Reclaiming My Body After…Doing Everything “Right”

Breaking free from wellness culture, food rules, and the constant need to fix yourself.

There was a point where I realized I wasn’t just trying to feel better. I was living inside a constant loop of trying to fix myself. It felt like a dark night of the soul in many ways, uncertain, and like an ending I didn’t expect.

And this fixing wasn’t occasional. It wasn’t a phase. It was constant, day in and day out. A loop just looping. I was always adjusting something, always searching for the missing piece, always believing the next shift would finally be the one that did it all. From the outside, it can look like care, discipline, and commitment to my health. But underneath it, there was pressure. So much pressure. Pressure to get it right, hope upon hope, pressure to stay on track even when it felt off.

And the hardest part to admit? A lot of what I thought was “listening to my body” wasn’t. It was overriding it. I just had to keep going, you know?

Wellness culture has a way of rewarding that. It praises discipline and optimization. It’s big on getting things “right.” Even well-meaning practitioners asking for food logs, hyper-focus on food, bottles and bottles of supplements. Even when “right” quietly disconnects you from yourself. It also applies to nervous system, emotional, and trauma work. I can’t live there either.

I followed the advice. I learned all the languages. I explored and trained in a lot of modalities and not gonna lie, I loved that part. Some of it truly supported me. But a lot of it kept me in this subtle, constant state of something that still needs to be fixed.

At some point, I realized I didn’t even know what was real or what was fear. There are so many rules, and when you feel awful, those rules become gospel. Because when something starts to help, even a little, you cling to it. Even when it stops helping. Even when it doesn’t feel right anymore.

And reclaiming my body didn’t come from finding better rules. It came from stepping out of that entire dynamic.

Not dramatically. Not all at once. But in small, very real decisions.

It looks like simplifying everything. Not adding more, but pulling back. Way fewer supplements. Not because they’re inherently bad, but because I no longer need to throw everything at my body just to feel like I’m doing enough. And all those supplements? Your body has to process those too. That’s just one example.

It looks like not forcing myself back into workouts I’m not ready for yet. It’s letting my body set the pace instead of trying to catch up to some version of where I think I should be or even want to be! I want to be strong again. I want to be doing the yoga I love. But I’m still rebuilding. I don’t want to push through just because I used to be able to.

It looks like keeping my food simple. Not hyper-optimized, not restrictive, not built on fear. Right now, it’s built on nourishment and on supporting my body as I rebuild that. It may look kinda the same on the outside, but the current underneath it is shifting.

After years of elimination, rules, and trying to get it exactly right, I realized something that felt almost too simple to be true: my body doesn’t need more control. It needs less.

And maybe the biggest shift of all, I’m learning to stop relating to my body like it’s a problem. Not saying it’s easy. And it doesn’t mean I don’t care how I feel. It definitely doesn’t mean I’ve arrived.

But I am working on no longer organizing my life around fixing myself. I’m organizing it around being in it. On making choices that are best for me. 

Reclaiming my body, for me, isn’t a dramatic transformation. It’s a quiet shift in leadership, listening instead of overriding, choosing instead of reacting, trusting instead of outsourcing. Reconnecting to what I actually want.

I’m not anti-wellness. In many ways, I love it even more now. Wellness, nourishment, taking care of yourself, those things are deeply ingrained in me. It is my passion. I’m just reclaiming that passion on my terms.

I’m no longer available for anything, no matter how “healthy” it looks, that pulls me out of myself. And I’m really SO done over-analyzing the past. Life is not meant to nor will it always be regulated.

If you’ve tried everything, if you’ve followed the rules, done the work, done the protocols, and still feel disconnected, it might not be because you haven’t found the right thing yet.

It might be because you’ve been taught not to trust the one thing that matters most.

Yourself.

This is what reclaiming my body looks like now.

Unfiltered.

P.S. Never let anyone tell you that you should do something when it feels wrong. I don’t care who the practitioner is. Yes, taking care of yourself matters, and yes, support can be really important. But ask questions. Sit with it. Before you hand over your power - or your credit card. More on that topic.