Why is my body rebelling against me? This frustrating thought frequents my mind – especially throughout these past two years as if somehow, my lupus symptoms were my body’s way of saying “screw you“ while purposely spiting me with illness. But when I actually stop and consider this theory I realize it’s flawed. My body isn’t rebelling against me. It’s signaling a deficiency by crying out for help.
That leads to another question that haunts me — But why would it be sick or injured when I take really good care of it? Do any of the things I do even matter?
It would be easy to shrug it off and think, Well I guess I’m just unlucky or even worse yet, What is the point of even trying? It’s tempting to surrender to hopelessness by quitting exercising and eating healthy altogether. However, upon further self reflection, it’s clear that I have not always been kind to my body. I’m actually quite lucky that my disease didn’t manifest sooner. Admitting that I’ve abused my body is difficult — but it’s the truth. My track record speaks for itself.
Throughout my teens and 20s, I did not properly nourish my body because I was hell bent on trying to starve it. This behavior while running competitively in high school was simply unfair to my body — especially once puberty hit and I vowed to erase the effects of it. When my body needed TLC the most, I punished it for developing.
Smoking cigarettes was another terrible habit I started because I thought it would help me lose weight and look cool ( It still makes me cringe that I actually believed that !). Fortunately I came to my senses after a few years and quit, but my lungs had to work hard to recover.
For decades, I drank diet soda like it was going out of style. For the majority of my teaching career, instead of coffee in the morning I would drink a 20 ounce Diet Mountain Dew followed by a Diet Pepsi for lunch. (When I was younger, I would come home from runs and rehydrate with Diet Pepsi!) Eventually it got to the point where I would be drinking a 2 L bottle of diet soda a day, which was my only source of hydration. Back then no one gave habits like this a second thought, because we didn’t know the detrimental effects all these chemicals had on our bodies. The fact that it had zero calories was its selling point. None of the other ingredients mattered to me.
For the majority of my younger life, yo-yo dieting forever trapped me in a vicious cycle of weight gain and loss. My coping mechanism of binge eating junk food as a way to fill a void, calm anxiety, or to punish myself if I was feeling inferior, created a sense of chaos that permeated everything. My stress levels were constantly elevated, and my poor body never had a chance to completely recover and repair.
Add to the list decades of fast food, sugar filled and artificially colored processed food, king size candy bars, deli meat sandwiches which are now known carcinogens, endless rounds of antibiotics, and a few years of experimenting with diet pills, weight loss fads (Slim- Fast and Dexatrim anyone?) and the disastrous low fat food craze. Is it any wonder so many of us are now experiencing health problems like autoimmune disease, diabetes and cardiovascular disease? Our habits have a way of catching up to us.
Considering how I’ve treated my body, it has every right to rebel. But when I view having lupus as my body rebelling against me, that perpetuates an antagonistic relationship which is unhelpful. When I treat my body respectfully by making an effort to tune in to how it’s feeling and what it’s trying to tell me, then giving it what it needs while leaving out what’s harmful, I am able to appreciate it and take care of it. My body and mind live in harmony.
Ultimately I have the power to nourish it correctly, strengthen it, condition it and to be grateful for all it allows me to do. It’s a way to thank my body for carrying me this far even though I mistreated it for years.
Sure I’ve been plant based for 17 years, but during these years I’ve done my fair share of over eating processed food, sugar, diet soda, yo-yo diets etc. I believe my focus on plants helped keep the autoimmune disease that was lurking in my body in check until Covid came along and finally pulled the trigger. But it took an autoimmune disease to wake me up and convince me to get serious about what I put into my body. Once I started hyper nourishing it, my body began to thank me by healing. Isn’t it empowering to know it’s never too late to make better choices?
Our knowledge about the effects of nutrition and lifestyle has grown exponentially over the decades. Nothing is 100% guaranteed but research has shown we have an excellent chance to reverse and prevent countless diseases depending on our habits. I thank God every day that my body has healed and I ask for strength to continue making healthy choices. I want to do whatever I can to avoid triggering any other diseases that run in my family — and there are many. Why settle on just getting by when it’s within my control to optimize my health?
I’m no longer accusing my body of rebellion. Instead I made a promise to treat it as the miracle that it truly is, because after all I’ve put it through, it really is amazing that it still has the ability to heal when I choose to love it and nourish it properly.
When you stop and listen to your body, what is it trying to tell you?
What’s one thing you can do for your body today to thank it for carrying you this far?
What’s one harmful thing you can stop as an act of love towards your body?