| Welcome |
|
This newsletter is about emotional tools for weight loss.
February 5, 2012
The Pleasure Deficit
the choice to nourish yourself
Hi ,
Your nervous system has two halves, the fight or flight adrenaline excitement half (sympathetic) and the slow, easy, relaxation half (parasympathetic). Pleasure is felt while we are in the slow, easy, relaxation half of our brain. Digestion of our food takes place while we are in the relaxation side of life and shuts down while we are in the excitement side of our brain.
Here is the kicker - stress/excitement hormones make us fat. Stress hormones come out when we are in the excitement side of our nervous system and settle down when we go into the relaxation side of our nervous system. What hormones am I talking about? The main ones are adrenaline, cortisol, and insulin. The biochemistry of how all this interacts is fascinating, but the bottom line is that chronic stress depletes our energy, makes us put on weight, fouls up our digestion, immune function is impaired, short term memory goes south, messes with our heart, and a host of other nasty problems result.
The good news is that relaxation does the exact opposite and reverses these problems. You can be on the best diet in the world for you, but if you are chronically stressed, it will do no good. So the key point here is that to be successful dieting, you need to learn how to relax, relax on a physiologic level and not just on a head level.
How do you know if you are relaxed on a physiologic level? Your body will show you with certain clues. When you are stressed your body will have more tone in your flexor (pulling forward) muscles. You might notice this as your head pulling forward so your ears are not centered over your shoulders, or your shoulders might round forward, or your deep pelvis muscles might pull your low back forward and up on your hips. These are stress signs. Other signs might include higher blood pressure or faster heart rate. Just good old-fashioned tense muscles or muscle imbalances are a good giveaway to the presence of stress. As I mentioned above, digestion is messed up by stress, so chronic digestion problems, gas, bloating, GERD, and so on are another sign of stress. My personal favorite sign of chronic stress is short-term memory problems, like not remembering what I was supposed to pick up at the store after work.
Important point - you can be stressed out without having any mental or emotional upset what so ever. As far as your conscious mind knows, you are doing fine, but your body can be totally a basket case. I see this all the time with patients. Their body is yelling out major stress but personally they are totally unaware of any stress at all. The stress is all in the subconscious mind and not the conscious mind. Our conscious minds are really like passengers in the back of the bus - we might have a nice running commentary going on but really have no control over where the body is going...usually. With effort we can learn to have an impact on our body and subconscious processes.
Bottom line - learning how to stimulate pleasurable relaxation significantly impacts loosing weight.
You would think such a thing as pleasurable relaxation would be attractive enough to motivate us to pursue it. But the reality is most of us don't. The reality is that our needs fit into a hierarchy and pleasure is not the most basic need. Our most basic needs are for safety/survival and belonging. Without these needs being met first, pleasure is not an option. So we will have to build a case for it as an option to motivate us to choose to nourish ourselves with pleasurable relaxation. The first step is to acknowledge that our most basic needs are already met here and now in order to open the doorway to something more for ourselves.
Psychological power tool no. 1: Be in the present moment.
One of the head games that defeats us at every turn is to worry or anticipate the future.
This automatically puts us into our fight or flight/excitement brain pattern. FEAR is the Failure it Engage and Accept Relationship to things or people in our lives. It is not possible to engage anything that does not exist yet, so putting our attention on the future always puts us into the fear part of our brain. Understand that excitement and positive anticipation are the same neural pathways as fear and produces the same inability to move into the relaxation part of our brain. In understanding this, we see that we can not feel ease and relaxation over our safety or belonging in the future and so can not step into relaxed pleasure. In short, putting our attention on the future is a constant chronic source of stress, and the weight gain hormones that go with it.
How much of your concern for safety or belonging is about right now and how much is about some other point in time? When we are in the present moment, most of the things that concern and stress us simply are not there.
To step into relaxation and pleasure you need to be here and now in your attention. Belly breathing exercises, movement training like Tai Chi, Yoga, Aikido, and dance, meditation and prayer, communion with nature, immersion in any activity you love, all of these can help you focus your attention on the present moment. This is key in learning the consciousness to successful weight loss.
One simple trait that is used as a predictor of likelihood of diet success is how fast you eat. Your brain needs to fully experience the pleasure of each bite of food you are taking in. People who eat fast are not paying attention to and savoring the taste and experience of the food they are eating. Literally their brains do not get the feeling they have eaten and end up sending us the message that we are starved because we have wolfed down our food so fast it never registered in our brains that we have fulfilled our need to eat. Be fully present when you eat and savor every bite to meet your brain's need for feeling satisfied. Otherwise we automatically overeat.
This same truth applies to our digestion. When we eat fast it throws us into fight or flight and our digestion is inhibited. This produces poor digestion, which in turn produces inflammation, nutritional deficiencies, and chronic digestive stress.
Psychological power tool no. 2: Feel what you feel.
We are emotional beings. Some of our emotions are uncomfortable because they are attached to feelings of failure at getting our relationship and personal needs met. We don't like to feel bad, and food can be used as a dissociative drug to block our feelings. Food has powerful effects on our consciousness. Using food as a drug this way is a sure path to overeating. A key awareness is understanding that you as a person are not bad or a failure just because the skills you have tried to use to get your needs met do not work well. The bad feelings are there to tell you to dump the poorly performing skills and take the risk to try some new and different skills. Other times the bad feelings are there to tell you that what you believe you need is a false ego desire that disrespects others, and the ego desire is what needs to be dropped. Either way, pushing away the bad feelings with food will only extend your period of suffering by keeping you from facing the truth today and doing something different.
Psychological power tool no. 3: Nourish yourself.
If you have a weight issue or food relationship issue the chances are about 95% that you do not know how to nourish yourself well. This is about being generous to yourself and giving yourself the best you can in your life. Nourishment is not about giving us excitement.
As a nation we are hugely over-stimulated on every front. It is the source of most of the illness - physical and mental in our society. Nourishment is loving yourself enough to take care of your body, your mind, and your feeling heart - your soul if you will. You matter in your life. No one can possibly know your needs or care for you like you can. As much as we want others to make us center and care for us, that is not their job - it is our job. They have a hard enough time figuring out what they need for themselves. They are clueless about us. Only you are truly able to respond to your needs. That makes you response-able for those needs.
What do you need to do to create peace and ease for yourself? How can you give yourself loving pleasure? The relaxed state of mind is about receiving - taking in life. Make food your friend, exercise your friend, enjoy your relationships with life. Let in and nourish yourself.
Take care,
David
Special Offer: Free Health Evaluation
Discover your true health status
________
Ouestions - if you have questions of
a health or growth nature we could discuss in this newsletter, or if
you have comments or ideas about a future newsletter focus please email
me at:
david@fairoakshealth.com
You are free to reprint this article in your newsletter as long as you include the following statement in the same size type and color:
"This article appears courtesy of Fair Oaks Health News, offering natural and healthy solutions for body, mind and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"
|
H
|
On the Wire
|
|
-
Why Antidepressants Don't Work for Treating Depression
After a major research effort by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have to conclude that the existing evidence from all the studies shows that antidepressant drugs simply don't work. They are little better than placebos. The problem is that the drug companies only publish the studies that show favorable results and hide the studies that show negative results. Using the Freedom of Information Act researchers were able to dig up 74 studies and the overall result shows little to no benefit from the second most widely prescribed class of drugs in this country. We are talking about billions of our dollars being spent for nothing. This article also discusses natural things you can do that does help depression.
_____________________________________________
"The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else."
~ Geoffrey Gaberino
Sit All Day? 6 Ways To Stay Active At Your Desk 
By this time everyone knows that sitting too much is a major health risk. It contributes to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and many other illnesses. But when you are stuck at work what can you do? Well here is a little article with a slide show and a video about what you can do that is realistic.
"Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us."
~ Earl Nightingale
Sleep preserves and enhances unpleasant emotional memories
Now here is a valuable tip. Brain researchers have found that contrary to popular belief, sleep actually burns those bad feelings and memories into your brain that you might be having before you go to bed. So the idea of sleeping off a bad feeling is the exact opposite of what works to reduce stress. It is much better to stay awake and get some emotional processing time in before you go to sleep. Bottom line - don't go right to bed after watching a scary movie.
"The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine."
~ Mike Murdock
_________________________________________________
|
| |
|
_______________
to check on old newsletters
_______________
About Dr. DeLapp
|
|
Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years. He began experimenting with medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis. In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education. Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic. He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice.
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health.
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities.
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth. The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework. Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.
Fair Oaks Healing
& Arts Center
Staff
Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor
Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life CoachEnergetic Nutritionist
Health Care Coordinator
Susan Richardson
Office Manager
Front Desk
Gypsy Andrews
Metabolic Nutritionist
Lifestyle Support Person
Front Desk
Susan McDonald
| |
