Peach Friedman
author, educator & trainer
intuitive fitness for women

As you might imagine, people ask me all the time, What do you do to work out, Peach?

I need to climb up on my soap box to address this topic. Especially if I’m talking to my mom, like I was the other day, and she was saying she’s not drinking coffee and I was like — huh — “not drinking coffee.” For like, today? Or tomorrow too? Or do you mean, this is what you do or do not do, like, as a lifestyle? You “do not” drink coffee as a long term thing? Or, is this a diet?

In other words, I’ll believe it when I see it, Mom.

My poor mom. This is a really common Peach line…I’ll believe it when I see it! I say this all the time, to anyone (close to me–I don’t bite strangers!) who is convinced their life is different now in some profound way because they’ve made some change that worked on one particular day, and have decided that if they recreate the same scenario every day, they will get the same results.

I’ll believe it when I see it!

I don’t support this approach to the body, really. Let me back up: I certainly believe in making healthy changes to yield a fuller, happier life. I certainly believe that if drinking coffee isn’t serving you, it may be a good idea to lay off the caffeinated sauce, so to speak. But I know from experience (my own, and watching my friends, and, well, my mom) that any little program or regimen we put ourselves on is bound to backfire, especially if there are limits or parameters. Or, especially if we tell everyone, I go to the gym every morning, for example, or, I stopped eating sugar.

So, when people ask me…What do you do now, Peach, for exercise? I get a little flustered, and then I explain that I don’t do or not do any one or two particular things. I wake up every day (lately to a crying or cooing babe) and then I do and don’t do various things based on whatever the needs are on that particular day. In other words, I listen to my freakin’ body, people!

Frustratingly vague?

There are tendencies, for sure. I tend to walk a lot. I tend to practice yoga a fair amount. But do you still run? people always want to know. And the easy answer is no, I guess. But I don’t like to say that because it’s not like I don’t run because of any big decision I made. It’s more like, I rarely feel like it. But sometimes I do! And then there I am running down the street.

My fitness philosophy is based on mindfulness and body awareness. This is a practice taught with food as “intuitive eating” and I teach it as “intuitive movement.” This is as opposed to an approach to exercise that involves following a plan or workout schedule. A workout schedule is the diet of the fitness world. It commits you, limits you, and ultimately drives you to fall into an “all or nothing” see-saw with your body.

My fitness philosophy involves flexibility, balance, and body awareness. It’s okay to use a schedule as a guideline, so long as it’s just that. My husband knows he better get his butt home 2 or 3 evenings a week in time for me to go to yoga, but you know what–sometimes I don’t go. And my nine month old is pretty accustomed to morning walks around Sacramento, but, hey, some mornings we nap together instead. Or run errands, or have a play date.

We Type-A Americans (I readily admit to being one of them) loooove our diets. We looooove our workout plans. We loooove telling people, I run or I don’t eat sugar or I gave up coffee but then, what happens when three months or two weeks or a year later, there you are sipping a frappuccino on a hot summer day? Are you left feeling guilty, like you’ve done something you shouldn’t have done? Like you broke your own rules? The very limits you put on your body in the first place?

What if, instead of imposing rules, limits, and parameters on our body’s routines, we let the body have a voice louder than the voice of our mind? What if every morning we woke up and said, Body, what do you want to do today?

What might YOU do today, if you gave your body a voice?