What If We Actually Trusted People With Their Own Bodies?

Over the last few weeks, I've written about cheat days, movement as punishment, eating disorder recovery, weightlifting, and learning to ask what my body needs from me instead of constantly asking what I need to take away from it.

The more I've written about all of this, the more I keep coming back to the same thing.

What if we actually trusted people with their own bodies?

Because so much of what we've been taught about food and movement starts from the assumption that we can't.

We're told we can't trust our hunger because we'll eat too much. We can't trust ourselves around certain foods because we'll lose control. We can't trust ourselves to rest because we'll get lazy. We can't trust ourselves to decide how we want to move because apparently, without somebody telling us what we should be doing, we'll do nothing.

There always seems to be someone waiting to tell us what our bodies need.

And I think we need to question that.

The Person Comes First

This is probably the simplest way I can explain how I coach.

The person comes first.

That sounds obvious, but I don't think fitness always works that way. A lot of the time, we start with the program, the exercise, the nutrition plan, or whatever outcome someone is supposed to be working toward, and then we try to make the person fit into it.

I want to do the opposite.

If I'm coaching movement, I want to know what works for your body. What doesn't? What do you enjoy? What are you trying to do? What makes you nervous? What feels good? What hurts? What would make movement more accessible to you?

If a movement doesn't work for the person in front of me, I don't automatically assume their body is the problem.

I change the fucking movement.

The same thing applies to food. I'm not interested in looking at someone's life and immediately deciding what needs to be removed. I want to know what they already eat, what they enjoy, what they have access to, what their schedule looks like, when they're hungry, what matters to them, and what is actually realistic.

That isn't lowering the standard of coaching.

That's coaching the person who is actually there.

Trust Doesn't Mean We Always Know the Answer

I also don't want to turn “trust your body” into another wellness phrase we throw at people as if it's easy.

For some of us, trusting our bodies is complicated as hell.

If you've spent years being told your hunger can't be trusted, your body is wrong, your pain should be pushed through, or your needs are excuses, you don't just wake up one morning and suddenly know exactly what every signal from your body means.

I certainly don't.

Sometimes we need support figuring it out. Sometimes we need information we don't have yet. Sometimes we need a coach, dietitian, therapist, doctor, physical therapist, or someone else who has knowledge that can help us understand what's happening.

Getting support doesn't mean handing someone else ownership of your body.

That's an important distinction for me.

As a coach, I have knowledge that can help someone. I can teach. I can notice things. I can offer options, make recommendations, adapt movements, build programs, and sometimes encourage someone to try something they aren't sure they can do.

But I don't become the expert on living in their body just because I'm the coach.

I think good coaching happens when my knowledge and their knowledge of themselves get to exist in the same room.

Maybe We Don't Need More Rules

This whole series started because the term “cheat day” makes me cringe.

And underneath that phrase was a rule.

You weren't supposed to eat that.

Then movement became the way to make up for breaking the rule. Push harder. Burn it off. Earn your food. Get back on track.

And underneath all of that is the same idea: somebody else knows what your body should be doing better than you do.

I've spent enough of my life around rules about food, movement, bodies, and what we're supposedly allowed to look like to know that I don't want to build my coaching around creating more of them.

That doesn't mean structure is bad. It doesn't mean goals are bad. It doesn't mean expertise doesn't matter or that we should never challenge ourselves.

It means the structure should serve the person.

The person shouldn't have to serve the structure.

That's true whether we're talking about a barbell, a meal, a training program, a rest day, or whatever else we've decided people need to do correctly in order to be good at having a body.

I Want Something Different

I want people to have more options, not fewer.

I want someone to be able to walk into a gym and know that movement can be adapted to them instead of assuming they need to change their body before they belong there. I want someone to be able to say, “That doesn't work for me,” without feeling like they failed.

I want people to discover that movement can be challenging and joyful at the same time. I want rest to be part of the conversation. I want food to be something we can approach with curiosity instead of morality.

And I want us to stop acting like the goal of coaching is to create people who are really fucking good at following instructions.

I'd rather help someone become more confident making choices for themselves.

That might mean pushing harder sometimes. It might mean resting. It might mean trying something new, changing the plan, asking for help, eating more, or deciding that something everybody else swears you “should” be doing doesn't actually work for you.

The answer isn't going to look the same for everybody because people aren't the same.

That's kind of the fucking point.

Maybe trusting people with their own bodies isn't about assuming everyone will always know exactly what they need.

Maybe it's about believing they deserve to be part of the conversation.

Their hunger matters. Their pain matters. Their joy matters. Their goals matter. Their lived experience matters. Their body belongs in the conversation because it's their fucking body.

For me, that's where all of this keeps landing.

I don't want to tell people how to become better at controlling their bodies.

I want to help create spaces where people can get curious about them, learn from them, challenge them, care for them, and maybe trust them a little more.

And I think that's a much more interesting place to start.