How To Rebuild Trust With Your Body After Years of Dieting

Introduction: You Can Rebuild Trust With Your Body

In the previous post, we discussed how the process of dieting and restriction led to broken self-trust. We unpacked the physiological imprint of that broken trust on our nervous system, our metabolism, and our hormone flow. Today, we are going to explore how to move forward and how to rebuild self-trust after dieting. First, we’ll outline the steps you can take to reconnect with your body and how to confidently move forward with your wellness goals from a place of safety and self-trust. 

Rebuilding Doesn’t Mean Starting Over

Rebuilding trust with your body isn’t about undoing the past; it’s about honoring what you’ve learned and finally moving forward from a place of safety, care, and consistency. You may be wondering, is it even possible to trust my body after everything I’ve put it through? Yes, it is, but remember that rebuilding is an act of courage, not perfection. Even if your relationship with food and your body feels broken, healing is available. If dieting disconnected you from your body, this post will help you begin the repair.

How a Relationship Is Rebuilt

When we talk about how to repair a broken relationship with yourself and your body, I don’t think it’s all that different from repairing a broken relationship with another person. Trust is rebuilt in the same way it’s built between two people: through safety, consistency, and care.

Signal Safety

Your body, through your nervous system, is always scanning your internal and external environment for cues of safety and threats. If you have spent time restricting food and overtraining, your body is sensitive to signals of famine and danger. To rebuild trust with your body, you need to reduce internal stress signals and create safe routines. This looks like consuming enough food at regular intervals, balancing training with enough rest, and balancing life stress with enough time to unwind.

Build Consistency

Someone who has been burned in a relationship isn’t won over by one apology; they wait to see consistent proof over time that the other person has changed. The same holds true when you rebuild trust with your body. It isn’t enough to occasionally eat enough or occasionally get a good night’s sleep. You must make a commitment to repeat small supportive actions consistently. Over time, the nervous system becomes more resilient to the environment and lets go of the hypervigilance it learned in an undersupported state. But at the beginning, you have to be truly committed to consistent acts of care to convince your body that it is in a safe place. This might look like following an eating schedule, food planning and prepping, a set bedtime, or planned breaks throughout your day.

Show Extra Care

When someone is rebuilding a relationship, they might go above and beyond the status quo to prove their devotion. In the same way, you may need a period of time in the beginning where you show your body that you are serious about this new relationship with it. This may look like extra gentle food choices to support digestion and remineralization, extra amounts of rest, some additional boundaries on your time, or a time of over-nourishing if you are coming from a depleted state. A time of extra-intentional support will go a long way to rebuild trust with your body.

This extra support will look different based on where you are coming from, but your body holds the answers to what it needs. Consider any symptoms or areas of dis-ease in your body. If this symptom were a message from your body, what would it be asking for right now?

Become Someone Who Keeps Promises to Themselves

So far, this discussion has discussed the process to rebuild trust with your body on a physiological level, but what about the mental side of things? What if you feel like you can trust your body, but don’t feel like you can trust yourself? What if you are asking: How can I believe in myself when I’ve broken so many health promises before?

Rewrite your identity

Rebuilding self-trust after dieting takes an identity shift. You can no longer be the woman who is always starting over, who can’t stick to a plan, and who never knows the right way to eat. If you believe that you are not a person who keeps promises to herself, this will seriously hold you back from every wellness goal you have. 

You have to start by redefining yourself as someone who shows up, nourishes her body with ease, moves her body with confidence, and embodies wellness. As you define yourself in this way, you shift your attention toward these things, you put energy into these things, and you start to embody that identity. 

Build Your Bank of Evidence

To start believing in your ability to keep promises, start with tiny promises you know you can keep. Then, track evidence of those follow-throughs. Every time you follow through with care, you build up a bank of evidence that points to this new person you are becoming. This bank of evidence helps you prove to yourself that you are capable of consistent, nourishing choices, even if they’re small. This might look like keeping a habit tracker full of supportive habits, a physical journal where you reflect on your progress and success, a note in your phone with examples of you showing up, or photos of balanced and nourishing meals.

Embracing the Journey To Rebuild Trust With Your Body

The initial rebuilding phase will be messy. Anytime you establish a new baseline, things may feel hard, unnatural, and confusing. Expect your progress to be imperfect and messy. But here is the thing that will set you apart from your previous self: keep showing up right away again after every setback. Don’t miss twice. Never interpret a setback as evidence that you need to be doing something differently. Instead, get right back at it, making adjustments as needed to prevent the same failure in the future. Don’t over-dramatize a minor setback. That is what kept you stuck in the past. Let’s decide once and for all to stop starting over and start moving forward, and enjoy what consistency creates over time. 

Forgive yourself

You were doing the best you could with what you knew. You were never trying to hurt yourself; you were working toward wellness with good intentions. I think it’s important to let go of any guilt and regret as you move forward in this new identity. You were trying to be healthy, not harmful.
I invite you to look back with compassion, not regret, for who you were and what you chose. You can now choose a different path with more wisdom and more gentleness than you previously allowed. That phase of life is over, and you can leave any regrets behind. 

Your Body Was Always On Your Side

Finally, I want to reiterate the hope that you can create a lasting relationship of self-trust and body trust. Your body was Intended For Wellness, and it is always on your side. You may have betrayed it at times, and you may have felt like it betrayed you right back. But it never stopped trying to protect you. Every symptom, every dis-ease, every unwanted pound – they were just cries for help. They were messages from your body asking you for nourishment and care, and support. They weren’t attacks, they were invitations. 

These invitations to go deeper, offer more care, and come home to yourself are still there, and you can choose to accept those invitations now. I believe that your body will respond beautifully as it sees you reach out with that care. You may have lost hope, but your body is still there, ready to work with you.

Conclusion: Hope For Your Wellness Future

You may have lost trust in your body, but your body never stopped working for you. Now, you have your whole wellness future ahead of you. With you and your body on the same page, imagine the amazing things you can accomplish while regaining wellness after diet trauma. 

Imagine gently alleviating symptoms, having more energy, feeling better in your body, or having a greater physical performance. What inspires and excites you about your new wellness future? 

Now, I’d love to hear from you: What does rebuilding trust look like for you in this season? What small promise can you keep for yourself today? What hopes do you have for your wellness future?

Wishing you well,

Meghan