E059 | Ditch the hustle: How to stop chasing health and start living it

Are you constantly second-guessing your wellness choices, wondering why nothing seems to be working—even though you’re trying so hard?

If you’ve been stuck in a cycle of protocols, perfectionism, and pressure… you’re not alone. The truth is, most women are unintentionally hustling their way out of healing.

And that hustle? It’s not helping. In fact, it might be keeping your body in survival mode—blocking the rest and repair it truly needs.

In this episode, you’ll learn what’s really behind the exhaustion, the flares, and the frustration—and how to finally create the safety your body needs to heal.

 BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST EPISODE, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why chasing health can actually delay your healing—and what your symptoms are really trying to tell you
• The nervous system shift you must make if you want to move out of survival mode and into sustainable wellness
• A simple 2-minute reset that calms your body and mind—without supplements, protocols, or perfection

If you’re tired of pushing and ready to finally feel better, this episode is your permission slip to stop performing wellness—and start living it, on your terms.

🧭 OTHER LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Join our free Facebook group: Embrace Your Healing Journey
• Book mentioned: The Healthy Deviant by Pilar Gerasimo
• Learn about the Body Wise Healing™ framework
• Explore the Body Wise Rest 12 week guided experience group coaching programme
• Write to me at anindita@aninditarungta.com – I’d love to hear from you!

Chapters

• 1:10 The Relationship with Your Body
• 5:16 The Concept of Wellness vs. Performance
• 8:17 The Impact of Fear and Perfectionism
• 10:50 The Cycle of Doing More
• 12:09 Creating Safety in Healing
• 14:04 The "2 Minute Nervous System Reset"
• 16:37 Key Takeaways from the Episode

Transcript

What if I told you that chasing health might actually be the thing that's keeping you sick? That all the green smoothies, trip trackers, self-care rituals won't work if they're fueled by fear, pressure, or perfectionism? 

And in today's episode, we are rewriting the rules of healing and showing you a gentler, wiser way forward that does doesn't just look healthy. It feels like home. 

Welcome to Embrace Your Healing Journey, a podcast for women with autoimmune and other chronic conditions to help them navigate their illness without fear of isolation and uncertainty, and find relief from their symptoms. Your body is your guide and ally in healing. If you're ready to embrace this journey with compassion and awareness, then this show is for you. Tune in weekly as I, a Functional medicine Certified Health Coach, deliver tips and insights that demystify the healing process, guiding you towards the relief you deserve so that you can feel healthy and happy once more. 

So in this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain and I'm sharing the real reason your health and your healing might feel so exhausting. And what happens when you finally stop pushing so hard and start listening to your body instead? Because healing isn't a hustle. It's a relationship. And I'm going to start by sharing this excerpt from the excellent book The Healthy Deviant by Pilar Gerasimo, and I'm going to share the link in the show notes below. I highly recommend that you check out this book and this is what she has to say. In a society where chronic illness is the norm, being healthy is actually a rebellious act and living in a way that supports your vitality without burning out or giving up isn't a personal failure, it's a radical form of resistance. 

She also goes on to say, 

let's face it, most of our medical professionals are struggling with health problems themselves. The majority of them have very little idea how a common, complex, and chronic disease states can be constructively addressed through lifestyle adjustments, particularly in the context of a culture that makes these lifestyle adjustments woefully difficult. Additionally, even if our conventionally trained medical professionals did have the training and background to effectively address the root causes of chronic disease in the context of our current health care system, they would probably be not be much help. Currently, there is no time and no incentive for most doctors to work their patients through a thorough analysis of the health problems, much less present thoughtful, personalized, realistic solutions to the social, socially, and environmentally entrenched challenges these patients are facing. 

So this is what Pilar has to say. And this is by no means to share that our doctors are not doing excellent work. Our medical professionals are not trying their best to, you know, help their patients. This is nothing to do with that. There are two different things. This is just tells you that the system that is there, the medical system, the conventional care system is not really designed for prevention or health creation. It's actually been designed for disease management. So the training is on that side. The approach and the focus, everything is on the on the side of disease management. So if and that unfortunately does not really work when it comes to chronic conditions. And that's where we are facing a huge crisis today. 

And you know, I've talked about this in my earlier episodes with my daughter's health issues, uh, you know, and it's it's the case for every, uh, person who has chronic health issues that just don't go, go away. And they go to their doctor, they get a prescription, and then it keeps coming back. And this book, You know, when I first read the book, it has been an eye opener for me in many ways, and I'm sure it will be for you too, when you actually understand why. You know, it's so hard to be healthy in an unhealthy world, because it means that, you know you're going against conventional norms, right? And I see this all the time, and I am a health coach. For heaven's sake, I'm trained as a, you know, as a health coach. But even then I find it's not really easy for me to do that. So, you know, I stick to routines when I try and stick to routines. I find it quite amusing or strange or weird.

 For example, I, you know, I'm off alcohol. Not that I drink much, but I do have a glass of wine once in a while and I'm off alcohol, say, for a month or two. And, you know, it's a, uh, you know, people find it quite strange. Or when I opt to stay at home instead of going out on on the weekend for a late night because I just want to rest after a very hectic week, or when I prioritize my Sunday afternoon siesta. And I don't want to go for a movie because, you know, through the week is so hectic on a Sunday. I just want to, you know, take a nap in the afternoon. It's. Not that I don't make exceptions to these. You know, it's just that trying to thrive in a culture that glorifies burnout, hard work in a pernicious rest means having a very different set of priorities. 

It's not so much about not doing the work or not working hard. It's actually about, not getting the message that we also need to take better care of our bodies and be guided by them. And like many women I work with now, I had also internalized the idea for a very long time that getting better men doing more so following protocols, perfectly eliminating the bad flu foods, tracking every symptom. Uh, but this does not really take into account the environment that we're asking our bodies to live in. 

And that's where lies the problem. And the book addresses this in a beautiful way, talks about an evolutionary mismatch. I highly recommend that you read the book to learn more about that. And often we are we don't have the support or the guidance, you know, how to connect with our body so that we can actually, uh, you know, experience sustainable healing. And that's what this a lot of the episodes actually are about. So if you haven't listened to some of the past episodes, I highly recommend that you do that, because in this episode, we are going to talk about how to stop performing wellness and start living it on your terms, because real healing does not come from chasing perfection. It comes from reclaiming your power in a world that tells you to outsource it. 

So today we are taking that power back. But let's go a little deeper. Because maybe what's keeping you stuck is not just the fatigue or the bloating or the brain fog. Maybe it's something much subtler. And this is not something that we usually talk about. Something much harder to blame, but just as real. So maybe it's that you can't remember the last time you fully exhaled, which means that you took a deep breath and you, you know, fully let the air out of your body. And it's important. Your breathing. Yes, but that's it's shallow. It's usually shallow for most people. Tight, like your nervous system is always holding its breath, waiting for the next thing to go wrong. And you might not even notice it until. Unless you or until you lie down at night and you realize you've been tense all day, you know. So whether it's your shoulders, whether it's your jaw clench, stomach tight, you know, and my shoulders always face the brunt of it. I can always understand, even my jaw, I know I clench it so I have to, you know, consciously keep on clenching my jaw throughout the day. And maybe you've noticed this, too. This constant state of vigilance. It's not just stress, it's your body living in constant survival mode. and that's a problem. 

Or maybe you just feel exhausted by even simple decisions. So, you know, decisions, including your diet. Which means should I eat this thing or should I skip it? Should I cancel that plan or just push through even when I'm feeling tired? So you're constantly second guessing yourself, like every health decision is like a quiz that you're too scared to fail. So that's not wellness. It's wellness induced decision fatigue. And decision fatigue is real. It's very much real. 

Or you're quietly ashamed of how hard you are trying. You don't talk about your morning routine, your food choices, or your rest rituals. Not because they don't matter, but because you're tired of being seen as too much. And this is something that I can completely relate to because often I am seen as somebody, you know, being too much. It's just that I'm a health coach, so it goes with the territory. But even then, some of the things that I do, people find it quite weird. Right? So, so or you know, so somebody find my find might find you too sensitive, too strict, too into health. So you hide the things that actually help you feel better. 

And it may also be the voice in your head. It's not your intuition, it's that inner critic that whispers you didn't move enough to say you were the wrong thing. Again. You're still not better. What's wrong with you? So when health just becomes another place to feel like a failure, you know that it's time to change. You know it's time to stop the hustle. Because it's not that your body is broken, it's that your body is living in an environment that constantly signals danger, right? So when you're doing all the right things. But if your body is constantly in an environment where it feels unsafe, it's not going to heal because chronic symptoms don't just come from food, hormones, or stress. They come from a place where your nervous system is stuck in chronic survival mode and never fails. Feel safe enough to heal. That's a huge problem because you cannot live in both the nervous system modes. 

And there are two of them the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic is the one that I'm talking about currently, which is the fight or flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system mode is a rest and digest with the healing and the repair actually happens. And you can only be in either one. At any time, you can't be in both at the same time. So if you're constantly moving in the fight or flight mode, your body will not be able to heal. And you've been, because you've been taught that healing means doing more, whether it's eliminating foods, taking more supplements, fixing every floor, every symptom. But what happens is that when you're relentlessly pushing towards perfect health, it keeps your body often in hypervigilance. If you are not aware of this, this definitely happens. And this low grade fight or flight mode, it blocks rest, repair and healing. So the very thing that you're trying to achieve that doesn't really happen. So your conscious mind is of course chasing wellness because you want to get well, but your body still thinks it's at war and your body will win every time. 

Because here's what no one ever tells you. You can't heal from a place of fear, pressure, worry, or perfectionism. You can only heal when your body feels safe enough to shift out of survival and into trust. That's when it will start repairing itself. That's when it will start healing. It has a self-healing mechanism. Because otherwise you followed all the strict protocols you've cut out gluten, dairy, sugar, you've followed anti-inflammatory diets, um, elimination diets, healing diets, and yet your symptoms keep returning or they keep changing so nothing feels consistent. So there's clearly something going on that's not being addressed. And you've invested in the best supplements. You've, you know, taken adaptogens, probiotics, omega. And still you wake up feeling exhausted. Your gut is unpredictable and you're wondering if you're missing something and you've seen the specialist, you've done the labs, you've taken the prescription. 

So each gave you a label, a different angle, a different name. But no one gave you a roadmap that sees you as a whole person, including your environment, including your own whole story. And you know, the the reason is because you've been treated like a diagnosis, not a person. That's typically what tends to happen, especially in the conventional medicine realm. So what happens when you get burned out trying to bio hack your way into wellness? So you meditate, meal prep journal. And it's not that all these things are bad. 

All these things are important, but. Are constantly trying to do this and you're putting more and more effort. It sometimes backfires. So and then what happens? You start blaming yourself and you wonder if healing is not just meant for you. But here's the thing. The real issue is not a lack of effort. It's a lack of connection. It's a lack of clarity and a sustainable plan. And that's what I'm talking about today. Because you don't need another protocol. You don't need to cut out three more foods, spend thousands more on supplements, or micromanage every single symptoms you need to create safety. If there's one thing that you take away, this is what I want you to know from today's episode. You need to create safety in your body, in your nervous system, and in your daily life. 

Because healing is not about doing more, it's about being differently. And it's about shifting from control to connection. And this is when your body starts shifting. This is when your body starts moving from survival mode to repair.So this is how it starts. 

Number one shift from pressure to permission. So start asking what does my body need right now? Not what the app says, not what the protocol says. What would feel genuinely Need nourishing. Sometimes it's a green smoothie. Sometimes it's a it's a nap. And sometimes just saying no. No to the next, uh, you know, uh, thing that comes up for you. 

Number two, replace self-discipline with self-trust. The reason all those habits hasn't stuck is not because you lack will, but it's because they were not built from a place of self-respect. You don't need to force yourself into healing. You need to listen to your body. And you need to trust your body to guide you. This is what is usually missing. 

And number three, create a micro create micro moments of calm. This is something that I've taught my clients over and over again, that you don't have to change everything in your life over all your entire life. But what would happen if you gave even two minutes of your life and your body a chance to exhale, and you would switch from the fight or flight mode using the power of your breath through the parasympathetic mode, which is the rest and digest mode where your body can actually start healing. That's what would happen. And this is something that's doable, because this would give the message to your body that you are safe now, and that's what your body wants to hear so that it can start repair doing the repair work. 

So now maybe you're thinking, that sounds good, but where do I even begin? So I want you to give you something right now. A quick win that you can try today, even if you have a couple of minutes and no more. It's what I call the two minute nervous system reset. It's a simple, powerful tool. And you know, and I share this with my clients are often amazed by how you know how different they feel even after this very, very short reset, like just two minutes. 

Here's what you do. You find a quiet space and you can sit or lie down. You put one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly so that you connect with your body. And you take five deep, slow breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth. That's it. And as you exhale, you gently whisper to yourself, I am safe, I am listening. And you repeat this for two minutes. And you can do this as many times. Two minutes is more than enough. That's it. 

Most women are shocked about how calm and grounded they feel without a supplement, without a protocol, or a perfect routine. And it works because it tells your body you can stop running. You're safe now. It's okay. You know it's okay to let go. It's okay to just take a pause. It's okay to start the repair work that you've been putting off because you've been constantly in this survival mode. And this is where healing begins. Not with force, but with trust. 

Because if your nervous system does not feel safe, your body cannot access healing. No matter how clean you eat, no matter how many supplements you take or no matter how disciplined you are. And that's why most women remain stuck. Yeah, so. And because this is the reason why most women remain stuck in a cycle of doing more more protocols, more pressure, more confusion and no real peace you need to be at, you know, find peace in your own body. That's your home. This is the only home, that physical home that you will ever have on this, you know, in this lifetime, right? So you need to find that peace. So creating a way of being that works with your body instead of against it gives you that peace. 

And that's exactly why I created the body wise reset. It's a 12 week live guided experience, and I'm offering a free trial until May 16th. Inside, you'll get a real taste of what it's like to stop overthinking and start listening, to Let Your Body heal with tools and the support that makes them feel doable and actionable. And if you want the full picture of how that works, then you can also join me for the free masterclass coming up on May 16th. Tired of chronic pain, flare up and fatigue? Discover the three step healing framework that actually works. 

Whether you join the masterclass, the trial, or both, you'll finally see that healing is not about doing more, about trying more. It's about coming home to your body and creating a rhythm that sustains you. So the next step doesn't have to be hard. It just has to be wise. And here's the body wise wrap up. 

Here's what we covered today in today's episode 

number one. Chasing health can actually keep you sick. If your wellness routine is driven by fear, guilt, worry, or perfectionism, it's likely. More harm than good. 

Number two, your symptoms are messengers, not malfunctions. The tightness of chronic fatigue is your body's way of saying I don't feel safe. Pay attention. 

Number three, the real problem isn't you. It's the culture of burnout. You've been taught to, you know, do more, putting more and hustle for healing in a world that glorifies doing more and disconnecting from your own body. 

Number four, what works is creating safety, not stacking strategies. Real healing begins when you stop performing and start listening. And you do this from a place of trust and not control. 

And number five, even small changes create big shifts. A two minute nervous system reset can interrupt this survival loop and help your body finally exhale so that you can switch from the sympathetic mode of survival mode to the parasympathetic mode or the rest and digest mode, where your body can actually start healing. 

If this episode resonated with you, if you're tired of trying so hard and still not feeling better, I want you to know this. You don't have to do this alone. You can join the free trial of the body reset right now until May 16th. This is your chance to experience what healing is actually like without the pressure or the perfectionism. And on May 16th, I'm holding a free masterclass, which is called Tired of Chronic Pain, fatigue and Flare UPS. Discover the three healing, three step healing framework that actually works. If you've been doing everything right and still not getting better, this is where we change that. Both these links are in the show Notes. 

I'd love to see you join the join us there, and I'd love to support you more deeply, because healing is not about hustling more. It's a return to wisdom, to wholeness, and to a version of you that no longer needs to earn wellness anymore. So if this episode resonated, send it to a friend, share it on Instagram, or DM me at @aninditarungta in the chat I read every single one. Your healing journey is valid and it doesn't have to be lonely anymore.