Food is soothing. I don’t think anyone would debate that.
Eating tends to be an enjoyable experience when it’s done naturally.
In these scenarios, food actually helps regulate your nervous system.
So what does this actually mean?
Let’s look at the opposite…
When you have a dysregulated nervous system, you tend to experience negative side effects like anxiety, exhaustion, irritability, pain, illness, fatigue, concentration problems, cravings, hormone imbalances, and much more.
I think most of us can relate to many of these symptoms.
But what we don’t realize is that one of the biggest contributors to a dysregulated nervous system is dieting.
When you eat in a way that is out of alignment with your body’s needs, aka dieting, you DYSREGULATE your nervous system.
But when you eat in a way that actually meets you body’s needs, you REGULATE your nervous system effectively.
Instead of eating to satiate, satisfy, and nourish your body, dieting is based around the idea of restriction, deprivation, and undernourishment (ie not eating enough food, which means not enough total energy consumption or nutrients).
Dieting is highly dysregulating, which creates a negative feedback cycle.
The dysregulation leads to more of those negative symptoms, such as anxiety, fatigue, or irritability. In turn, we end up using food to cope with this discomfort.
It’s a downward spiral.
But you can also create an upward spiral by giving up the dieting.
And to be clear, dieting doesn’t mean you’re following some kind of branded eating style. It simply means you are primarily focused on using food to control the size of your body.
Because when you use food in this way, you tend to neglect your body’s need to use food to satiate, satisfy, and nourish.
Consistently meeting those 3 needs is the very thing that regulates your nervous system, keeps you feeling good, and leads to you naturally eating the optimum amount of food that results in your healthiest weight.
Moral of the story? Don’t diet. But you already know that.
So more importantly, don’t use food to control your body. Use it to meet your needs, and your body will naturally gravitate to its healthiest weight.
Talk soon…