Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume - 3, Issue - 7, 1 January 2019 | Page 38

Friday, 28 December 2018
It’s surprisingly common for people to believe that “food is the enemy” or
“food makes me fat” or “fat in food will become fat on my body” or “my
appetite is the enemy” or “as soon as I have the perfect body, then I’ll 
finally be happy.” 
Such beliefs may seem harmless, yet they can create a relationship with
food and self that’s filled with a lots suffering and pain.  Well, think about it—
if “food is the enemy”, then we are constantly in a  flight or  fight
stress response whenever we eat, or even think about food. 
Such a powerful stressor can cause all the problems of stress-induced
digestive shutdown, decreased calorie burning capacity, and an inner life
that’s seldom at peace.  
The question is: Is your relationship with food nourishing, or punishing?
Hopefully, you will notice that there’s way more to good nutrition than simply
‘the food’.
“We quite literally change our calorie burning capacity when we’re stressed
Stress can put weight on— relaxation can take it off
How????…..
It’s fascinating how stress, fear, anxiety, anger, judgment and even negative
self-talk can literally create a physiologic stress response in the body.  It
means that we generate more cortisol and insulin, two hormones that
have the unwanted effect of signalling the body to store weight, store fat,
and stop building muscle. Because you need instant energy for flight or
fight. (Explained down below)
Strange as it may sound, we quite literally change our calorie burning
capacity when we are stressed. 
What’s more incredible though, is that as we learn to smile more, ease into
life and breathe more deeply, the body enters a physiologic relaxation
response. In this state, we actually create our optimal day-in, day-out
calorie-burning metabolism. 
So, you could be following the best weight loss diet in the world, but if
you’re an anxious mess, the power of your mind is limiting the weight
loss of your body. Far too many people adopt stressful weight loss
strategies—impossible to follow diets, overly intense exercise programs,
tasteless food, extremely low calorie meal plans—all of which can create
the kind of stress chemistry that ensures our weight will stay put. It’s time to
relax into weight loss.
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