The times I *don’t* listen to my body

It feels like everyone is getting ill right now, with so many coughs and colds going around. I’ve been down with a bad cold since the weekend.

And every time I get sick, it feels like the same battle: between listening to my body and resting, vs ignoring it and powering through.

Powering through vs listening to my body

At the weekend, I powered on through to celebrate the 40th birthday of one of my best friends. I considered the risks, spoke to my friends about it, and decided it was absolutely worth it to me.

But when it came to Monday, I felt like absolute death and had zero energy for anything on my to-do list.

Thankfully I could take a couple of days horizontal on the sofa, doing nothing but absorbing TV (in related news, the latest series of Slow Horses was brilliant 😅). 

Of course, there are also trade-offs to these decisions: pushing through might mean feeling worse afterwards (as I discovered!), and when you're ill, there's also the risk of passing it on to other people. So it's not just about what I want to do, but also the potential consequences for myself and others.

Sometimes I'm too ill to push through. Sometimes I want or need to push through anyway. And sometimes I know I really need to rest, even when there's a whole list of things I'd rather be doing.

It’s not always easy to decide which things are worth pushing through for, and which can wait. 

It’s not just about illness

It’s got me thinking about the same push and pull with our bodily signals around eating and exercise.

I talk a lot about listening to your body, and I do my best to practise what I preach - but it doesn’t always work out that way.

Sometimes there’s something delicious I want to eat, even though I'm already full. Sometimes I need to eat before four hours of meetings, even though I’m not hungry yet. And sometimes I overdo it with movement, because I really need to get the gardening done before it rains.

Does that mean I'm getting it wrong? I don't think so.

Listening doesn’t always mean obeying

I think there's an important difference between listening to our bodies and always doing what they tell us.

When I'm sick, I try to pause and think about what I genuinely want or need to push through for, and what can wait. A meeting can be rescheduled, but my friend's 40th birthday can't (not on my account, anyway 😂).

And with eating and exercise, it's often the same. I might choose to eat something delicious when I'm already full, simply because I want to enjoy it. Or eat before I'm hungry, because I know I won't get another chance for hours. Or spend a day doing more physical activity than I'd ideally like, knowing I'll need some extra rest afterwards.

In all these situations, I'm still paying attention to what my body's telling me. I'm just considering that information alongside everything else that's important to me.

Our bodies don't exist in isolation from the rest of our lives: sometimes what we need physically and what we want emotionally or practically aren't quite the same thing, and we need to balance all of that.

Listening to your body doesn't have to mean following every signal perfectly. Sometimes it means noticing what it's telling you, and then making a conscious, intentional choice about what to do with that information.

Do you ever find yourself torn between what your body needs and what you want to do? I'd love to hear how you navigate it.