fitness needs pyramid

I've always believed that people don't often come to fitness just to change their body. They come to it because they want something in their life to feel different and they've been taught that changing their body is the way to achieve that.

Myself and many others can promise, it is not. Change is at the very top of my fitness needs pyramid... meaning it comes last and potentially more importantly, it is totally optional. You may opt to never work on that element... and that's ok. 

Weird for a fitness instructor to say, right? For someone who whole heartedly believes that exercise saved her life to say that you don't ever need to work on goals of changing your body if you don't want to. 

My definition of mental health focused fitness is that it isn't about changing your body, it is about connecting with your body. 

Your body is the one relationship you will have for your entire life, no matter what. And what's something we know to be true about relationships? Don't try to change the other person into someone they are not (or someone they are not ready to be)

And what's the one thing you can always do in any relationship? Understand yourself better.

At the base of my fitness needs pyramid - the foundation of the thing that must be in place or the rest crumbles - is awareness. (the first A of AC squared)

I know... anti-climatic right? Simple awareness. What does that even mean? 

In a fitness sense, it means being aware of of your body's needs - food, movement, recovery. Being aware of how your body tells you it needs food and how it communicates that it has had enough. 

That one piece has been so distorted by diet culture and a lifetime of learning to ignore hunger cues because we've already had our calorie limit for the day or it isn't time to eat yet with the intermittent fasting window. 

Did you know that female bodies going through a monthly cycle have times of the month where their metabolism rises and their body actually requires more calories in order to meet its basic needs? Has your diet plan ever accounted for that? Have you taught yourself to tune out hunger cues by drinking water and chewing gum? No shade if you have. That's what you were taught!

Calorie calculators are built based on research from male bodies that do not acknowledge the changes we experience in hormone levels that allow us to sense hunger and fullness more or less easily. And there is growing research that long fasting windows not only don't give women the desired weight loss result long term, they can actually create ripple down effect health issues. 

So awareness about your body and its cues is one side of the coin, but also awareness of the data gap that may be influencing your decisions. Ultimately what you choose as best for your body is up to you (obviously), but you deserve the correct information with which to make those choices.

So awareness HAS to be the first step, the first layer.  

In terms of movement, how often have you pushed through uncomfortable amounts of time sitting and then eventually stood up and made that groan noise that makes you feel 100 years old. Your body was sending you requests for movement long before that and asking you to shift in your seat, stretch, walk around the block, maybe even to fidget. 

But since you were a child, you've also been taught to sit still, not move unless it's time (according some holy clock), not fidget. I'm guilty of saying that to my kids when they were younger and we were at the dinner table. 

And in doing so, we learn to disengage from actually having a two way conversation with our body. I often hear people saying they feel like their body is betraying them, and without judgement I ask you to consider how often your body might have felt that you were betraying it when you didn't respond to its needs? 

I don't mean that be blame or shame. Again... it's what we've been taught. I recently heard about the 8 cries of newborn babies and how each cry means something. Each cry represents a specific need they have in that moment. 

Only most of us are not taught this as parents and if we don't respond, after about 3 months, the babies stop trying to communicate that way... they either disengage or just have a generic loud cry and we continue to do our best to help and often get really frustrated. 

In the case of our body, I would argue that it often stops trying to communicate in subtle gentle ways and gets louder and louder until we are truly suffering all the time, or it shuts down. Either way, we get better and better at ignoring it. 

Emotional trauma adds another layer because often times, emotional trauma can lead to dissociation from our body. Our ability to interocept (sense into our body) is weakened. And not only weakened, trauma survivors often feel downright unsafe being aware of their body and unconsciously tune out.

For so many reasons, this simple step of awareness (although boring on the surface), is a necessary powerhouse... and can be really exciting as a reconnection tool. 

Think of it like reigniting an old flame and getting to know yourself all over again... or maybe really truly knowing yourself for the first time. And trust me... you're a catch.

Are you with me so far? That building a solid awareness foundation has value. (and yes, there is a specific way to do that which i'll get to later). For now, I'm curious how you'd rate your awareness level on a scale of one to ten.

• How confident do you feel about your ability to sense hunger and fullness?
• How do you know your body needs to stretch or rest?
• How do you know your body needs to discharge some energy?
• Do you have awareness of when you are actually reaching your physical limits vs when your brain is telling you this was silly to try and your time would be better spent folding your socks.
• If you have awareness that your body needs to move, do you know what kind of movement it needs?
• Does it safe for your to bring awareness to your body?

None of this has anything to do with whether or not you actually do anything or how well you do it. It is 100% awareness of a need and understanding of what the need is. 

I would suggest feeling 8, 9, or 10 out of 10 consistently and confidently for at least 30 days. And I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go through my 30 days of awareness for free. 

This is what I would want anyone working with me one on one to do so if you are interested in approaching fitness differently, start with this.

Now let's say you're feeling good about awareness, what next? Great question. It's a C word (not a cover the children's ears one though). Connection. 

To me, connection means taking that next step and being able to respond to the needs your are now aware of. Think about those babies who have different cries for when they are hungry or tired or need a diaper change. If we are aware of what the problem is and fix that problem, the baby is content. If you respond to the problem your body is bringing to your attention with a solution for that problem (not a distraction or stonewalling completely), your body will also be more content. 

This might look like actually getting up and stretching if your body is stiff from sitting, instead of powering through and searching Amazon for a better office chair. It might look like having some protein if you're extra hungry after a workout instead of forcing yourself to wait until dinner. It might look like practicing sleep hygiene if you're constantly feeling tired... instead of doubling down on coffee every day.

Responding to your body appropriately also means knowing what a female body needs that might be different from what a male body needs. Literally every piece of research you are reading is based on male bodies. 

OK, I'm being dramatic. 6% of studies are done using data specifically collected from female bodies and take their hormones and physiology into account. You have to look hard to find those studies. And there really isn't huge amounts of data on it when you do find it.... cause 6% of studies dedicated to female bodies means there's a lot of ground we still need to cover.

But knowing and responding to your body's need based on info relevant to your body is going to (in my opinion) create a safer internal experience within your body. You will feel more connected to your body and more aligned because you aren't pitting your what is natural and normal for your body against what the fitness program says you 'should' do. 

So much of what women think is 'wrong' with them, is actually their body doing exactly what it was designed to do. Literally nothing is wrong with you; until you force your body to do a program that was not designed for it. Kinda like giving Tylenol to someone who has allergies. Not helpful.

Just above connection on the pyramid, is Acceptance.

Acceptance and Connection often ping pong back and forth with each other closely. In fact, you're not likely to ever be doing just one of these things in total isolation from the others (which is why I'm debating the pyramid model), but they do build off of each other. 

Anyway, acceptance is about believing your body deserves to have its needs met regardless of how it looks or performs. Acceptance is about building respect, gratitude, and offering space for both challenges and recovery. 

Diet culture and generations of women being valued only for their appearance is going to make this tough. I honestly believe it may be one of the toughest things you do. And you will spend your whole life trying to swim uphill against diet culture for as long as it exists. 

This is not meant to make you want to sit down in the dirt and give up. It is meant to acknowledge that if you've tried in the past and 'failed', that makes sense! If you struggle with this part despite having tools, that makes sense!

You're not just building acceptance about and for your body, you're building acceptance that our society is currently set up to make you fail. The diet and fitness industry is a multi billion dollar a year machine that ONLY works if you don't like yourself ... if you believe you aren't good enough the way you are.

Acceptance means coming to place where you feel clear that your desire to change is based on your needs and wants... not what society tells you to be.

So if/when we have awareness, connection, and acceptance in place, NOW change has a chance to to work.

Notice when i talk about change, I am talking about changing the shape of our body or how well it performs (ie faster stronger etc...) Changing our habits and our mindset around our body was already happening with connection and acceptance. And guess what... many times, the natural side effect of that will be that our body shape changes. 

BUT, and i cannot stress this enough, it also might not. And that's ok. That's why we work on the acceptance piece before trying to demand a physical change. Your body needs to know you are going to love it and stick by it no matter what. 

And once you feel that way, you may decide you don't care about changing the shape of your body anymore. This is why i said at the beginning that the change part is totally optional. 

If however, you do still want to lose weight or gain muscle or finally do the splits, (which is all totally fine to want) you have built a relationship with your body is way more likely to withstand the challenges of body composition change. 

Cause let's not sugar coat it... it's hard!!! Your body has a biological desire to keep you the same. And as I've said before, anything that is hard wired in biologically is going to be hard to shift. 

It doesn't mean it can't be done. But if you can work from a place of changing your body because love your body rather than working from a place of changing your body because you hate your body, well that changes everything.

And I know, I know, there's always the 'sounds great Kate but HOOOOWWWWW?"

In case you missed it, my pyramid is ACAC (Awareness, Connection, Acceptance, Change - CH sound for change but it's still a C - don't get too picky with me lol)

And the 'how' for each piece of the pyramid is also an alternating A and C word. Hence AC squared!

And it's not just me making the words fit because they have an A and C... it honestly is they way I approach fitness and mental health... but now the words match the magic :) 

OK, so here is the HOW. For Awareness, we're going to use curiosity. 

The next step is Connection. The tool we'll use for connection is attunement. We'll take what we learn in awareness building and bring it into the light. We'll turn up the volume on things we were barely paying attention to before and see how much better we can get at finding the right solution to the 'cries' our body is making. And then see if we can tune in even further and notice those cries before they become wails. 

Attuned movement means...

• It rejuvenates, rather than exhausts or depletes.
• It enhances the mind-body connection.
• It alleviates stress, rather than amplifying stress.
• It provides genuine enjoyment and pleasure.

So we'll play with that... with what feels good. with what your body wants... without any hidden agenda ... the purpose of movement at this point is connection

When we're heading down the path of Acceptance, we'll be using compassion. Learning to transfigure judgement into compassion is a skill that will transfer over to many places. But compassion, especially among trauma survivors, can feel vulnerable and weak.

Good news... when we started with curiosity, we also started strengthening our compassion muscle. So when we get to shining a spotlight on this Acceptance step, it will be easier than if we just tried to jump right into compassion. We've spent a lifetime learning to hate our bodies; compassion can feel foreign and wrong at first (which again is why I don't suggest starting there)

And finally change. The 'how' for change is an A word if we're following the pattern, right? Wanna guess? Probably not lol. The tool we use to achieve change is action. 

Action can pertain to actual action or movement with your body. But if you haven't heard before, brace yourself... exercise alone does not create body composition change. In fact, if weight loss is the goal, it actually does so much less than you probably think. Muscle gain requires exercise much more. 

Anyway, action also pertains to putting plans into action, taking action on your ideas and testing them out to see what works for you... and what doesn't. It's being consistent with actionable habits. 

So there you have it. A four layer pyramid with an A and a C word in each layer. AC squared. 

Awareness --> Connection --> Acceptance --> Change achieved with Curiosity --> Attunement --> Compassion --> Action.

What do you think? Does your fitness journey feel more manageable when you understand why starting with change was always setting things up to blow up? Does it feel more relatable when it's put into the pretty Ac squared word pyramid?

Let me know how all this lands for you.