my mindset around them was just not healthy.
I've learned though, that food in and of itself, there's no inherently bad food. It's the amount of food and it's the mindset around food that's the most important, right? One cookie, isn't going to hinder your goals. Do you really need 10 cookies though? Or a plate of French fries is not going to hold you back from reaching your goals, but do you really need to have French fries every meal?
It's not necessarily, like I said, the food that you're eating, it's the amount of food and the relationship that you have with food, because I've talked about this so many times on the podcast, but if you give yourself this perspective of, I can't have this, I can't have this. And you're constantly telling yourself that you're not able to have this or you're such a failure and you're just beating yourself up, naturally our human instincts wants to be like, "That's the first thing I want and I'm going to fixate on it until I get it. And then when I get it, I'm going to eat it so much until I become sick. And then I'm going to be in this vicious cycle of feeling guilty again."
Does that sound familiar? That was me for a decade plus of my life. So if you're listening to this right now and you're shaking your head, I am right there with you. But what I've learned from macro counting is that it has helped me break free from the restrictive mindset that I previously had. And one of the other things that I want to mention about macro counting is I used to think, "Oh my gosh, it's going to take so much time and energy," but the matter of the fact was I was spending so much time and energy on trying to get myself away from certain foods that it was literally all I thought about.
The thing about this mindset previously for me was that I had no education about foods. So I was just going off of what I read in magazines or what I thought I needed to do. And so it had no concrete reason behind it, other than this is what I think that I need to do and I always questioned myself. And so when I finally started to learn how to properly fuel my body, I felt so empowered around food. And that's what I want for you. I want you to feel empowered around food because there are no foods off limits. I'm able to eat what I want. I'm able to finally celebrate an anniversary or birthday or go on vacation and not feel stressed. So if that is you, if you're like, "I want that in my life." I am so excited because we are just opening up the enrolment for the Honor Your Body Challenge.
Now, if you don't know what this is, this is a challenge that I do a few times a year. I only do it a few times a year because it's very intensive. It takes a lot of time for me and my team to put this together and to get it out to you. And really like, it is a community of women who are just on fire. And it's so, so fun. So I kind of want to just share with you this opportunity that I have because it's coming up January 18th is the first day of our challenge for 2021, but enrolment opens on December 28th. So right now, if you're listening to this on the day that this podcast released December 28th, enrolment is open, you are able to sign up for the Honor Your Body Challenge. So how does this challenge work? I'm sure you've heard a lot of different challenges on the internet and you can be very, very skeptical.
I'm here to tell you that this challenge is not a quick fix. I will be the first to tell you that it's a four-week Honor Your Body Challenge, where we focus on these three foundational things that I just talked about. Movement, mindset, and macros. We carefully designed this four-week challenge to enable you to build a strong and healthy foundation that can last you a lifetime. So in here, what do you get for four weeks? So, first thing that you're going to get, which is what I just kind of talked to you about, how I think it's so important to empower and educate yourself as to how to properly fuel your body when you're on this journey of embracing your real and in particular honoring your body. So in this four-week challenge, we actually customize your macro, so we give you a blueprint that helps you make food work for you.
So you'll get a questionnaire form to fill out and you'll receive your step-by-step guide with details on how we personally calculated your macro numbers. This is not something that's automated. This is me and my team are going through this and we are personally in calculating your macros and we're giving you some macro sets. So progressive macros, meaning when your body, not if, but when your body progresses or when your body stalls, what do you need to do to ensure that you're still properly fuelling your body so that you are able to make progress continuously? Most likely these macros will last you way longer than four weeks. We really want to make sure that we set you up for success, that we set you up to educate and empower you around your food.
Because to be honest, that is the most scary thing that many people face is I don't know how to properly fuel your body, right? You can go into something with a healthy mindset, try to have a new perspective. You can move your body, do a workout program, but the food part is what I have seen in the last seven years of just working with over 10,000 women is that the food part can feel very overwhelming. And so we really tried to break it down and simplify it for you in this challenge. You will also get a four-week movement program. So this is an actual plan that's going to bring you results. This program allows you to perform any exercise, whether you're at the gym or at home. Most of you, likely are still in stay-at-home orders. And so with minimal equipment, you're able to complete these workouts. Every single week for the four weeks, you're going to have five weekly workouts that are going to help you maximize your fat loss, build lean muscle, increase your endurance, energy and stamina.
It's perfect for all levels. And this is a great way, if you've been interested at all in my Movement with Julie weekly workouts, you will get access to the app for this four week movement program for the Honor Your Body Challenge. And it's so fun. We're all doing it together. The workouts, you have two different options each day. So you can either opt for the full workout, which is about 45 to 55 minutes or if you're low on time, do the 30 minute variation. If you even need it, 20 minutes, you can do one less circuit. So it's very, very time friendly. I try to maximize your time as much as possible. And for those four weeks, you're getting five days a week workout. So Mondays we do lower body, Tuesdays, upper body, Wednesdays, cardio and core, Thursdays, full body, and Friday is booty blaster.
So fun, incredible to have a community and support around you, which is kind of the last key element of this challenge is having a community that's going to cheer you on with no judgment. I don't know about you, but I've been a part of a lot of challenges and to be honest, I hate the judgment part or feeling just that you can't show up as yourself. I am the biggest believer in creating an authentic community that you can feel free to show up being vulnerable. Showing up with your win, showing up with your losses, showing up with your challenges and your struggles. A real challenge in my opinion is not complete with accountability and support, and that's why I create this community for you. So if you have a Facebook account, we're going to have a pop-up Facebook group for this four weeks. If not, I am on Instagram cheering you on.
So just know that you can totally join the challenge if you don't have a Facebook group, but essentially the four-week Honor Your Body Challenge focusing on movement, mindset, and macros throughout those four weeks, I'm going to be giving you mindset shifts and perspectives that you can really focus on each week. It is a blast and we have had thousands of women go through these challenges. This one, January 18th, 2021 is the first day of the first challenge of 2021. And this is going to our fourth Honor Your Body Challenge. One question that I wanted to just touch on it is if you have done an Honor Your Body Challenge in the past, I want you to know that every single challenge is different. So the workouts are different. You can get new customized macros. The community's going to be different.
And all of our recipe and meal ideas, those are going to be different as well. So I will go ahead and link the signup page, where you can learn more, you can read testimonials, all the things in the show notes below. Also, if you just want to type into your Google search, honoryourbodychallenge.com, you will get everything that you need to know. It is incredible. And I want to be the first to invite you on this journey, because like I have said, I truly, truly believe that when these three things work together, when you're prioritizing all three movement, mindset and macros, you are going to see a difference. You're going to see a difference in honoring your body and ultimately embracing your real. I hope that you found this episode helpful. I hope that you can pull something from it. I really, really hope to be doing this challenge alongside of you.
It is going to be an absolute blast. So again, www.honoryourbodychallenge.com, that's going to take you and give you all the details that you possibly need. And I'm stoked, man. I am so excited ring in the new year with a community of like-minded women who are all doing this ultimately to remember that we are here to honor our bodies. We are here to honor our bodies so that we can be our best to give our best. I don't know about you, but I, after the year that we've had, I have learned so much, but I have also been tired. And so going into 2021 and having this refreshed, revived vision and passion for my goals and my dreams, and just putting myself first in the sense of honoring my body with a new perspective, that's what I want to do. And I want to have a group of women alongside of me because we are stronger when we do this together.
I love you so so much. I hope that you found this episode helpful. If you have questions or anything again, honoryourbodychallenge.com is going to give you a lot of FAQ. So be sure to check that out. You can also feel free to DM me on Instagram, juliealedbetter, or Embrace Your Real Instagram, we have a team waiting to help you there. Thank you so much for tuning in. I look forward to seeing you on the inside of the Honor Your Body Challenge that starts January 18th, 2021. I love you so much 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 and 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.