You’ve been eating great and exercising for the past 17 days (but who’s counting?!) You’re right on track for that summer body! And finally, you get to go on vacation to show off that bikini bod, but find out you can’t really enjoy yourself there. You start to feel guilty about indulging and relaxing. The vacation ends and yet, you didn’t enjoy it like you hoped.

You vow to start over as soon as you get back.

On Monday, you eat all the green salads, do the HIIT classes even though it hurts your knees, then another celebration arises and you “overeat” again. Your plan is ruined. You might as well just eat whatever.

The guilt piles on, and you feel heavy. You’re further triggered by the images on social media, and seeing your own picture makes you reel from the inconsistency of how you want to see yourself.

Maybe you can relate with this pattern.

Maybe you’re tired of chasing the “perfect body” and annoyed when the diet and exercise rules change yet again, promising if we’d just do “this one thing” we would be happy. It’s too hard to keep up.

And maybe you don’t have to.

I can only write about this because I, too, got fed up with this cycle. I say I don’t care about trying to lose weight, but seeing my chubby cheeks in pictures and hearing the internal critic accusing me after habitually eating extra servings was getting old.

When I couldn’t feel content in my skin, when I was bothered by my own existence, how could I live and love fully the way I so desperately wanted to?

The Dangers of Yo-Yo Exercising

“Target those trouble zones!” my fingers stopped scrolling as I stopped to check out this new Instagram ad. Need body satisfaction? There’s a diet and exercise program for that. Different words, same message.

Most of us now know that nearly 1 out of 3 Americans are dieting, and it’s likely each diet comes with an exercise plan as well. Chances are the plan dictates you stick to the plan, or you lose.

But diets can be sneaky. You’ll know it’s a diet if it rules over what you can and cannot eat, and how you should exercise to get you to where you want to be, instead of celebrating who you are.

But since 95% of people on a diet gain the weight back within 1-5 years, either life changed, it didn’t fit you or your lifestyle, or didn’t work the way you hoped it would.

Most of those who go on a diet gain weight back, then go right back into another diet and lose it again, gain it right back, and the cycle continues. This is the yo-yo effect: weight moving up and down through diet cycling.

When we yo-yo diet (and yo-yo exercising usually fits right along with this), we don’t give our body the stability and consistency it needs.

So what’s really wrong with going on and off exercise programs and staying mostly sedentary in between? This article helps us count the ways:

Yo-Yo Exercising Causes You to Gain Weight
Our bodies have been made to adapt to famine. What a helpful adaptation! Our body thinks a diet is a famine, so we wants to hold onto the weight. Our body fights hard to stay in homeostasis, to stay at home, so any drastic measure makes the body respond drastically too. The key to partnering with your body is going at her pace. Think a walking pace, not a full out sprint so she doesn’t have to huff and puff and burn out her adrenals to keep up. Do what is sustainable long-term to keep it consistent. The average life expectancy is 78 years old. You’ve got time.
Yo-Yo Exercising Increases Risk of Injury
Just like when we don’t warm up for a workout, jumping into a high intensity program after being quite sedentary will jolt your body in dangerous ways. When starting an exercise program, build up a slow and steady on ramp instead of beginning with the burpees. And if you need to break because of a real injury or life change, find something to do with the parts of your body you can move to keep a base of mobility to stay strong and prevent future injury. Slow and steady wins the race!
Yo-Yo Exercising Increases Appetite
When you rapidly lose weight through intense exercise, your body wants to keep you alive and increases your hunger signals so you can replenish what you lost. Think of our ancestors running for miles to hunt an animal, then sitting down to eat said animal. We no longer have to hunt for our food (unless it’s finding that exotic ingredient at the grocery store) so this method of high intensity workouts followed by a sedentary lifestyle doesn’t mesh very well.
Yo-Yo Exercising Causes Mood Swings

“Exercise gives you endorphins. And endorphins makes you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their husbands, they just don’t.” Elle brings up a good point. Exercise releases endorphins and so many other feel-good neurotransmitters, but these only last in our system about 48 hours. Staying active keeps those neurotransmitter levels balanced, but going on and off an exercise routine causes mood fluctuations that feel subtle but make a big difference.

Stepping Back from Yo-Yo Exercising

Culture sells us comfort because the world is hard, and then follows up with one-size-fits-all programs to fix the consequences. But even though we are all human, we are bio-individuals.

One diet will not work for every person long term. We’re too free for that.

But we can’t want freedom until we feel some discomfort, and we can’t know we’re free until we walk out of the open jail door, turn around, and see that the cell is not what defines us.

Culture’s expectations never define us.

Strong is the new skinny, they now say.

But we say: surrender is the new strength!

Surrender to the truth that we can’t find our worth in the exercise we do, but peace in the person God created us to be. There, we will exercise not from fear out of what we don’t want to become (fat, lazy, unlovely), but simply out of love for who we are in Christ.

Growing up, we modeled our parents’ eating and exercise habits. Later, we experimented with the way our peers moved and ate, what we saw on social media, and formed an idea of how we would be accepted in the real world.

I think the time has come for us to return home to our first love, to listen not to someone else’s idea of health, but to come back to our own bodies and the God who made us. Our body has a lot to say, so let’s lean in.

What is Intuitive Exercise?

What is intuitive exercise, and how is it different than a rigid routine associated with a diet?

Intuitive exercise shifts the locus of control from an external command to an internal cue.

Instead of abiding by what someone else is telling you to do, you start listening to your own body’s signals for what you need.

There are a lot of smart people in the world telling us what food and exercise is good for us, but our own body is crazy smart if you think about it. Your body can:

Heal broken bones
Transform a bagel into energy
Send pain signals and reflexes before injury

These are just a few examples, and I’ll bet you can name some more.

The best part about intuitive exercise is that there’s no rule that you must run to be in shape, that you must do whatever is the latest exercise trend.

You get to listen to your body and understand what you need to function well:

You get to lean in to the physical sensations of fidgeting and use your brain to hatch a plan to release that pent up energy with an impromptu dance party.

You get to recover how you need to the day after you feel you worked too hard instead of pushing yourself and feeling used.

You get to be kind to your body, learn to work with you body, and see your body as a partner, as one you live in relationship to instead of being the boss of.

You free your body from the chains of expectations and let yourself be loved. Just as bones free our limbs to move, you anchor yourself in the ancient wisdom of your body to move in freedom.

Practical Example

The difference between intuitive exercise and following a rigid plan is the flexibility to adapt according to your body’s needs.

For example, if you enjoy a plan, you can still do your plan. If your workout plan has you scheduled to do heavy deadlifts, but your legs are fatigued, you’ll do a few warm-up deadlifts to test your range of motion and energy levels, then decide how much weight you want to put on the bar and how many repetitions you want to do.

Write down your observations along with tracking your exercise with a row to jot down your RPE (rate of perceived exertion) and your perceived rate of technique.

By writing this information down, you’ll be training your brain to make the mind-body connection whenever you workout, strengthening your intuition and ability to listen to and train yourself better.

Some days you’ll need more rest, and other’s you’ll need more movement. Intuitive training still involves discipline, but it’s the discipline to discover what you need most, and to go for it.

Christian Intuitive Exercise

We could stop there, but we would be amiss if we didn’t acknowledge the body’s inextricable relationship with the spirit. The body cannot live without the spirit, so we must also open our hearts to how our soul speaks, the seat of our desires. Emotions expressed in the body can help us dig to the root of what we feel we are lacking. We know that when we are sad, we feel fatigued, drained of energy. The Psalmists of the Bible don’t deny the correlation:

“For my life is consumed with grief and my years with groaning; my iniquity has drained my strength and my bones are wasting away.” Psalm 31:10

While intuitive exercise helps us look to the emotions and body as a guide, Christian intuitive exercise (or, essentially, Spirit-led living) points our eyes of our hearts to the God within, who is not stressed by the emotional storms. He is the source of our self. As the book of Acts says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

The body He gave us is smart, meaning the Creator is infinitely wiser. His thoughts are higher, his ways beyond ours. He keeps track of us better than we know ourselves, and better yet, loves us completely:

“Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7

How can we dig deeper, past the external demands, past the somatic cues, and learn to discern the eternal voice of God?

The Path From Diets to Intuitive Training

We can use a diet as knowledge. We may start with a diet to help us discover the calories we are consuming and observe the balance between input and output in our bodies. This can be helpful to give us a starting point with rails as boundaries.

We can use intuitive exercise as wisdom. We may explore intuitive exercise to give us the freedom to choose how to use that knowledge for our unique self. We can use intuitive exercise as a way to wake us up to the lifelong gift of a relationship with our body, and how movement is a way to help us live the way we want. Here we are learning to explore the path and worry less about the ditches on either side.

We can use Christian intuitive exercise as a way to integrate that knowledge and wisdom and live in relationship God, connected to others. Without God, any health practice will feel like something is missing. You may even get to your healthy goal and think, “Is this all there is?” Because the goal will always feel empty without the Giver. Christian intuitive training is exercising the freedom God gives us to move in our bodies to feel joy and to do good. Now, are are walking with God along the way, allowing Him to lead us into new adventures. We are listening to the Holy Spirit within us by faith, who both translates our deepest groanings to God and reminds us that Jesus is always interceding for us.

What Christian Intuitive Exercise Teaches You

Think about what the last exercise plan you did guaranteed you. A movie star body? More energy? Healing? Whatever it promised, that is what you are looking for exercise to do for you.

In Christ, your soul has all it needs, so you don’t have to workout from a spirit of poverty, feeling like you have to impress someone or adhere perfectly, wondering if it will work this time around.

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Philippians 3:12

In Christ, you are never alone, your pursuit is never in vain, and you are always successful. If you ever do feel like you’re striving, it’s not from the Lord.

You’ll learn to understand His voice as love that leads instead of fear that drives.

Fear stems from our survival mechanism, but love is eternal.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” 2 Corinthians 4:16

We know that we will get old, injured, and that’s ok. Our main goal is not to get a perfect body on the outside but to train what lasts on the inside:

“…[F]or while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” 1 Timothy 4:8

I feel like that this point I’m using all Scripture, but it’s my love language. If you need more Scriptural proof, I have a post on 34 verses about faith and fitness to strengthen the connection for you.

The Problem With Following Jesus Over Programs

While this way may seem idyllic, we know following Jesus is not always easy. Some days, your body will want to rest, but you know you’ll find more joy when you get up and serve in God’s strength. You’ll be reminding yourself that,

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26

There won’t ever be just one answer, just one way to exercise. God will constantly ask us to get up and follow Him when we don’t feel like it, or even to rest in green pastures when we want to keep going. But when we put down our own exercise map and pick up His yoke, we will find it to be easy and His burden light.

When we lean not on our own understanding but trust in the Lord with all our heart, acknowledging Him in all our ways, He will not only show us the way but make our paths straight.

Exercise will no longer be about us, but about living as loved daughters of a good Father with Jesus our brother and the Holy Spirit our comforter. And even though it will be harder because it’s not the way of the rest of the world, we won’t care because we will be occupied with joy.

Practical Example

Just as you say a blessing before you eat to center your mind on thanksgiving in the Lord, you can say a prayer of thanks before you workout to focus your mind on God throughout the workout. As you do, you’ll free up your spirit to let Him lead you in love instead of feeling driven by performance and fear. Here are a few prayers you can say depending on the mood and type of workout you’re doing:

Strength workout in the middle of a gym: “Hidden in Christ”

Walk outside to relieve stress: Breathe in “Jesus” breathe out “sets me free”

Short HIIT workout to increase energy: “Ready for every good work”

Training for a race with a friend: “His love never quits”

Pilates workout to feel better: "All for the Lord"

How to Put Christian Intuitive Exercise Into Practice

If you have been nodding your head at all reading through this, maybe you feel overwhelmed with the thought of overhauling your relationship with exercise.

First, prayer. Tell God what your heart is saying, and He will understand. Just as intuitive exercise invites you to tune in to your body, prayer invites you to tune in to the Spirit within you. And then listen! He always responds. Maybe not immediately, so keep your eyes and ears and heart open to receive His response. As Richard Rohr says, the concrete is the doorway to the eternal. And as Jesus says, ask, and you shall receive!

If you want more guidance from His Word and from a personal trainer’s coaching methods, I would encourage you to check out Move for Joy: An Intuitive Training Approach to Pursue God in Fitness and Find Happiness.

My goal is to coach you not to stick to any one program, but to discover how God made you to move for joy. Because when everything else breaks down, when you’re tempted to jump ship and hop from one rescue plan to another, the joy of the Lord remains. His joy is your strength!

Add Intuitive Eating with Our Joyful Health Course

Exercising is only one side of the coin. That’s why my friend Aubrey from Grace Fueled RD and I are creating a course on all of the how-tos of Christian intuitive eating and exercising. It’s called Joyful Health: Eat Well. Move Free. By Grace.

In Christ, you have all you need. But if you want someone to walk with you, we’d love for you to join us! You can sign up for our webinar on July 27th. Even if you can’t make it, we will send you the replay and all the course info that starts in August. Can’t wait to meet you!

Sign up for the free class!

DISCLAIMER: Please consult with a qualified medical professional before beginning any exercise program. Always start at a beginner level and then move up to something that challenges you, but don’t push yourself beyond your own limits.

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