While figuring out my relationship with my body, I have come up with a theory on the three groups that people fall into in relationship with their physical body.
The First Group is the Instinctual body group
The wonderful people in this group are born with the instinctual knowledge that their mind and body are connected and they react accordingly. They learn quickly what is good for their body and how they want to feel in their body. They are comfortable in their skin and comfortable around others. This group does not go on fad diets, instead, they make lifestyle changes based on their own information about themselves. They rarely need to seek advice about nutrition or physical movement because they know what works for them. They are not prone to the latest exercise trend. They may try a new exercise making waves on TikTok and then decide for themselves if it’s best for them rather than being swept up in mass hysteria.
The Second Group is the Learning Body Group
These brave people do not have instinctual knowledge but they have learned how to develop their knowledge and intuition around their body and its needs. This group of people may have learned through playing sports at a young age what their body can do and how it feels best. The important thing to note about this group is that we can all learn at any age at any stage in life. This group may have experimented with dieting and workout trends and keeps trying to find the best fit. This group is learning how to integrate the mind and body, how to regulate the emotions that cause many of us to over or under-eat, and how to move the body in a way that is nurturing and strengthening. People in this group may be recovering from disordered eating habits. People in this group may be working on losing weight with grounded conscious effort.
The Third Group is the Disconnected Group
These lovely people live without the connection of mind and body. For this group, the body is simply a vehicle and it is mysterious how it works and why it gets sick. People in this group are afraid to seek their own intuition. They eat what they desire and move as much or as little as they feel is important. They do not make the connection between the meal they eat at night and how that affects their sleep and how they feel in the morning. They may have an idea that they should make a change but they don’t make lasting changes to their lifestyle. It is simple and profound fear that holds them back from walking towards the second group. Many people in the second group started off in this third group but decided to be brave. I do not want the third group to be pitied, I want the third group to cease to exist in this world–I want us all to transform into learning.
The good news about the third group is an individual can leave that group at any time and move towards the second group.
Digging into the second group more.
This group more than the others has a million subgroups that people can feel they are in. This is a huge encompassing group because the focus is on learning and that looks different for different people and it can change throughout our lives. Learning about the body is a lifelong experience for most of us. People in this group can be yo-yo dieters trying to figure out what works for them, and hopefully figuring out a healthy lifestyle eventually. People in this group can look like models or look like slobs and everything in between. This group is not about appearance. It’s about learning and some of us are further along than others in the human learning process. When I was younger I actively pushed away feedback about my body because I didn’t want to be “one of those picky people”. I didn’t want to be someone who is constantly monitoring their diet and counting their steps. I didn’t want to be a fussy person who only cared about how they looked. What I didn’t understand is that how I felt is more important than how I looked.
Now a bit about the words felt, feel & feeling
Feel and feelings can mean different things and this creates confusion. A feeling can be considered intuition, it can be based on emotion, and it can be a literal sensation in the mind and body. For the purposes of this article, a feeling (feel, felt) is the physical sensation that our body registers and our mind interprets.
How do I feel in my body and mind after I eat pizza vs. brown rice, chicken, and broccoli?
Does this sound like an obvious question? When I read it to myself it is amazingly obvious, however, I know that for years I saw no distinction. When the mind and body are considered separate there is no communication channel. I knew intellectually that pizza is not healthy but I felt no difference in my body. I knew that if I never ate pizza, fries, and grilled cheese sandwiches again I would lose weight. I knew that desserts have no health benefits, they are simply indulgent. I knew that a bowl of baked ziti has little other than carbs and fat in it. Knowing something does not make someone in the third group make different choices. Also, labeling these foods I mention as bad or unhealthy is not helpful. Because when we eat a food that we know is bad then our body-mind registers that we ate something bad and this can have more negative effects than just fat. Terminology is important because words are tied to memory and memory is tied to emotions.
The whys are a mile long because we all have different influences from society and family and our own instinctual behaviors.
I have an idea of what my whys are and the more I look into the whys and what I was thinking at different times in my childhood and early adulthood the more I realize that the best place to put my energy is on changing my instincts and becoming more connected to my mind-body. Therapy (with a great therapist) is invaluable, and I encourage anyone to engage with a therapy modality that sounds the best for them. Sometimes, going over our childhood and figuring out all the whys is a way of avoiding moving forward. Only you know if you are moving forward.
There’s another tricky idea for someone in the third group. Often these people, speaking from personal experience, don’t have any idea how to be self-objective. How do I know if I am moving forward? I need someone on the outside to tell me. Such as getting advice on a new haircut, what jeans to buy, when to wear sandals, how many meals to eat in a day, the best app for counting calories, etc. The list goes on and on of the multitude of things we often seek outside advice on. And we learn at a young age that this is normal, this is what being part of a society is about, this is how we gain friends, and this is how we fit in.
If I’m so interested in fitting in then why don’t I diet and exercise more?
The mind is a funny and illogical place. I, like many others, what to fit in, and yet I don’t too. I was always labeled as weird when I was younger and I decided to take that in with pride. Of course, I’m weird, I don’t want to be normal-boring. And this is the basis (most likely) for many of my illogical decisions. There are many interests that I had a child and still do, that may not be considered mainstream–so I’m a weirdo. I was secure enough in myself not to give up on my interests. However, I still wanted to fit it, but I knew I didn’t. So, I failed before I started.
Failure Before Launch is Common
I know I’m not alone in deciding that I have failed at something before I start it. It did take me a while to realize that this was a major impulse of mine. The tricky part is that it’s not always true. I could name a list of accomplishments that will take up the whole page and this is a great practice. Acknowledging accomplishments is always helpful and can give us all a good ego boost when we are feeling low. It’s a good practice when starting something new to remind yourself of what you have achieved in the past. I have a shorter list of things that I genuinely did start and did not finish or accomplish my goals at, and these are often the sand outs in my mind. The times I tried and failed and the times I tried and finished overclouded my understanding that there were some things that I never tried and still failed at.
The main thing that I never tried was taking care of my physical body and my mental health (these things are almost always linked). I have a distinct memory from a young age of seeing the covers of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazines, music videos with models, and Victoria’s Secret ads and I knew without hesitation that those women were what beauty and desirability are and that I was not that. I was 11 and I had already failed.
There are layers in there too, it’s not only that I was a child and couldn’t compete with a grown woman in looks and curves. Also, I was afraid to be desirable because scary things happen to beautiful women. At 11 I was still struggling with my learning disability (I could barely read or do math until I was 14) and I knew I would fail at anything that the rest of the world took seriously.
For many years in my adulthood, I was sort of grateful that I had never tried to be model-like because so many girls develop eating disorders seeing the same images that made an impression on me. Until recently I had not considered that my emotional eating is an eating disorder or disordered eating. I have tremendous empathy for people struggling with anorexia and bulimia, I also have empathy for people struggling with overeating. All disordered eating habits are about food and not about food. My theory is that people with eating disorders or experiencing disordered eating are part of group three but are trying to enter group two.
Entering the Second Group – Learning is for Life
The second group is huge and sometimes I think of it like a major highway with multiple lanes, on and off ramps, and express lanes. I’ve been on the on-ramp to the second group numerous times, but I would say that now (in my 44th year of life) I’m finally in the slow and steady lane. That doesn’t mean I don’t take a detour for road work every now and then. I will probably never be in the fast lane of the second group and that’s ok, I can figure out my pace and go with my flow, not the flow of others. Sometimes when driving on the highway (the real one) I see a car going way too slow and that’s not safe (and it’s really annoying). In the second group highway metaphor going your own pace is completely appropriate. It is a highway where ideally everyone is doing their own thing and learning their own intuition. Some people in the second group are concerned with going with the flow and fitting in with diet trends, I’ve been there, and I think it’s the first part of learning for many of us.
When I was younger I rejected the mainstream thoughts simply because everyone else was doing it–that was not helpful. But then I fell into a stage where I wanted to try what it looked like everyone else was doing, but that didn’t work either. But I think it was an important step for me in the learning process.
So, now I’m in the tough part where I decide what is best for me based on my body’s feedback.
