My body knows what I need.

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honeydue1.9 K10 months agoPeakD6 min read

Last year, I talked quite a bit about the many benefits I found in a mainly carnivore diet. I felt stronger and cleaner somehow than I had for many years. For the first time, my body felt like it was running on maximum efficiency. I had great energy levels, felt and looked pretty rad, and enjoyed the simplicity of a pretty restrictive diet.

Then I gradually let that slip. At first, using various "excuses" like being abroad or embracing some holiday gluttony. But those excuses came and passed, and while my inner tyrant demanded we return to previous rigour, I resisted. There was something not quite defined in me that said keep away from that, and I like to think it wasn't just your average sugar-hook. I've never had a big sweet tooth anyway, and most of the traditional culprits like sugary drinks, crisps or highly processed ready-made meals never once appealed to me.

I love cooking. I love preparing my own food and for now I have the time to indulge that. I have no need of pre-packaged meals.

So I decided not to return to my carnivore ways, which isn't to say I ditched meat. Just another step towards resisting my inner authoritarian, the one that craves order and rules and does not tolerate deviation.

I love to deviate.

I've noticed over the past half a year or so, I've been leaning more towards greens, veggies and fresh fruit. Some of my favorite ingredients right now are carrots and courgettes. Avocado's a guilty pleasure, but only in a superficial sense. I like the overall state of my diet, so don't feel too guilty about the occasional "treat".

See, I don't like the way our society thinks about nutrition and health. You work out so you can have cheat days. You eat greens because you should.

I don't. I've finally found a place where I eat healthy not because I force myself, but because I enjoy it. I don't really keep an eye on carbs or "bad" meals and try to balance those out. I've found the more I live like this, the less my body wants processed, oily, heavy meals anyway. I don't need to say "oh I've had three pastries, better not have a cheeseburger as well". My body doesn't want to, anyway.

"Working out" has been the same. All through my teenage years, I used to work out fairly regularly to keep fit. Largely to counterbalance my inability to say no to foods I enjoy. I still can't. I don't enjoy deprivation, and I didn't mind the workout. But there was a certain sense of obligation behind it.

Now, I will occasionally run a home workout on YT, mostly when I'm feeling a bit stuck physically. Mostly though, I just dance a lot. I do yoga too, but I don't count that as working out. I walk a lot, try to walk if I can get my ass out the door early enough, or take myself for a stroll when I'm feeling the need.

The biggest trick is learning to distinguish between needs. I need to move. But how? Once again, the body typically knows what I need to do. Whether I need to be slow and intentional or get my heart rate up. Whether I need to feel graceful or bold. It's all a continuum, all within the same flow.

What's been interesting to me, when I became more loose with my diet (and following an equally loose physical exercise routine), I was sort of expecting to put on some weight, see a bit of cellulite or flabbiness or something. The way you do when you don't hold off on the pasta and skip leg day.

Yet I feel and look healthier now than I ever did before, either when I was doing more rigorous workouts or observing a more restrictive diet. My legs are strong because of my dance. My belly doesn't bulge excessively because I don't really feel the need to eat crap (and when I do, I indulge myself, but also make sure to ask why do I need comfort in this way? What hurts me?). My arms are tauter than they've ever been because I've integrated them within my perception of body. Because for the first time, I'm not afraid to move with the wholeness of my being, and have learned to rely on all my limbs and muscles with equal loving trust.

It seems counterintuitive to what I'd been taught that the moment I stopped minding my diet or my exercise routine, I saw such increase in my self-confidence, my fitness, my wellbeing. Doesn't it seem like it should be the other way around? That the more rigorous you are about those things, they better you look and feel?

It wasn't like that for me. Which is different from not caring about them. I do. I love movement and feel myself craving it when I don't. I love learning new recipes that actually nourish me. I love listening to my body.

And I've found such safety and comfort in realizing that it knows intuitively what I need. That, for once, I don't need to worry. I just gotta listen.

My body also needs a lot of music right now. Or rather, my soul does. So I've been listening to a lot of songs, far too many to overlook the fact that today is Tuesday.

Ren's been a bizarre musical love for me. There was a time when I didn't think his music was my type. Didn't appeal to me. Now I find myself drifting more and more towards rap, reggae and a bunch of things my younger self would've never approved of. You change by listening to what the emerging you is asking for.