Body & Mind

This Year, Resolve to Stop Depriving your Body and Start Nourishing your Mind and Spirit

BAYOUHEALTH  | BY SHANNON DAHLUM

AH, JANUARY, THE BEGINNING of diet season yet again. It seems that every year we start all over on our quest to adopt healthier eating habits. If the approach from last January worked, or the one before, we wouldn’t have to recommit to it again this year.Perhaps the issue isn’t that we continue failing in our efforts year after year, but that our efforts are failing us. Rather than trying harder on another diet, maybe we need to accept that dieting isn’t working and try a new approach entirely. 

The problem with focusing all of our efforts on food is that it’s just a band aid that temporarily addresses the symptoms of a deeper underlying problem. It’s been said that our relationship with food is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves, and I often see this at play with my clients. Weight loss is frequently targeted as a goal because we feel like once we achieve it, we’ll feel more confidence, greater acceptance from others, or we’ll be more worthy of success, love, or happiness. We’ve misinterpreted the size of our bodies with our sense of worth, and if we could just achieve a certain outward appearance, we think we will finally love who we are and so will everyone else. Rather than trying to change our food choices, we’d probably be more successful in the long run if we worked on improving the state of our emotions and beliefs. 

EMOTIONS

Your body is intimately connected to your thoughts and feelings. The thoughts you think create a physiological response that affects how your body feels and functions. For example, if someone is breaking into your house, your brain sends the signal that your body is in a threatening environment and survival mode kicks in. A cocktail of stress hormones are released that direct your energy outward, to ensure immediate survival; your pupils dilate, heart rate increases, muscles tense, blood pressure and respiration increase, blood sugar increases, etc. This happens so you can hone in on any threats around you and you’ll have the ability to run, fight or hide. All of the internal functions that need to happen for long term health are put on hold.  Things like digestion, detoxification, immune function, reproductive ability, metabolism, learning and memory, etc., aren’t going to help you survive when you’re under immediate attack, so these functions are down regulated until the threat passes. 

While it’s helped the human race survive for thousands of years, paving the way for you to exist today, the stress response has become increasingly damaging to health in today’s culture. It’s not only actual threats that trigger the stress response in your body, but perceived threats, too. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between things that you think are threatening and things that actually are, so it will respond the same way in either instance. In the example above, if that person breaking into your house is actually just wind whipping against the window, your stress response still happens. What you believe your reality is, is just as real to your brain as what your reality actually is. Even less acute threats, like financial worries, relationship strain, and traffic can keep you stuck in survival mode. Your thoughts control your physiology. This is how your internal belief system dictates your external reality.

As a human with a highly evolved thinking brain who can think complex thoughts, you also have the ability to feel a wide range of complex emotions. Every thought creates a physiological response in your body. When you think a thought, various hormones and chemicals are released and these create various feelings, or emotions, in your body. When you’re thinking happy thoughts, you actually feel uplifting feelings.  You may feel more expansive, energetic, lighter, like you have a bounce in your step. The emotions you feel a positive response from are renewing emotions; they trigger an increase of DHEA, a hormone associated with greater metabolic function and decreased body fat. Your body is more efficient at creating and burning energy when you’re in a positive emotional state. When you’re thinking sad or self-limiting thoughts, you feel contracted, down, low in energy, heavy.  The emotions you feel an uncomfortable or negative response from are depleting to your energy system and they increase your level of cortisol, a stress hormone. When cortisol is chronically elevated, energy production decreases and your body’s tendency to store fat increases. This is how your emotions directly affect your metabolism. 

Your emotions drive not only how your body processes the foods you eat, but they play a large role in driving your desire to eat certain foods, as well. When you remain in a negative emotional state, with chronically elevated cortisol, your body prioritizes sugar as a fuel source rather than fat. Sugar is used to provide your body with quick bursts of energy; the type of energy you need for immediate survival in a life threatening situation. It takes much longer for your body to create energy from fat, so your fat cells are essentially locked up tightly, disabling your body from trying to burn it. When your body’s sugar reserves begin to run low, rather than switching to burning your own stored fat, you feel cravings for fast acting fuel sources to replace the sugar.  The desire to drink alcohol or eat sweets, chips, breads, and other highly processed foods that spike blood sugar kicks in.  To your brain, eating these foods  is necessary for continued survival in this chronic state of stress. Mental power may help you stay away from these foods for a brief period of time, but your survival instincts will always overpower your will. 

BELIEFS 

Where you direct your attention is where you direct your energy, which gives things power to grow.  When you try to build healthier habits in order to fight something you dislike about yourself, you’re actually subconsciously fueling those parts. Your mind is really powerful and its tendency is always to look for ways to prove itself right.  Your perception may become skewed from reality in order to see the things you believe are true. You may even see things in the mirror that no one else sees. When your brain is looking for something, it will find it, even if it has to exaggerate a bit or make things up. 

It’s not only what you see, but also what you do that’s subconsciously driven by your beliefs. If you believe you can’t stick with healthy habits, then you certainly won’t. If you believe you can’t run a mile in nine minutes or less, then you’ll never run it in under 9:01. If you believe you don’t have time to get some healthy movement in, then you won’t fit exercise into your day. When you get down on yourself for feeling overweight, you’ll feel driven to continue the habits that lead to an unhealthy weight balance. If your beliefs don’t resonate with the activities and behaviors you want to create, they’ll never stick. You’ll always fall back into the habits that will perpetuate your current beliefs about yourself. 

Eating nourishing foods, moving your body in balanced ways, prioritizing sleep, and connecting with loved ones are all ways you take care of yourself. They’re acts of self love. When there’s a lack of love for yourself in some capacity, those habits will feel like a struggle. Your actions won’t resonate with your thoughts. Taking loving care of something just happens naturally, though, for something you feel loving emotions toward. Healthy habits spring from healthy beliefs about yourself. 

The intention behind your actions is everything.  If you can shift your focus onto the things you appreciate about your body and want to enhance, your energy will be poured into those positive aspects of yourself.  Habits will be formed that support the growth of more positive characteristics.  You’ll see the things you love and appreciate about your body increase.  When you stop fighting aspects of yourself that you dislike, you rob them of your energy and they’ll eventually fade away.   

Dieting is a backwards approach to creating change. It’s an attempt to shift your beliefs about your body by changing its external appearance.  While you may be able to create temporary results, it rarely lasts.  When your old habits creep back in, which they inevitably will, your body will once again shift back to be a more accurate representation of your inner beliefs.  Internal beliefs create external reality, not the other way around. 

Sometimes, holding onto extra weight can be a way of subconsciously protecting yourself from something that you believe will be even more uncomfortable to face. It’s easy to use the weight on the scale as an excuse for not achieving something else in life. Perhaps you’ve told yourself that once you reach a certain body size, then you’ll be more successful.  Once you reach a certain number on the scale, then you’ll take the trip, find the romantic partner, or feel safe to be intimate. There may be shame about your body or your sexuality, and holding onto a little extra weight can provide a sense of safety; something to hide behind so you don’t feel so exposed. At times, extra weight can even be a protective mechanism your subconscious employs if you’ve experienced trauma or abuse in the past, as a way of attempting to prevent something similar from happening again. There could be unhealthy relationships or environments that you’re regularly exposed to at home or at work, and these are keeping you weighed down, both mentally and physically. It’s possible that you’re unconsciously maintaining your body’s current state because you don’t feel ready to face all those other hard things.           

Rather than jumping right into another diet this year to try to change your external appearance, take a deeper look within and see if there’s something you can improve on the inside first. How are you, really? The events of last year took an emotional toll on many, and working toward bringing yourself back into a positive emotional state may be what you really need in order to feel good again and create positive physical changes. 

Before you punish yourself even further through calorie deprivation and over exercise, prioritize stress management. Tune into your self talk and pay attention to what you’re saying. What you say to yourself is what runs your body’s operating system, so be more conscious of what you’re telling it to do.  Work on your beliefs about yourself, because they are the building blocks your body is created from. Take inventory of negative emotions, experiences, people or events that have happened in your past that you may not have worked through completely.  

Pay attention to current environments that feel like they weigh you down or hold you back. Practice self compassion. You’re human, and humans aren’t perfect, but with a little bit of love and forgiveness, humans can be incredibly resilient. 

Your outside is a reflection of your inside. Instead of resolving to deprive your body this year, make a commitment to feed your mind and spirit. Nourishing yourself with positivity and gratitude will encourage healthy habits to emerge on their own, and your body will naturally become an outward expression of the love and beauty that lies within.