Many people have gone through numerous trendy diets and exercise regularly, yet still have pounds to release! What is not working then? There are many reasons why diets and physical exercise alone don’t work. First plain and simple “Diets to lose weight” don’t work period!
Second is the age factor – OK I know no one wants to hear that they are getting older, it is not about the number of years, more about the aging process itself and how it affects the hormones responsible to maintaining the homeostasis or health of your body. The homeostasis can be compromised by many external factors such as the environment, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the eating habits and most importantly the level of stress in your life.
Let’s identify some factors:
Hormonal imbalance: such as Adrenal Exhaustion due to STRESS, Thyroid, SAD (Seasonal affective disorder) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year.
Food sensitivities : You have a physiologic sensitivity to sugar or gluten (or both!) or other foods that is driving you to want those foods. We crave the very foods we are sensitive to because we’ve grown used the abnormal biochemical state those foods produce.
Neurotransmitter imbalance: Again Stress, Depression, and Chronic Fatigue – If we look first at biochemistry, it helps to understand the role of serotonin, one of the neurotransmitters most relevant to weight gain and loss. Serotonin is responsible for regulating mood, sleep, and body temperature, among other functions. What makes the cravings even more troublesome is that people with a serotonin deficiency often have a heightened pleasure response to carbohydrates.
Stress Old and New: It won’t surprise you to know that stress, and how you react to it, can be tangled up in your eating patterns. Stress activates your fight-or-flight response with the release of adrenaline and cortisol. This process can alter your digestion and your relationship with food. If you stay stressed for long periods, your body’s daily cortisol cycle will spiral out of whack, upsetting the normal internal conversation. Chronic stress allows these effects to continue indefinitely and you risk Adrenal Exhaustion, Hyper/hypothyroidism, Depression, Candida, SAD (Seasonal affective disorder) and other health issues like Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and Hypoglycemia.
While we all have stress in our lives, each of us will respond to it differently and that includes how, when, and what we choose to eat. If a person believes that showing his/her feelings and emotions is a sign of weakness, he/she might use food to hide that fear. Some people become obsessive-compulsive, and use strict food management to gain a sense of control over a stressful situation, especially one which is ongoing. Others retreat from stress, taking comfort in their favorite foods.
THINK ABOUT THAT! When we revisit in our mind old stressful events we set the cascade of chemicals reactions in motion once again! I call this “Living in the Past” or Negative “self-talk” – “Why did I do this?” “Why did he said/do that to me? “I can’t believe he/she….to ME!” worries do the same, you are in the future thinking of what worst can happened to you!
Stress is not a disease or a symptom- it is a learned behavior established early in childhood from our family programs. To change our response to stress is to let go of our old re-action to OLD and PAINFUL triggers. In NLP it is called an Imprint – in psychology an Engram – When you are able to accept all circumstances in your life as a RESPONSIBLE individual fully knowing that you have created then with your thoughts, you let go of VICTIMIZATION – you accept WHAT IT IS and start living in the NOW!
Emotional eating – healing starts with awareness! Whether we are using well-loved foods to calm ourselves, or depriving ourselves of them as punishment, we are preoccupying ourselves with food to prevent unwanted feelings, including — but not limited to — the big ones: anger, fear, despair, and shame…Emotional eating has its roots in actual emotions. No matter why you have these cravings or binging you need professional help!
