How your thoughts are making you fat

Women are hugely anxious about their weight. 

 

It’s almost part of our make-up, part of who we are. It's in our thoughts daily And yet from years of trying to achieve the perfect body and be gorgeous and skinny, many women have got to a point where they’re pretty scared of food.

Sounds weird doesn’t it? Being scared of food? And yet that’s exactly what happens. After years of calorie counting (which we know now isn’t how it works) and cutting out fat (which we also know now doesn’t work), it’s like food has become this thing to worry about.

For many women, this means that every time food passes the lips, there is a sub-conscious (and often conscious!) worry that: “Eeek! It’s making me fat!”

 

What the body gets from this is…

“Help! I’m under attack!”

The body doesn’t differentiate between different types of stress. 

 

It responds to real and imagined threats in exactly the same way i.e. sympathetic nervous system dominance.

This is the system that says “fight for your life or frikkin’ run for your life!” It’s intended to be active for between 2 and 4 minutes to get us out of danger, and then settle down back into relaxation.

When you have toxic thoughts about the food you are eating (or anything else for that matter), your body perceives this as a threat.

That means that food remains in the stomach and digestion shuts down, waiting for the stressful situation to pass.

 

Alongside this: cortisol increases, adrenalin increases, insulin increases and the body is signaled to store fat, not build muscle…and certainly not lose weight.

Did you get that?

Every time you have a scary thought about food, your body senses the anxiety and translates this as a threat. It goes into digestive system shutdown.

 

You could eat the healthiest food in the whole world and your metabolic power would STILL be diminished.

So what can you do about it?

 

• Hammer the truth into your head - you HAVE to understand that food is NOT the enemy. By viewing food this way, you are doing damage to your system and you are in no way contributing to weight loss or improved digestive capacity.

• Get the facts – if you’re a sciency person, do the reading to help you get your left brain around this point. Books like Mind Over Medicine (Dr. Lissa Rankin), The Slow Down Diet (Marc David) and Eat Fat, Get Thin (Dr. Mark Hyman) are great.

• If you’ve lived this way for many, many moons and are still finding it difficult to get it, make use of energetic techniques that will help you unhook from these toxic beliefs at a subconscious level. Everyone knows I’m a big fan of BodyTalk, - but do what works for you.

• Bring more pleasure into your meals. Find some healthy foods that you love, and add more of those over time.

• Make your mealtimes more sensuous – set the table, light a candle, play some music - anything that helps you want to sit down for a longer time, relax and enjoy your food.

• Don’t eat anything that you don’t love, even if you think it’s good for you. You’re aiming to increase pleasure and relaxation.

• Take a few deep breaths before eating – this will help activate the relaxation response in your system.

• Make space for food you love. You’re going to receive better nourishment by occasionally eating something “bad” with full pleasure and relaxation than you are from eating healthy foods under stress.