Part 02: Your Food History
This is part two of the mini course devoted to creating food freedom. In this lesson, learn what is controlling your biology to shift your life in a new direction.
Did you miss the first lesson and action items? Check them out below.
Growing up in the 90s, super skinny models and rash health claims were part of everyday life. Of course, I didn't notice any of it until it was brought to my attention that I had a problem.
That's how health gets started for most of us.
Food is just food until one day, someone awakes you to the realization that it might be more than just nourishment for your body.
For me, that happened at the ripe age of ten.
It was the end of fourth grade, and my body had begun its descent into puberty. There was no denying that things were changing.
We were headed to the end-of-year celebration at the local swimming pool.
As I stripped free of the shorts that fit last year, pre-hip development, and headed to cannonball into the pool, a boy called out, "THUNDER THIGHS!"
Even though he could have been speaking to any of the 120 kids there. I I knew he was talking to me.
And so began the realization my body was a problem.
That day, I went home, made myself a bowl of instant macaroni and cheese, and began devouring the health magazines stacked on the coffee table between our two pleather couches.
This began day one of what felt like a million others, during which I compared what I was to who they told me to be. I quickly realized that nothing about me was remotely okay. The only assumption I could pull from those magazines was that food was my problem.
Of course, you might have wanted to assume I abruptly changed what I ate. But I can't for the life of me remember ever restricting, depriving, or starving myself, at least not until later in my life. I liked food way too much to rationalize giving it up. What kid in the 90s didn't love cheese-covered noodles?
But it did change my relationship with myself and food, shifting the direction of my entire life.
I'm not ashamed to tell you that I've spent a lot of counseling sessions here on the words that one immature fourth-grade boy said to me. But as silly as it seems now, it was a pivotal moment that shaped my beliefs.
Beliefs that have been hard to shake.
Arguably, the health and entertainment industries have worked together to set a bar that is impossible to achieve.
It's skewed our perspectives, creating an image of health that it was never intended to be. A perspective that has led more people to attempt health only to end up more unhealthy.
Today, I want to show you the way out.
Because you'll never see the good in what the diets have to teach as long as you continue to villainize food and your body.
To do that, you have to change your perspective.
I believe perspective is one of the most life-changing health tools you have.
Health is not as much what you do as how you view what you do because your perspective changes your biology.
It's also why you can change your diet in a million different ways and never see results. Because it's not about what you feed your body but what your body does with what you provide. And what it does lies in the hands of your perspective.
HEALTH LESSON:
Did you know your thoughts, perspectives, and beliefs are the number one driver of your biology?
Your mind is the control panel of your body. I know the health space has worked hard to understand them by separating them, mind and body. But, the only way to truly understand them is by seeing how they work together.
Let's start with your body.
Your body is one big sensory organ. It's constantly gathering information, mostly about your safety, and it takes all of that information and filters it through your mind.
Your cells send hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, and other molecules throughout your biology to the places in your brain that make sense of this information. From there, your brain determines how to act.
Neither work alone but always and constantly together.
Through that, it processes that information based on your immediate safety. This process is why you pull your hand away when you accidentally touch something hot or refrain from engaging in a situation that feels dangerous.
You don't have to know why. You act regardless because your body has deemed it necessary to keep you safe.
SAFETY DRIVES EVERY HUMAN BEHAVIOR.
Your need for safety trumps every other process in your mind or biology.
Because of this, your body has tightly controlled feedback loops to ensure you exist in a safe environment or at least work to provide one.
It does this by enlisting your emotions and perspectives to shift your beliefs and change how you act.
But likewise, it can happen in the opposite direction.
Let's look at your mind.
Just as your biology can change your thoughts and emotions, your thoughts and emotions can shift your biology.
Making your perspective another sensory organ determining how you should respond.
Your perspective (and mind) can determine whether you're living in a state of survival or thriving simply based on the information you choose to focus on.
That brings to light one big difference between your thoughts and biology.
You only have power over one.
You can change what you do all day long, but if you don't have a healthy perspective, your body will still respond in survival. Discounting all of the benefits of what you do.
Changing your biology comes in part because you've changed your thoughts.
Of course, that's been overlooked by the slew of magazines telling you your problems are the direct result of what you do.
That's why you eat differently, move more, restrict, starve, or even purge to change your biology. When the honest answer is, you need to change your mind.
You have to change your perspective.
What I love about this is that your perspective isn't set in stone. It's moldable all throughout your life.
Perspective is simply the individual way you see something. It's the lens through which you view the world and everything in it.
As mentioned, perspective is also the main factor controlling your biology.
To get back to that health lesson.
When you perceive something as harmful, scary, dangerous, or a threat, your body sends signals through your autonomic nervous system to ignite an immediate response, working to protect you.
Inside your biology, your survival response works to:
Conserve, store, and hoard energy (store extra body fat while adding to its stores).
Seek additional energy from external sources (boost your cravings and drive for high-energy food).
Decrease digestion and overall energy.
Constrict blood vessels, raising blood pressure.
Shift your mind to focus on the threat that might exist.
This state is why most people can't see food as anything but the problem.
Your focus on the problem only accentuates it. When you're living in the survival response, you'll never see the solution because you can't get beyond the problem.
This doesn't work to harm you but to protect you. And if you can see it as such, it's one of God's greatest gifts to your health.
Your body can protect you, even if it has to protect you from yourself.
When your life feels threatened, it will refuse to take its focus away from the negative. If it does, what's to say it won't hurt you?
For example, your survival response serves you well when, say, there's a bear in your backyard. If you were unphased by the bear, you might walk outside and get eaten. To prevent that, your brain focuses on the threat, so you take it seriously.
Unfortunately, when the threat is always there, it creates a deep obsession. Even worse, when you stay here too long, you move from the sympathetic state to the freeze response.
The place where you lose motivation to even try to escape.
You move from accentuating and fearing the problem to assuming you are the problem.
I need you to know as long as you perceive food as the problem. IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOUR PROBLEM.
Just as long as you believe you are the problem. NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE.
You have to shift that by shifting your perspective.
I get so giddy over this topic.
Primarily because we've spent so much time in the health industry working in places that only accentuate the threats, we spin in circles. Thus, nearly 100 years after the birth of the health space, we have more problems than when we started.
It's time to change the narrative. To see that health is not as much about food as what you believe about food and your body.
Health is based on your perception because your perception is changing your biology.
Trust me. I know it can be hard to change your perception. Many of your perceptions come from what you believe or what you've learned to believe.
Which is what you have to confront to change.
01: Ask yourself what it is that you perceive about:
Food
Your Body
Health in general
02: Ask, what beliefs are making you see health that way?
Here's the thing: Many of your beliefs aren't actually your beliefs.
They were things you learned to believe. Just as I learned to believe, my thighs were a problem in my life.
We pick up a lot of food beliefs long before we even recognize food might be a problem.
You formed beliefs based on:
What someone else spoke over you
What the diet magazines told you to believe
The food habits of your childhood
The words your mom spoke over her body
The way you saw your parents eat
The list could go on and on and on.
The idea is that some of what you believe isn't actually what you believe. It's just what you learned to believe. And what you learned can be re-learned into something new.
But it starts by evaluating what you believe.
I've found it helpful to list significant people or events in your life and what you learned to believe from those situations or circumstances.
For example, what did you learn about food or your body from your mom?
It's okay if you don't like what you've learned, but you can't change it if you don't understand it.
In the next lesson, we'll dive into the action plan to shift your perspective.
I’d love to know how these lessons are resonating with you! Leave a comment below with a health perspective you’re hoping to change!
I’ll see you on Thursday!
