A Woman Turns The Tide On Negative Self-Talk

Childhood challenges and traumas go right to the core. As children, we have very simple means of regulating emotions – food being a key way to soothe and comfort.

The residue of these challenges continues through adulthood until we consciously face and work through them.

As adults, we can find ourselves confused why we have unwanted eating habits such as binging – and often completely overlook the deeper psychological reasons these habits were formed in the first place.  

Therefore, changing any unwanted eating habit must involve more than simply trying to eat less sugar or adhering to strict food rules. If you want sustainable change, learn about yourself, your past, and your psychology. Discover and tend to the places inside where you’re hurting.   

Paying attention to our inner dialogue – meaning how we speak to ourselves and about ourselves – is a good place to start changing from the inside out. Speak kindly, compassionately, and lovingly … you deserve it.

Why Emotional Metabolism is Key to a Vibrant, Healthy Life

The body’s metabolism takes the air we breathe and the food and water we consume, and turns it into fuel while removing toxins. This is nutritional metabolism. 

Emotional metabolism involves the deliberate, consistent practice of allowing our emotions to surface. We then have the opportunity to become more conscious and present human beings.

When we don’t allow ourselves to feel and process our emotions, there can be a literal effect on the body’s physiology and organ systems.

Unwanted eating challenges such as overeating, binge eating, and emotional eating are often signs of unprocessed emotions or trauma.

Societal conditioning tells us to “suck it up” or “get with the program” — meaning, we’re often encouraged to suppress and deny our feelings. Rejecting this conditioning and embracing our feelings — including the challenging ones — is fundamental to enjoying a healthy and fulfilling life. 

The Evolutionary Reason the Human Body Craves Carbs

https://psychologyofeating.online/ss/

Marc David, visionary, teacher, and consultant in the novel field of Eating Psychology, explains why the human body has evolved to crave carbs, and how this has helped us survive and adapt over the ages. Now, however, our modern lifestyles have created a bio-rhythmic confusion where our environment has changed but the urge to consume carbs has not. Check out this podcast to know how carbohydrates fool the body and what you can do about it.

There is an evolutionary reason for the human body craving sugar and looking to instinctively load up on carbs whenever available. The body evolved to eat during summer and during times of plenty to ride out hard winter times.

This instinctive human urge has not changed though the availability of carbs has. Carbs fool the body and make us consume more than the body can metabolize.

Hibernating animals such as bears demonstrate this behavior of fattening up during the plentiful summer months to tide over the lean winter months. Here, the high blood pressure and diabetic state actually help in survival.

In our modern lifestyles, we consume carbs all around the year, signaling the pre-hibernation stage to the body. This, along with artificial light and less sleep, causes the body to store fat and prevents the body from reaching its metabolic potential.

Changing the quantity and quality of carbs consumed, and making changes in sleep patterns helps the body relinquish its fat stores. Learning what works best for your body will help you make the most informed choices.

• Challenges with food often start in one's adolescence and can continue even decades later. However, the duration of an eating disorder shouldn’t be equated with one’s ability to overcome it. Growth and healing are possible at every age.
• An eating disorder can manifest as a coping mechanism to deal with a traumatic event or stressful situation. Working with the trauma event(s) is a key first place to begin on the path to healing.
• When an eating disorder developed as a childhood coping mechanism to stress or trauma, later in life we can find this part of ourselves is still stuck in childhood. 
• A woman's relationship with her mother – or her daughter – can often determine her relationship with food. Therefore, doing inner work - whether with a psychotherapist or other skilled practitioner - can be very helpful in understanding the familial dynamics of one’s eating patterns.
• Stepping out of shame and guilt, and cultivating honesty with oneself (and ultimately with others) is vital as we walk a more intentional path around food and body.

• People want to find the perfect nutritional approach and because there are so many people looking for the one true way to eat, there are lots of experts out there promoting their version of an ideal diet. 
• For every scientific study that says meat is bad, there's a study showing you why it's good. Same for wine. Same for salt. Same for a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet, a paleo diet, a keto diet, a raw food diet... The list goes on and no wonder people are confused. 
• There are as many accurate, useful, and perfect nutritional approaches as there are people on the planet. 
• As a consumer of nutritional information, you simply need to relax and get comfortable with the fact that the field can be widely chaotic and dispersed. 
• We're on a nutritional journey, whether we like it or not. If you're a human being alive on planet earth, then you are an eater and you need to learn how to best make that work for you. So can you enjoy that part of your journey? 

• The majority of people I work with over the years report that they achieved their weight loss goal with extreme dieting, often accompanied by intense exercise. In other words, they got where they wanted to go by unsustainable measures. 
• The interesting thing is that so many people have the false belief that, “When I look or weigh differently, then I'll be happy.” By the way, you didn't invent this kind of thinking, if you have it. The world did.
• Diets don't work because when we consistently eat in a way that is too low in calories for the body, which means too low in nutrition, too low in essential nutrients, and too low in what the body needs as its energy requirements...When we do that, our metabolism adjusts downwards over time.
• Dieting instructs the body very directly to store fat and to not build muscle. Muscle tissue, by the way, is by far and away the main source of calorie burning in the body. So you want your body creating muscle.
• Your job is to learn how to nourish yourself with food. Your job is to learn how to be an eater. 

• Eating challenges can start during childhood. However, you can transform these challenges at any age … whether you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, or beyond. 
• Nutrient-rich food choices make you healthier and result in natural weight loss, while intuitive eating allows you to tune into what your body is truly hungering for.
• Societal conditioning helps perpetuate ‘diet culture’ and often causes disordered eating patterns. Learning to identify these unhelpful messages is key to turning the corner in unwanted eating challenges.
• Being happy with yourself marks the return to consistent nourishment and good health.

• An eating disorder can continue to impact the digestive system even many years after recovery. Finding ways to create a nourishing relationship with food that is rooted in kindness and caring to self can help to strengthen and improve digestion.
• You can overcome digestive problems like bloating, indigestion, irregularity, and acid reflux, and reduce dependence upon meds with core strengthening exercise.
• Emotional causes of digestive problems such as bloating, irregularity, and acid reflux are very common. As we tend to our inner world, these sorts of physical symptoms often naturally resolve. 
• Recovering from an eating disorder often means learning to manage one’s symptoms while simultaneously retraining ourselves in how to be an eater.
• It is necessary to start to inhabit the body again and to embrace self-love to reverse the long-term symptoms of indigestion.

• “Let's agree that it's time to transform the silent and global attack on body and self. Let's also agree that it's best when we take the power to heal and transform into our own hands…”
• Learn The Three Keys to Healing an Unhappy Body Image, highly effective practices that will make a big difference!
• The key toxic belief to let go of right now is this: In order for me to love myself, I must first change my body. 
• Headline News: Weight loss does not equal embodiment. People of all sizes and all shapes can either be “in” their body, or they can be disembodied, or somewhere in between.
• Detoxing your mind means acknowledging that, indeed, we have certain beliefs that are like slow acting poisons, poisons that drain our energy and rob us of our joy.

• Those who eat - meaning, all of us - can benefit from learning to eat slowly and consciously. By doing so, we not only help to break unconscious eating habits, but we find a simple and easy way to bring ourselves more fully into the present moment.
• Eating can be a beautiful, nourishing, and wonderful experience. Retrain the brain to love food and to enjoy the experience of eating and the feeling of satiety that comes from it.
• It is important to recognize that food is not the enemy. Try to make friends with food: love it, appreciate it, and bring as much fun and joy as you can to it. 
• Experimental studies have revealed that stress can cause weight gain. Reducing stress can be an effective means to repairing one's relationship with food.
• Rather than cutting out some foods entirely, moderation truly is the key to a balanced approach to eating. 

• There's something that psychologists call ‘symbolic substitutes.’ A symbolic substitute is exactly what it sounds like: When a human being can't get the thing we actually want, we will turn to the next closest and most accessible thing. And sugar is one of the most common symbolic substitutes.
• All creatures on planet earth are constantly looking to seek comfort and avoid pain. It is simply how we're all wired. Turning to sugar for comfort is a perfectly reasonable strategy. It works!
• By focusing on what our heart and soul are actually desiring, our dependency on sugar can find a natural and easy ending.
• The work of beating a sugar addiction is not eliminating sugar, but adding more life, more love, and more connection.