Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume - 3, Issue - 7, 1 January 2019 | Page 39

Friday, 28 December 2018
“Happiness is the best digestive aid”
Can you recall what happens when you eat during anxiety or stress? Many
people report such symptoms as heartburn, cramping, gas and digestive
upset. During stress, the body automatically shifts into the classic 
flight-or-  fight response.  It is the feature of the nervous system, evolved
over millions of years as a brilliant safety mechanism to support us during
life-threatening events. In the moment the stress response is activated,
something very interesting happens—the digestive system shuts down. It
makes perfect sense that when you’re fending of  an angry gorilla, you don’t
need to waste energy digesting your breakfast. All the body’s metabolic
energy is directed towards survival. So, you could be eating the healthiest
food in the universe, but if you aren’t eating under the optimum state of
digestion and assimilation—which happens to be relaxation—you literally
and metabolically are not receiving the full nutritional value of your meal.
Overeating—it’s simpler than you think
NO! it is not a lack of will power problem”. The problem for a majority of
overeaters is that they don’t actually “eat” when they eat. What I’m
suggesting is that we aren’t always fully present to the meal, aware of its
taste, eating it slowly, or simply; feeling nourished by the food. 
When this happens, the brain, which requires taste and satisfaction, misses
out on a key phase of the nutritional experience.  The brain literally thinks it
didn’t eat, or didn’t eat enough. And it simply screams back at us
—“Hungry!” So,
you can dramatically decrease your overeating by increasing your
awareness and presence at every meal.
Slower eating means faster metabolism
Well I like to  ask a client: “Are you a fast eater, moderate eater or slow
eater?” If the answer is “fast”, then it’s time to change.  that’s because the
act of eating fast is a stressor as thought by the body. 
Humans are simply not biologically wired for high-speed eating. So when
we do eat fast, the body once again enters the physiologic stress response,
which results in decreased digestion, decreased nutrient assimilation,
increased nutrient excretion, lowered calorie burning rate and a bigger
appetite.  
The bottom line is that you can literally empower your nutritional metabolism
simply by slowing down. For many fast eaters, slowing down is quite a
37