Hi, I would like to ask for some coaching around my relationship with exercise but more in general with the model itself.

So starting from the belief “my body will have a shape that I will enjoy more seeing, touching, showing if I am working out” I have many times acted out of fear and exercised for the fear that these feelings of appreciation and worthiness would not be available to me today if I do not go exercise.

Now when I go exercising I see my brain wanting to believe “I am changing, I am healing my relationship with my body and exercise”, and has some prescription that the evidence that this process is happening, will be me exercising less, me skipping workouts after I tuned into my body and followed my intuition that rest is more appropriate that day.

So I am looking for an action (A = skip workouts, exercise less) to create the feeling of confidence around the thoughts/beliefs “I am practicing loving my body unconditionally / I am healing my relationship with my body and exercise”. So this does not agree with what we have been taught here that feelings come first and A are a consequence of them.

So option 1: While keeping my workout routine I practice new thoughts, new feelings, and wait to see how my actions might change as a consequence

At the same time I wonder how exploring new actions and “learning by doing”, so
option 2: I change my actions (= workout less or stop) -> get curious on if my body is lovable anyway -> perhaps discover it is.

I see my brain judging me because I keep doing the same actions, and tell myself  that if I keep doing the actions I am doing, no matter how much thought work I do I will be experiencing a much smaller change in my relationship with body and exercise.

To make it more clear with a silly metaphor: I might be doubtful I can survive in Africa, so option 1 is I do thought work and I wait to experience confidence, to feel “ready” before taking the plane and moving there. Option 2 is I jump to Africa right now with all the doubts and fears not feeling ready and I look for evidence that I can actually survive there.

Perhaps option 1 is more a massive action around T & F lines, option 2 is more massive action in the more literal sense, and perhaps the second option is like an exposure therapy? Anyway I’ll be very grateful if you could help me clear out my thoughts around this! Thanks