Full Capacity Living…
Learning to Trust Your Body Again
When Rebecca (not her real name) first came to me, she was afraid I of food.
Her previous functional medicine practice started with food sensitivity testing, before looking at her lifestyle, her stress, or her gut. The results came back with a long list of foods to avoid. So she did what any conscientious person would do. She cut them out, and then she cut out more, until she was eating only a handful of foods.
The hardest part of her story is that her symptoms didn’t improve. They got worse.
By then Rebecca was afraid to eat almost anything. She logged every bite and every sensation in a symptom tracker, looking for patterns that never lined up. The tracking became its own source of distress. She was also taking a long list of supplements, and she had no idea whether any of them were helping.
What the testing missed
Food sensitivity tests often flag the foods we eat most often, because they partly reflect what the body has been exposed to rather than what is causing harm. That means a lot of false positives. Used as a starting point instead of one piece of a bigger picture, these tests can send people down a path of restriction that creates more problems than it solves.
What Rebecca needed was not another list. She needed someone to slow down and listen to her.
We started with safety
Before we changed anything on her plate, we worked on calming her nervous system. We used breathwork and tapping. She started going outside every day to a creek on her property that she found calming. I made her personalized meditations, and we only kept the ones that she said left her feeling calmer and more grounded.
This work has to be personal. When it’s cookie cutter, the results are limited, because what calms one person does nothing for the next. Rebecca’s faith had always given her a sense of calm and connection, so we began there. Once her nervous system had something familiar and steady to rest on, we began trying new things.
Over time she began listening to her body again, but in a different way. It wasn’t the anxious, symptom-hunting way she had been taught. It was more like gratitude. She noticed when she had more energy. She noticed when she felt safe and held. She learned what calm actually feels like.
Calm is not lazy
That last part is harder than it sounds, especially for the high-achieving women I work with. After years of pushing and producing, rest that isn’t sleep feels uncomfortable. Slowing down feels lazy. “I should be doing something. I should be doing more.”
I have pushed back on the word lazy for years. Restorative time is not a reward you earn once everything else is done. It’s what makes it possible to hear what your body is telling you. You can’t tune in to subtle signals when you are always running at full speed.
For Rebecca, healing was about much more than finding the right foods. A lot of our work together was a shift in how she saw herself. She stopped seeing her body as something to manage and fear, and started trusting it again.
Health is rarely just about food and exercise. It’s more nuanced than that. How we talk to ourselves, whether we feel safe enough to rest, and whether we trust our own signals all shape how we heal.
In her words
When our work together ended, Rebecca wrote to me:
“You have a gift of gentleness and the perfect amount of it that makes me, and I’m sure lots of others, want to do better and try new things. I could have met anyone else to guide me through my health journey, but I believe it was meant to be you, truly. I feel so much better in ways I never could have expected”
When I read her words, I hear someone who now sees herself differently. That shift is the real healing, and it was hers to make. I’m grateful I got to walk alongside her.
This week, try this: Pick one moment each day to stop and notice how your body feels. Don’t fix anything or write anything down. Just notice. When did you feel the most energy? When did you feel the most at ease? That’s where trust begins.
With care,
Karen
