I’m not going to tell you that whole foods are good for you or that you should eat a well-balanced diet. You already know this. Instead, I want to encourage you to heal your relationship with food, which will in turn help relieve your distress around your eating, weight, and body image struggles. Anxiety, trauma, and eating-related behaviors are closely coupled.
Part of the reason for this is that perception of threat and danger shut down the digestive system. It is part of how your body works when it sees a perceived threat to survival – physical and psychological.
The digestive system works best when the Parasympathetic Nervous System is activated – it’s needed for resting and digesting. When anxiety washes over you, it activates the Sympathetic Nervous System or “fight or flight response”. These two arms of the central nervous system are constantly in a healthy push and pull relationship.
When life’s calm and stress is neither here nor there, this mechanism works well as a team to find a balance. But when life is full of uncertainty, the Sympathetic Nervous System is often in overdrive and the Parasympathetic Nervous System is not active enough. We forget to pull the “parachute” and meet the overwhelm with relaxation to get that gentle gliding in life that only our parachute/Parasympathetic Nervous System can provide. When the fight or flight response is activated, your brain doesn’t want you chomping down on lunch. It wants you running and hiding from the scary thing. Naturally, it wants to keep you safe.
What is one thing you can do today to help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system?
