Is Body Trust Biblical?

What we talk about in this episode

In Episode 2 of the Joyful Health Show, we discuss whether or not body trust is biblical. We explore scriptural insights on the difference between our bodies and “the flesh” as the apostle Paul writes about it. We also explore the scientific realities of trusting our bodies for food and movement and give practical exercises to move forward trusting the Holy Spirit and God’s good design for your health.

Resources Mentioned

1. Take our free class, "stop dieting and discover the joy in food and fitness"

2. Learn more about our Joyful Health Course here.

3. Get started with Intuitive health by grace today with Body Blessings: A 30-Day Journal to Praise God with Your Body through Prayer, Intuitive Eating, and Joyful Movement 

Guest Bios

Kasey Shuler is an author, personal trainer, and co-founder of the Joyful Health Collective. Her mission is to help women find lasting health by starting with grace and finding joy in movement. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Athens, Georgia, and outside of joyfulhealth.co, you can connect with her @kaseybshuler on Instagram.

Aubrey Golbek is a dietitian, writer, and mama on a mission to help women ditch diets and find grace in the areas of food, body image, motherhood and beyond. She is the co-founder of the Joyful Health collective and has worked one-on-one with clients as a dietitian in private practice since 2015. Aubrey is the author of Grace, Food, and Everything in Between and together with her husband runs Movement Cube Chiropractic + Rehab where she offers in person nutrition counseling. She lives in Tulsa, OK with her husband and children. You can connect with Aubrey on instagram @aubreygolbek.

Is Body Trust Biblical ? Episode Transcription

(Aubrey)

Hey, friends, welcome to the Joyful House show. I'm Aubrey, registered dietitian, and I'm Kasey personal trainer. And together we are here to help you discover joyful health by grace. Hi, guys, and welcome to this week's episode of the Joyful House show today, Kasey and I are talking about whether or not body trust is biblical.

And you guys, I'm so excited to talk about this because one of the biggest roadblocks that Christian women have with intuitive health is this belief that trusting our bodies is the same as living in the flesh or glorifying the flesh, which is something the Bible warns against.

This is a conversation like I said I'm excited to have because at least for myself, I know when I finally understood this topic, it changed everything and how I viewed my body and how I viewed my relationship to eating and exercise.

So, Kasey, just to start, can you kind of talk about why people, why Christians especially maybe have a problem when they first hear you can trust your body?

Why Christians have a problem with body trust

(Kasey)

Yeah. Well, because I think a lot of it is that we have confused the word flesh in the body and the Bible because they're very similar words and we can talk about that in a second. But also, we live in a culture that does not trust our body's natural signals. And so we rely on things like meal plans or OK, We know that this portion has this many calories and this many calories. Is good for this person at this weight, and we rely on numbers and lots of external factors and not our intuition anymore. And I feel like this is a pretty new phenomenon, even though we feel completely steeped in it.

And so it feels normal. It's it's pretty new. It's pretty new as far as like not just eating when you're hungry or stopping when you're full. Because now we we eat when our diet tells us to eat or, you know, we stop when we've had so many calories, even though we're so hungry.

And so we beat ourselves up because we think, Oh, I'm still hungry, but I can't eat anymore. And then you think about food because you're hungry. And so your body's sending your mind signals that you need to eat and you stuff those.

And then you start putting the blame on yourself for being hungry when you really were, depending on someone else or something else, maybe to tell us how our body should respond to you and what our body needs. And I know that I have a pretty big history with this too, which we can go into later.

But um yeah. So I think that's that would be like the biggest struggle as far as as we can't really trust our bodies. And I see a lot in fitness classes. If if my friends in the fitness class they're like, Oh, no, I don't wear my fitness watch today or I can't track my workout, it's like, Oh, well, I guess it doesn't count, you know when. So we we kind of think that, well, our success doesn't count if someone else didn't check it or if we didn't get proof in a picture, we don't post on social media.

And so a lot of our life is like pushed to the outside, to the external world when and that is also pushing trust into things other than ourselves, too. So it just kind of ends up being kind of a cycle.

So, yeah, what about you? Are you have you have you seen it personally and just around you?

00:04:19 (Aubrey)

Yeah. So I think there are and you there are. There's a spiritual component to this question. And then there is also this culture component, which you kind of address that culture that we live in, which is like, No, our bodies can't be trusted. Like we we sort of believe that we can outsmart our bio, hack our bodies like that.

We are that we believe in this like separated being that we're like brains. Our minds and our minds are like a far superior and above our bodies, which are just like this lowly thing to be controlled and manipulated with every new discovery from science. But as believers, right, we and we know that like God, created our bodies and that from the beginning we didn't have all this information about nutrition or exercise or sleep or the chemicals that make up different hormones in our body.

We didn't have that information, but we did have like the cues that are given to us through our bodies, and we did. So we had hunger and we had fullness and we had, you know, our intuition, which was given by God.

And so I think that's a really good point that you brought up that this is relatively new like we would not have done this hundreds or thousands of years ago because like, we didn't have these things. And so that's kind of that component.

And then I think the spiritual side of things which I see and sometimes when I work with Christian women and they're beginning to learn intuitive eating is that they've been taught that their bodies are sinful point blank, that their bodies are sinful, that nothing that comes from their bodies can be trusted.

And so they've got to use their self-control, their willpower to be better than their sinful bodies. And I can see where this comes from. I mean, growing up in the church, like especially in a previous generation, everything was focused on purity and avoiding alcohol and avoiding cussing and avoiding smoking.

And I'm not saying I am not saying we should go and like go to the other end on everything. But there was a lot of focus on just controlling your behaviors and your body and and not as much focus on connecting with the Holy Spirit and living by the spirit.

And that is kind of the spiritual side of things that I think we're going to get into. Like Kasey said, the flesh in the Bible, Paul, especially Paul, he talks about living by the spirit and not by the flesh, and that word flesh can sometimes be mean body and sometimes it's used, mostly it's used actually in the Bible to talk about like our self led efforts or like our selfish ambitions, I think which I may be jumping the gun here, but I think one of the definitions I'm trying to find it for you guys because I wrote it down.

It was in like the help's word study when you go and look at this word and was basically our actions apart or done apart from faith, like whatever we do in our own striving, apart from faith, that's actually this living in the flesh that Paul was talking about.

He wasn't necessarily talking about trusting our hunger and our fullness. Paul was talking about the self- led efforts and not our hunger and our fullness or those cues that were given to God, given to us by God at creation, right?

Adam and Eve were eating before the fall, so we know that those were designed into our bodies. And we have a couple of scriptures. I want to share really quick concerning that because I don't want to just like, give you these things and you guys be like, what are you talking about? How can I just trust this person's word on it? And so first, the scripture that comes to mind when people are like, well, we can't trust the body, we can't trust the flesh is in Romans, right?

It says for those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind in the flesh is death.

But to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

So right, like if God, if God is talking about like those who live in their bodies and listen to their hunger and fullness can't please God. It doesn't sound right. Doesn't hit like that's that's not making sense, right?

But is he's talking about like if you're living on your own apart from faith, trying to do everything in your own strength instead of living by grace and power by God's spirit? Right? That's what he's contrasting. And one more thing, just so we can be clear.

He even said it's like now the works of the flesh are evident or obvious sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery and many strife. Jealousy fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, NBE, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. That is not listening to hunger and fullness, and our needs are rest, right, I think we have to get so clear

that is so different. And he goes on to say, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things. There are there is no bar. And so OK, Casey, when you hear that and you think about maybe your past with trying to like white knuckle control your eating, has

it felt like it was the right thing to do? Can you think about like what fruit was produced from that? And what fruit have you seen in your life and from just letting it go and trusting the signals God put into your body?

Integrating body and soul by Grace

00:10:25:11 (Kasey)

Oh yeah. When you said that those who are living in the flesh cannot please God. I was like, Oh, right, because also Hillary McBride, she has this book called “The Wisdom of the Body,” and she talks about that word flesh, which I was like, Oh yes, like, we need this explained, because like you're saying, we've separated our mind and our body. Whereas like God said, like, you know, Love the Lord, the Lord, your God, the Lord, your God is one. And to love the Lord, your god with all of your mind and your heart and your soul and your body.

And so like this, integration is key to our lasting health with God. And so when we are trying to do things apart from him, then it's not going to work. So like, you know, Paul uses the two different words.

The Greek word translated translated as body is soma, and the Greek word translated as flesh is Starks. This SARS, and it's more often used to refer to meat like a disembodied kind of way. Whereas Selma refers to a living, breathing, subjective experience of being a person or to a system such as a family or a community.

And so it's like, Oh, well, when I'm living in the flesh, when I'm living apart from that family community, the body of Christ, I am isolated. I could just like, picture myself as like this little gremlin like, Oh no, I'm going to like, keep this food that I want to myself because I don't want to share it

because I won't have enough. And and then I because I haven't been eating what I wanted to, and this is the only thing I want to eat. And so and being able to like trying to do the whole eat clean and train dirty was just like daily condemned me because I couldn't do it.

And so it's like we have these desires to please the Lord, but we don't have the ability to carry it out. So like Paul says, Romans seven and Paul is not against the body. I think we want to make that clear.

Like whenever, whenever he talks about the flesh, he's talking about that disembodied apart from faith thing. But he says in Romans seven. “I know that nothing good lives in me. That is in my flesh, but I have the desire to do it as good, but I cannot carry it out.”

So, you know, Aubrey and I, we both see so many women who come to us and they have tried to do the right thing with their health for years, and they're exhausted and worn out just like we were.

I'm trying to eat the right things, eat the right portions, work out so many times a week, do the right kinds of workouts. And we had this desire to do good, but we could not carry it out and that.

And so we have to like die to ourself, we have to we have to die to that flesh part of us that says that we can do things apart from God because we can't. And then and the end of that, Paul says, like, Well, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus and in Christ who came as a

body so the body can't be sinful. And then when he rose from eternal life, it's not like, Oh, like whenever we can shed this body and then we'll be pure eternal spirit. It's like, No, he can't he? He took his body back and now his eternal body, he will never heal, will live forever.

And that is our future, too. So we have to start living in a way that we can give thanks to God for the gifts of being in our body now. And so, yeah, like this morning, teaching a class at the Y I was, we were laying down at the end and I was thinking like we were laying on the floor. We can have faith that the ground is holding us up and we don't even second guess that we don't. We're not like, Oh, I really hope this ground is going to hold me up and I sit when I lay down on it.

I really hope this chair is going to hold me up when I sit down, and we don't usually think that we just do it by training over and over and over. I've been able to build up that trust and the thing and building and building up trust in our body that we have built up the muscle musculature

and the motor patterns to be able to sit down and be able to lie down. And it becomes just part of our intuition and that intuition not being like this unscientific thing, but really, it's like our body's way to protect us of, Hey, this is what I've learned.

This is what I know, and now I'm just storing it here, and we're just living it out on impulse because this is what has worked well. And so I think with body trust, we can be very narrow when it comes to body trust.

It's like we trust our body for a ton of stuff. We trust our body for like, Oh, we don't we don't think about our hearts not beating. We don't think about our lungs, not breathing our teeth, chewing up the food.

But we can't trust our body with hunger and fullness. Now that's something that we can't trust our body with or like. So, Aubrey, what have you seen for the people who think, Well, if I just start intuitive eating, I'm just going to I can't trust my body, I'm going to.

I'm going to continue gaining weight and my health is going to continue to decline. What would you say to the person who has that fear?

What happens when we trust our bodies

00:16:10:14 (Aubrey)

Yeah, I think part of part of that is also tied in with to this whole what is the flesh thing?

Because when we have, when we are white knuckling a diet and we're restricting and then we have this experience where we fail it, like you said, there's nothing good in our own effort, right? Like, we have this experience where we fail the diet and we end up binging or like really overeating on the thing that we were restricting. And so that tells us, then we store that in our minds as like proof that we can't trust our bodies when really what that is fruit of is this like control that we're trying to hold on to.

No, we can't trust our own efforts on our own, like controlling everything by our own willpower. But when we let that control go and we actually eat enough to feed ourselves and nourish our bodies, our bodies are going to not have that experience of wanting to binge on everything.

And in fact, and in actuality, we see our bodies regulate our weight to a level that is appropriate for our genetics. It may not be like the weight of the model that you see or the weight of your best friend who is tall and lean, whatever.

But it's your body's weight where you don't have to control your eating and your exercise. But really, you just listen. You just eat. When you're hungry, you stop when you're full. You as you eat things that nourish you, you move your body in a positive way.

And then we see our weight stabilize in this range of what we say. Like anywhere five to 15 lbs, it's like this set point range that our body weight will move back and forth within, depending on the life stage we're at, depending on the season.

You know, whether we're able to move very much or move very little, whatever. And so it's it's amazing. And when people can trust that process long enough to get to that, that's when it's like, really awesome. And you're like, Yes, this worked.

But a lot of times in between is is the heart is the hard point. It's the point where you kind of have to step out on faith and just trust. And we're not trusting nothing. The thing we believe that we're trusting is God, our creator, and we believe that we're trusting him because he made our bodies.

And so I think that that's like a super power that Christians have when they're approaching intuitive eating that if you don't have faith, you don't have, you're really just blindly trusting in your body, which you have. You know, if you don't have faith in a loving creator, you have no reason to trust.

And so I think that's. Hopefully that helped answer that question by remembering that, like your past experiences of maybe feeling out of control around food and exercising are often clouded by rules and restriction and self led pursuits to control.

And that's maybe why you had a negative experience with it, not because you can't trust your body.

00:19:23:08 (Kasey)

Yeah. And I think, you know, like God has given us that common grace as far as well, like anyone can do this whole intuitive eating thing.

Yes. But why do we not add on? I think we're more of just clarifying we're eating well and we're moving free by grace because we know that's the only way that we can live free and our spirit and our body and our mind, and that it can be all connected like that.

So my definition of body of being not isolated as individuals, but connected and in the body, in a family and humanity in the body of Christ. And so even like, OK, we do have when we get to the point, when we when we know physically that all things are permissible, but not everything is beneficial, then we can

be at a party or whatnot in we can be around people who might be dieting and not able to trust their bodies. And, you know, sometimes it's helpful for the other person too, for us not to indulge in our freedom, but to be able to restrain so that we can love them well, like in Romans 14 type

of sense. And so, so as far as like, yes, we trust our bodies, but mostly we are trusting the spirit and to be able to listen to our bodies as a reflection of our spirit of our like and their spirit.

Listening to the Holy Spirit's voice and nitpick. Small still voice is very similar to the small still signals in our bodies that we can train by listening in and by noticing and by giving things every time we noticed that because that continues to cement that neural pathway and reminds us to go back to that same route again the next time and really strengthens. So so that it becomes natural to us. It's just like riding a bike. And so body trust will not just be like this insurmountable obstacle because as we know, faith moves mountains and it doesn't take more faith.

It takes a mustard seed, a faith and so on. But being able to trust in those small things like, like I would say, definitely open our like to broaden our perspective of like Aubrey said, a lot of it is distress based off of what culture has fed us about what our bodies should be doing rather than what we feel like.

I know Aubrey and I have both had children, and I know that when I was pregnant and nursing, my hunger levels were through the roof. And then as soon as I stopped, I felt like eating was a full time job for me.

And then once I stopped nursing, I was like, Oh, I'm suddenly not hungry. Like, it's the time. It's like been two hours. I should be starving by now, and I'm not hungry. This is strange, but also wow, like our bodies do regulate.

And like Aubrey said, it can be scary at first, but we do have a lot of helpful training resources to walk y’all through that, and we definitely would recommend our master class first, stop dieting and start discovering the joy in food and fitness.

And then if you can relate to that, then we have twelve week courses that we coach you through. You walk through others, you walk with others through it. So you and you're also reminded that not everyone stays the same.

And that is the way it's supposed to be because it's our journey with the Lord first, with each other connected by love. So yes. So Aubrey, is there anything else you wanted to add to that? Where can we give some other practical pieces?

00:23:00:05 (Aubrey)

Yeah. And so I was thinking about just that concept of listening to your bodies, but listening to the spirit first. And I think that can be an overwhelming or confusing for some people. And I think and to just give an example of how that might play out where like, let's just say you feel like your body is telling you to binge on the tacos. But the Holy Spirit is saying no, that could happen, and that could be like if you're having and it wouldn't really, I wouldn't say it was your body telling you to binge on the tacos.

It might be like just still that restrictive mindset of, “I'm never going to get these tacos again.” Like, if you feel like your motivator, this is just a way I guess to kind of look at your motivation and try to decipher where it's coming from.

Hmm. So if you feel like your motivation for eating, I'm just going to choose eating because I'm a dietitian, The dietitian here. If you feel like your motivation for eating is, well, like a rebellious like, I can't normally have that, so I'm going to have it tonight.

Or it's it's like, I'm going to start a diet tomorrow, so I'm going to eat a ton tonight. Then that is, I would say again, more rooted in that diet mentality that's still sticking around and it's something to just pause and not condemn yourself for because that's a pattern, right?

That's just a pattern of thought that we're going to like reform to pause and then just really connect to those physical cues. OK? Am I truly hungry for this? The answer is probably. Yeah, you probably are hungry, but I'm going to slow down.

Eat this with people so that I'm not tempted to just binge on it, and I'm going to really just pause and ask, OK, have I had enough yet? Is it? Does it still taste good? Am I feeling full?

Do I need seconds? OK, I'm going to go get seconds. So just using that moment to practice again, tuning into physical sensations and taking it up with the Lord because I feel like the spirit, someone that kind of empowers us to put that stopper like, you know, when you're when you're on this train of like negative thought, whatever it is, it could be completely unrelated to eating. And you have a moment where you are like, Wait, what am I doing? Why, what? Why am I doing this? Or Why am I thinking this way?

To me, I feel like that's a Holy Spirit. Like, OK, you know, let's reconsider what's going on. So that's just maybe a practical, some of the nuance of how that can play out in an everyday eating experience. I would also encourage you guys know, Kasey started to mention our course, our twelve week course joyful health.

We do not just like, send you off and say, OK, guys, trust your body and the spirit and go like, there's twelve weeks of content, right? And we start with guardrails, which is helping you make sure you're fueling your body adequately.

So you're eating enough, you're eating often enough, you're getting all of your food groups, you're getting balance. And then we work through some of those beliefs and those fear foods one at a time. We even talk about, you know, setting healthy habits.

So this is not just like no structure free for all you're on your own. I think God's given us each other to help share things we're good at or we're knowledgeable about and then learn from others because, you know, we can all learn from each other.

And so that's what we do in our course and a good place to start. Like Kasey said, it's taking that master class. And then if you are kind of in between because we only run the course twice a year for twelve weeks, we just want to be able to coach a smaller group and be more involved with

you guys. And so we do it at the beginning of March, in the beginning of August, every year. But if you're in between, you listen to the master class. We also encourage you to keep listening to this podcast and the blog and following us on Instagram, of course, but to get our body blessings and prayer.

Intuitive Health Tracking Journal, it just helps you to take these things to the Lord in prayer. Sort of like what we're talking about, but through a journal. And to also start to get to know your hunger and fullness and your physical needs through tracking.

We're not talking about tracking calories or macros or even portion sizes, but tracking hunger, fullness, what you ate, your movement, your needs. All of that is in this journal. So that's a really good place. Whether you're before the course or you've already taken the course to just sort of brush up on your body's needs to start right?

Kasey

And I was going to, yeah, I like the movement side of things for whenever I train clients. A lot of people want to push themselves too much. And so part of that too is like, it's it's not the body chess piece, but it's like the diet culture piece as far as well.

No pain, no gain. I have to keep pushing through or if I don't follow through, then I don't follow through with anything in life and I'm just not a follow through person. And so I think being able to be able to notice when you're having that dialog that's going against your body's signals as far as your body's telling you, like, 00, that squat really hurts when I go down deep, like my knees are starting to ache. But if you are you pushing through anyways or are you listening to your body and being kind and kindness, by the way, is doing what is eternally fitting for you?

So we're not just thinking about what is good for our body, but we're practicing what is fitting for us, because that is what. God gives us is what is fitting for us, and he trains us one step at a time.

And so and sometimes it might be, oh, I feel like instead of thinking about like, how many calories do I have to burn, you start thinking about how much more energy do I have in my body to give or how much like stress training can I like burn off as far as how you want to feel?

And so like, how you want to feel in your mind is very well connected to how you feel in your body. So in that the body Blessing's Journal can help reveals a lot of those patterns. So, you know, we definitely encourage you to put things in black and white, put it in ink.

So you can kind of. And we're encouraging, you know, integration in the journal part is helping separate the thoughts that do not belong to you as a daughter or a son in Christ. And and so being able to you put those down, you can be able to remove that from your mental space and cast it aside, give

it to the Lord. And so, yeah, we and I would also just leave you all with being able to notice to you and that track or journal or just in the regular journal or when you wake up or when you're moving, just notice, Oh, my fingers are moving.

I really took that for granted. There are like a million things happening in our body at any given time for us to be alive here right now. For you to be listening to this. I mean, if if you dig into anatomy or physiology at all, then you will realize the wonders that God is doing to hold all things

together, including our bodies. So. So I hope that this can really improve your trust in your body and more. So lead to trust in your creator. Yeah. Aubrey, would you like to pray us out?

(Aubrey)

Yeah, yeah. I want to leave you guys with a verse that you may have read over before and thought, Well, this isn't really applicable, May not have thought it applied to this, but the Lord really just put this on my heart and to share this with y'all. So in Ephesians 5:20, Paul is actually talking to husbands, but he says husbands in the same way to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife, loves himself. Indeed, no one ever hated his own body, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. And so I if if there's one prayer that I have for you guys listening and Christian women when it comes to viewing our bodies and our health is that we would start

to view it this way that we would nourish and cherish our bodies just as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church and move away from hating our own bodies. And we're also called to nourish and cherish other people's bodies.

And I think that the two go hand in hand, right. We just see the value of bodies, our own and others because Christ has called them valuable. So if we could and we could reframe our mindset with how to get away from.

You have to perfectly take care of the temple because it's what's right to do and instead thinking about, like just God wants us to nourish and cherish what he nourishes and cherishes. And that's what we sort of pray for you, and I'm going to go ahead and actually pray for you.

And then we will see you guys in the next episode. OK, wants to add something? I guess I'll just keep going on this. Like going. Wait, wait, wait. I want to say something. So you mentioned the temple, but the temple is only holy because of God's presence.

Yes. So I think, yeah, which is a whole other set. Yeah. Let's go to another episode on that. Right. But by taking care of our body, we're really just nourishing and listening to the spirit within our bodies. So, yeah, so yes, I'm gonna let you.

I'm gonna let you pray now. Yeah, I know I was like, Should I have even brought this up at the end of the episode? But I couldn't help myself. Yes, you are as a believer are our a temple of the Holy Spirit, simply because by faith, not by any perfect eating and exercising.

And we get to receive that with all and banks giving and ask God to help us to view our bodies in this positive light the way that he does. So that's why I'm going to pray over y'all right now.

00:33:40:06 - 00:34:03:13 Aubrey Prays us out

Father God, I just thank you so much for this conversation. I thank you that you are shining. Meaning your life in this area of body image and and food and movement and health, Lord and I ask that whatever seed that has been planted through this podcast and would that you would water it and just continue to grow it in our hearts, in the hearts of the listeners and so that they would grow in you and would just be more of who you created us to be in Jesus name. Amen.

And until next time, guys. May you rest in his grace and follow the joy.

34:28:19 Kasey

Hey, hey, y'all. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today and listening and make sure you stay tuned for next week when we answer another one of your frequently asked questions. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review so more people can discover joyful health by grace