Choose To Be A Hero/Heroine? (Article 3)
There is power in writing and telling your story because it helps you discover and begin healing your inner child. This can then lead to healing your eating disorder or other painful behaviors. What are you going to choose, victim consciousness or hero/heroine?
I was lost in the freezing cold -I couldn't breathe- I was underwater –thrashing. This image haunted me in a way that I could never understand. I only feared men and any anger they displayed in the slightest twitch of their lips or jaw. In my subconscious, unknown to me, this memory ruled every interaction I ever had with men.
In my early 40’s I did intuitive drawings that revealed an image of a toddler drowning underwater. Trekking deeper into my past, as I wrote my story I found this; the memory of my father who was an alcoholic still in the backwoods of the Olympic Rainforest bordering the Puget Sound Bay. He had been drinking and had taken my older brother and myself in a small rowboat to fish. I had said something that angered him and he hit the side of my head tumbling me into the frigid cold northwest waters.
As I processed through this memory I was able to speak up to men and authority figures. I am ever grateful for my past and the new found strength and awareness.
Start to choose to begin your story by writing what it was like when you were a child, write what happened to you , and what is it like for you now. It is a process of trusting whatever comes to mind and writing it without judging it, without thinking about all the could haves, just begin to want to trust the process of clearing your soul. In other words you can view your story as having a heart to heart talk with yourself. In telling your story write about what is important and meaningful, confusing, conflicting or painful in your life. You can choose to courageously risk sharing inner thoughts on paper and discovering more about yourself. And by doing this you begin to heal yourself and your inner child.
Furthermore it has been documented that sharing your story with supportive others can increase the healing. Dr. Charles Whitfield talks about this process as giving a gift to yourself, in his book A Gift To Myself. According to Alice Miller, “Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience, not merely corrective experience but through our revisiting of early fears, sadness, and angers.” And so taking your time and writing your story is the next step in inner child healing.
John Bradshaw, in his book Home Coming -Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, calls this work original pain work. He states that if original pain work was understood and used as treatment it would revolutionize the treatment of neuroses in general and compulsive addictive behaviors. From my many years of clinical practice and using the very techniques I'm writing about I agree that it is the most effective treatment.
So what would you need to begin to write your story?
1. Find a supportive person to hear your story or group or therapist.
2. Make a strong commitment to write and finish your story in approximately four weeks.
3. Find a private place to write.
4. Set a time aside each day at the same time.
5. Take your time each day to write and invite the feeling s to come up and write about them.
6. You can have your childhood pictures near to help you remember.
7. Have a support person or accountability partner available to talk with you as needed.
8. Be willing to share your story many times, even though your feelings are hard to express.
If you commit to writing and working through your pain and grief by sharing, participating and experiencing the suffering from your past, you then can begin to release it. When you complete your story it is the hero/heroine’s journey. Or you may choose to remain unaware and this can lead you to resenting others, or blaming yourself, or blaming others. Or even choosing to stay unaware can lead to stress related illnesses. If you choose to stay in unawareness it can prolong your suffering and keep you in what is called the victim cycle or even the martyr/victim consciousness. Is that really what you want to do?
Yes, this work can be emotionally painful, and yet when you complete it you truly will be able to be pain free.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Eating Disorders- Speak Those Bad Feelings & Gain Control
Get Out of Your Head & Into Your Heart
By Kathleen Fuller, Ph.D.
A recent story illustrates the concept of getting out of your head and into your heart, which is vitally important to help prevent destructive behaviors such as eating disorders. A fourth-grade teacher shared with me the following story: The coach came to the teacher and said,” I can’t get one of your girls to come in, would you go get her? The teacher was on her lunch period and sent another girl. This didn't work, so the teacher called to her in a commanding voice and the girl came directly. Now this teacher is a very unusual teacher; she, like most teachers, is caring and yet she also has a deep wisdom about the importance of expressing feelings.
As reference in Dana.org latest brain research an article by Alexis Madrigal says naming feelings takes some of the emotional impact out of them by engaging a brain region that aids self control, according to this new research.
Experiments, at the University of California Los Angeles, site that Matthew Lieberman found verbally saying person looks angry while looking at a photograph reduces the negative emotional feeling that the viewer would feel.
Let’s go back to the teacher who began talking to the little girl of eight years. The little girl passionately yelled, “I hate this school. I wish I was dead!”
Shocked at the intensity of this little eight-year-old, the teacher said,” You sound very angry. Do you really hate me because I'm part of the school?”
The teacher found by talking further that this little eight year old was so frustrated she didn't know what to do. Her little mind went to hate and suicide. Frustration is indeed an intense hostility. Let’s follow how that frustration is birthed.
Frustration can start as an irritation that grows into anger, then hurt, and finally into the hostile feeling of frustration. This little girl came from a poor family with many addictions and had no way of learning or permission to express her feelings. Because this experienced teacher understood this girl’s background, she taught her to stomp her feet when she's angry and to come and talk to her in private as soon as she could.
Let's suppose that this young eight year old girl does not get any help with expressing her feelings. She may go through the next few grades with inappropriate anger expression. Furthermore anger expression is viewed by most teachers as disruptive and she could be labeled as Bi Polar. Clinically she could develop further features of a personality disorder and even turn to drugs or alcohol or develop an eating disorder because no one was able to talk or teach her at an earlier age. Just as good habits are formed bad habits are formed that then dictate our behaviors.
As referenced in my clinically researched book Not Your Mother's Diet The Cure For Your Eating Issues most little girls are taught it isn’t nice to express or feel anger. Most little girls learn to swallow it. Yet the hostility can flash deep inside for a moment before it’s swallowed. Even the hurt and betrayal you may feel in your work day world may also be swallowed so fast that that anger is nearly forgotten. And almost without a thought, the swallowed anger seems to magically go away.
Yet the result of swallowing anger (or any other strong emotion for that matter) is that eventually it comes out sideways in unconscious, uncontrolled behavior. The primal feelings of anger and betrayal that are swallowed become scattered through the subconscious, resulting in confusion. What happens to a little girl who grows up and thinks it’s paramount for her to focus on the feminine diversion of diet worries or the hunt for the perfect body? This confusion first born of denied anger becomes in many women or men a personal dieting cycle, because anger first has been denied over time and then stuffed down with food.
As a clinical mental health therapist I teach my patients of all ages and genders how to recognize and name their feelings. This is one of the first simple coping skills. The most basic feelings are irritated, angry, hurt, betrayed, frustrated, scared, sad, lonely and depressed. You could try this technique, it works to help you be more aware of your feelings. At the end of each day have a little note book by your bed, and write down all the feelings you had during the day. That's it, it's so simple. See if you feel better or if you feel worse because of so many negative feelings. This is a clue for you to reach out and ask for help from a professional.
The Wisdom of Honoring Your Emotions (Feelings) is taken from my book Not Your Mother's Diet-The Cure For Your Eating Issues available on Amazon.
The following is a brief quote:
Emotions are often misunderstood. They are seen as negative outbursts that are best repressed. But strong emotions can be a way for your intuitive self to get your attention when you’re in the midst of a situation.
Your intuitive self uses emotions to flag a situation and bring it to your attention, so that you can take a deeper look at the truth.
Not Your Mother's Diet Dr. Fuller, a leading eating disorder expert reports on little-known tips too many tragically ignore in her breakthrough book
Not Your Mother’s Diet
BUY HERE Buy Not Your Mother's Diet from Amazon.com
By Kathleen Fuller, Ph.D.
A recent story illustrates the concept of getting out of your head and into your heart, which is vitally important to help prevent destructive behaviors such as eating disorders. A fourth-grade teacher shared with me the following story: The coach came to the teacher and said,” I can’t get one of your girls to come in, would you go get her? The teacher was on her lunch period and sent another girl. This didn't work, so the teacher called to her in a commanding voice and the girl came directly. Now this teacher is a very unusual teacher; she, like most teachers, is caring and yet she also has a deep wisdom about the importance of expressing feelings.
As reference in Dana.org latest brain research an article by Alexis Madrigal says naming feelings takes some of the emotional impact out of them by engaging a brain region that aids self control, according to this new research.
Experiments, at the University of California Los Angeles, site that Matthew Lieberman found verbally saying person looks angry while looking at a photograph reduces the negative emotional feeling that the viewer would feel.
Let’s go back to the teacher who began talking to the little girl of eight years. The little girl passionately yelled, “I hate this school. I wish I was dead!”
Shocked at the intensity of this little eight-year-old, the teacher said,” You sound very angry. Do you really hate me because I'm part of the school?”
The teacher found by talking further that this little eight year old was so frustrated she didn't know what to do. Her little mind went to hate and suicide. Frustration is indeed an intense hostility. Let’s follow how that frustration is birthed.
Frustration can start as an irritation that grows into anger, then hurt, and finally into the hostile feeling of frustration. This little girl came from a poor family with many addictions and had no way of learning or permission to express her feelings. Because this experienced teacher understood this girl’s background, she taught her to stomp her feet when she's angry and to come and talk to her in private as soon as she could.
Let's suppose that this young eight year old girl does not get any help with expressing her feelings. She may go through the next few grades with inappropriate anger expression. Furthermore anger expression is viewed by most teachers as disruptive and she could be labeled as Bi Polar. Clinically she could develop further features of a personality disorder and even turn to drugs or alcohol or develop an eating disorder because no one was able to talk or teach her at an earlier age. Just as good habits are formed bad habits are formed that then dictate our behaviors.
As referenced in my clinically researched book Not Your Mother's Diet The Cure For Your Eating Issues most little girls are taught it isn’t nice to express or feel anger. Most little girls learn to swallow it. Yet the hostility can flash deep inside for a moment before it’s swallowed. Even the hurt and betrayal you may feel in your work day world may also be swallowed so fast that that anger is nearly forgotten. And almost without a thought, the swallowed anger seems to magically go away.
Yet the result of swallowing anger (or any other strong emotion for that matter) is that eventually it comes out sideways in unconscious, uncontrolled behavior. The primal feelings of anger and betrayal that are swallowed become scattered through the subconscious, resulting in confusion. What happens to a little girl who grows up and thinks it’s paramount for her to focus on the feminine diversion of diet worries or the hunt for the perfect body? This confusion first born of denied anger becomes in many women or men a personal dieting cycle, because anger first has been denied over time and then stuffed down with food.
As a clinical mental health therapist I teach my patients of all ages and genders how to recognize and name their feelings. This is one of the first simple coping skills. The most basic feelings are irritated, angry, hurt, betrayed, frustrated, scared, sad, lonely and depressed. You could try this technique, it works to help you be more aware of your feelings. At the end of each day have a little note book by your bed, and write down all the feelings you had during the day. That's it, it's so simple. See if you feel better or if you feel worse because of so many negative feelings. This is a clue for you to reach out and ask for help from a professional.
The Wisdom of Honoring Your Emotions (Feelings) is taken from my book Not Your Mother's Diet-The Cure For Your Eating Issues available on Amazon.
The following is a brief quote:
Emotions are often misunderstood. They are seen as negative outbursts that are best repressed. But strong emotions can be a way for your intuitive self to get your attention when you’re in the midst of a situation.
Your intuitive self uses emotions to flag a situation and bring it to your attention, so that you can take a deeper look at the truth.
Not Your Mother's Diet Dr. Fuller, a leading eating disorder expert reports on little-known tips too many tragically ignore in her breakthrough book
Not Your Mother’s Diet
BUY HERE Buy Not Your Mother's Diet from Amazon.com
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Eating Disorders- Can’t Stop Eating at Night? What Do You Do?
What if this is you? Imagine you have enjoyed a good dinner. However, in a short period of time the cravings start. You’ve had a nourishing dinner, but emotionally you are still feeling empty. Later you decide to sleep but you toss and turn trying to go to sleep but instead you lay awake with your stomach craving something. Can’t sleep? So you get up and go for favorite high calorie snack. This doesn’t happen just one time it happens infrequently throughout the night. By morning the extra food intake during the night inspires guilt and shame, which can again lead to avoidance of breakfast, helping to keep the cycle going.
Many individuals have feelings of shame because they don’t have control over food; night eating syndrome is a real disorder and you can get help. If something similar happens to you, you probably have night eating syndrome.
More Information on what is Night Eating Syndrome?
A person with night eating syndrome experiences a daily cycle with respect to food intake Understanding this cycle is the first step to being able to plan the gentle changes. After a large amount of food consumed during the night (33% or more of daily calories after dinner according to Stunkard AJ, Grace WJ, Wolf HG: The night-eating syndrome Am J Med 1955; 19:78–86), the person has no desire to eat much for breakfast. Minimum food intake continues through the day, while depression becomes more pronounced at the end of the day. A significant amount of food is consumed for dinner, but 33% or more of the food intake occurs after dinner and at one or more times during the night. This eating does not normally qualify as binging because it is usually occurs over several hours during the night.
During the nighttime, individuals with night eating syndrome have a decrease in the hormone that accompanies sleep, melatonin. Researchers have found that the drop in melatonin contributes to their sleep disturbances. (Go to my products page and click on Our Health Coop and order Melatonin. Our Health Coop has the best price you’ll find anywhere. http://www.notyourmothersdiet.com/products.html )
Who is at Risk of Developing Night Eating Syndrome?
Night-eating syndrome is thought to occur in 10% of obese people seeking treatment for their obesity.
Researchers have found that the triggers are:
1. Depression
2. Anxiety
3. Interpersonal stressors
4. Boredom
5. Prolonged dieting
6. Body image dissatisfaction
How is Night Eating Syndrome different from Binge Eating and Bulimia?
Relatively small snacks are frequently eaten that are high in calories at night. Individuals with binge eating disorder and/or bulimia consume large amounts of food in a short time frame. The binges may be infrequent.
Check out the Treatment Tips to decrease or eliminate night eating:
(one – two percent of the population has night eating syndrome, but the rate is as high as six percent among those who are obese. The emotionally charged eating tends to run in families with addictions according to The American Journal of Psychiatry.)
- Progressive muscle relaxation with affirmative healing statements have been shown to reduce symptoms associated with night eating syndrome Go to Food Impulse Control Hypnosis Mp3 downloads on my products page. http://www.notyourmothersdiet.com/products.html This MP3 download Food Impulse Control has shown to be successful in reducing symptoms associated with night eating syndrome
- 5 HTP has shown to be helpful in reducing the carbohydrate cravings that can be a part of the night eating syndrome and 5-HTP addresses the stress by reducing the body’s need to release the stress hormone cortisol. The food consumed at late hours is often high-calorie, starchy food. Carbohydrates adjust the chemical balance in the brain, increasing serotonin levels. Increased serotonin, in turn, helps the person to sleep. 5HTP can do this without the weight gain and can be ordered here: (Go to my products page and click on Our Health Coop Banner at the top far right of that page and order 5-HTP. http://www.notyourmothersdiet.com/products.html Our Health Coop has the best price you’ll find anywhere.)
- For hormonal issues, one way to combat night eating syndrome is to administer tryptophan. Tryptophan has a similar effect to carbohydrate consumption; it ultimately results in a raised level of serotonin. This is 5HTP and the link to order is: (Go to my products page and click on Our Health Coop Banner at the very top right of that page and order 5 HTP. http://www.notyourmothersdiet.com/products.html Our Health Coop has the best price you’ll find anywhere.)
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· Of course, it is also helpful to address the issues that create stress. This often calls for some form of mental health counseling. http://www.notyourmothersdiet.com/counseling.html
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· Structured nutritional meal plans are a means of reducing the episodes of dietary restriction and the urges to binge and purge, plus natural weight loss can happen. (See article link at )
1. Skipping meals is a trigger for night eating. Make a commitment to change and plan three meals a day.
2. Spread your calories out evenly over the day to avoid feeling overly hungry
3. Eat breakfast even if you don't feel like it
4. Plan a healthy after dinner snack in a pre-portioned package
5. Eat a serving of whole grains with dinner
6. Adequate nutritional intake can prevent cravings and promote satiety (See article at)
The following are more practical suggestions to curb night eating
· Brush your teeth after dinner and after any snack
· Freeze dinner leftovers for lunch or next dinner so you don't snack on them later
· Chew XyliChew Gum - Peppermint from a health food store (order from my resource pages scroll down to Peggy’s Natural Foods Banner http://www.notyourmothersdiet.com/resources.html
· Keep your kitchen free of junk food by making a grocery list of wholesome choices and buying them
· Find other activities like drawing, knitting, to keep your hands and mind preoccupied or go for a walk
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Prime Eating Basics to Get You in Control
- The Basics of Eating Healthy & Dropping Those Extra Pounds
1. Three meals a day- sounds easy and it is easy when you become willing to do whatever is needed to create this healthy habit.
2. Sit down to a pretty place setting and allow yourself to enjoy the meal. It is called loving your body by calmly making a space just for your eating pleasure.
3. Plan a menu- make it fun and jot down a grocery list to organize your grocery trip.
Here are some meals in minutes that could be so easy to throw together to feed yourself well. The eating basics include the healthiest food choices possible, opting for fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean cuts of meat instead of processed and refined foods. Eating basics is not complicated, nor is it expensive.
Breakfast (be willing to set a fairly regular time for your breakfast)
1. Smooth start- ½ cup yogurt, your favorite fruit, and one cup ice cubes and blend
Drink water in between
Lunch
2. Make a whole grain roll up and put your favorite ingredients inside. (you can buy already washed organic greens) Mix it up with different ingredients.
3. Pack a favorite healthy drink (green tea is a healthy substitute for coffee or soda)
4. Whole grain roll ups make a wonderful melted pizza like meal with cheese and veggies
(You can use almond cheese instead of milk based cheeses.)
Drink water in between
Dinner
1. How about stir fry using pre-washed vegetables with onions and garlic, add cut up meat or tofu or shrimp, scallops or other fish with ½ cup water with soya sauce or other. Five-ten minutes to be ready to eat. Make it simple and throw it all in together and stir fry it.
2. Buy sea food that the grocery store steams for you. Add sauce and a steamed vegetable. Brown rice can take longer to cook but it cooks by itself.
3. A real quickie is buying an already cooked chicken. Add a salad. Plus you can have left-overs for lunch the next day.
Grocery List (you can print this out)
1. Lunch carrier and make it the best with thermos.
2. Bright plates and glasses that are place setting for two with a placemat that makes you smile.
3. Yogurt for seven days
4. Pre-washed vegetables in a bag
5. Frozen vegetables that you love
6. Onions two
7. Garlic already chopped and fresh herbs to throw into meals for finishing touches.
8. Favorite meats for at least seven days and freeze until needed
9. Favorite fruits and buy frozen ones so you can add them to your smoothies three bags
10. Brown rice -- you can cook three servings and store the rest for quick stir fry
11. If you like sea food get some to freeze and a favorite sauce (read the label too)
12. Add what you like as your favorites here and don’t forget the salad dressing.- Benefits to eating basics, include:
· Fat loss
· Weight loss
· Energy increases
· Clearer skin
· Healthier and shinier hair
· Better quality of sleep
· Increased positive attitude
· Clearer thinking
Hands to Help You Feel Good
All hands, your hands and others
Round the table share
The food is spiced
With smiles and love –
A joyous meal is here.
Friday, July 3, 2009
The set point — reprogramming your genes and cells for healthy weight
This is an excellent article and I posted it with you in mind.
by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP
Everyone goes through life with a certain amount of “baggage” — an inheritance that’s both physical and emotional in nature. When it comes to our physical inheritance (our genes), many women feel that there’s not much they can do to change matters. But “DNA” doesn’t spell “destiny” — and we do have the ability to influence how our genes respond to our environment.
The conversation between your genes and your environment is particularly encouraging when it comes to weight loss. Women who struggle with their weight often feel as though they are pre-programmed to be heavy. So let’s learn how the metabolic “set point” works — and how we can change it.
What is the “set point”?
The job of a healthy metabolism is to keep a woman’s body at a set point, which is a body-to-fat ratio within a 10- to 15-pound weight range that optimizes her chances of survival. Set points are individualized and stubborn — your body likes stability — and your metabolism defends your set point by slowing down or speeding up when your weight approaches the outer limits of your set point’s range.
When the idea of a set point was first introduced, scientists believed it was immutable and determined by genetics. If your parents were “wired” to be skinny people, then you would be, too — and likewise, if you came from heavy-set people, it would be your eventual destiny to become overweight no matter how hard you fought it.
But in the past few decades it has become clear that the set point isn’t predestined and unchanging. In fact, your set point is also governed by your environment, even from the time you are growing in utero.
Research shows that a disturbed intrauterine environment (for example, due to the mother’s stress levels, a high-carb diet, nutrient deprivation, and drugs) can negatively influence the metabolism of the developing fetus, raising the potential for serious adult conditions like insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, and more.
In other words, obesity does run in families, but it has as much or more to do with the mother’s health and weight during pregnancy than her genetics.
Obviously, you can’t do anything about what your mother did when she was pregnant with you, just like you can’t go back and exchange your genetic makeup. But what you can do — even if you have struggled with a high set point since before you were even born — is take steps that help your genes reset your metabolism. Such steps include lowering your stress burden, changing your diet, losing extra weight, and protecting your health long-term.
Has your lifestyle upset your set point?
In recent decades there has been an explosion in artificial foods and preservatives. The average American diet is also extremely high in sugar, refined grains, and bad fats. Our growing and harvesting methods strip our food of its nutrients, and pollutants, pesticides, and dangerous chemicals are all around us. We drive instead of walk, sit at desks instead of working outdoors, and the average food serving size has doubled. In short, we have lost a good quotient of our nutrition while dramatically increasing our toxic load and reducing our activity levels.
The modern American diet and lifestyle have sent the average set point soaring. We all hear it and see it on a daily basis: obesity is an epidemic. And not just in this country — over 300 million people worldwide were deemed “grossly overweight” in the year 2000, leading the World Health Organization to coin a new term: globesity. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
New research into the body-wide phenomenon of metabolic syndrome, or syndrome X, is proving that weight is a vastly more complex issue than measuring calories. Conventional ideas about weight loss are being supplanted by another school of thought — one that understands weight loss as a “universal” process and treats the body’s major functions, including neurochemistry, immune function, digestion, detoxification, musculoskeletal function, and hormonal balance, all at once.
Communicating with your genes: emotions, exercise, and food
In functional medicine, changes in health — good or bad — often reflect communication between your environment and the tissues, cells, and genes of your body. “Environment” in this sense means the physical world you live in; the food, air, and water that you take in as nourishment; and your emotional surroundings, past as well as present. Certain forms of communication can be healthy for one person but profoundly unhealthy for another, depending on our genetic blueprint. All this potential variation explains why some people can eat gluten or dairy and have no ill effects, for example, but others cannot, or why an acute illness or other stressor can precipitate all kinds of health problems where before there were none.
Yet while our genes may be tuned toward frequencies that promote ill health, including toxic weight gain, these communications can also be dialed down, or even turned off. The question my patients always ask me is, How?
Emotional buttons — switching genes on or off
We’ve always known intuitively that laughter is the best medicine, but before now we haven’t really grasped why. Some of the most interesting research being done today is showing how gene expression can be altered by emotions. Studies of laughter therapy in type 2 diabetics showed that as many as 23 different genes were altered as a byproduct of laughter. Not only that, but the activity of several blood enzymes and their precursors changed as well, in ways that were beneficial toward preventing a range of metabolic imbalances.
So one of the ways that we can send positive signals to our genes, cells, and proteins is by cultivating positive emotions. At the same time, addressing sources of negative emotions — particularly trauma from our past that is a continual source of sadness, guilt, shame, or anger — can reduce the flow of negative messages to our genes and cells. (For further guidance, read Dr. Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotions.)
Exercising regularly — and having fun
Exercise, too, has been shown to affect gene expression. When you start using your muscles more, genes within skeletal muscle cells respond by programming the production of different amounts of proteins and new muscle cells, along with changing metabolic processes. These changes are beneficial, for the most part, although it’s also possible to over-exercise — and when we do, that’s actually stressful for the body, and triggers cell damage.
I would also add that doing less intense exercise that you enjoy is probably more beneficial than too much high-intensity exercise that just isn’t fun, not only because you’re more likely to continue exercising regularly if you like what you’re doing, but because the boost you get from having fun adds to the benefit on all levels.
Food as information
Today there’s an entire field of research called nutrigenomics, or “nutritional genomics,” investigating the effects nutrients have upon genes in both disease and health. The information our genes receive from our food can be a powerful way to “convince” them to respond in ways that are healthy — and it’s not so much about how much we eat (although obviously, overeating isn’t going to help anyone) than about what we eat. Food that is rich in phytonutrients and low in added sugars and chemicals speaks differently to our genes and cells than processed foods. A healthy diet of whole, organic foods reminds our genes and cells of how a healthy body should respond and supports smooth functioning of the body’s systems.
A recipe for “re-setting” your set point
It’s a revelation to many women that they can influence their genes and aren’t doomed to being overweight because of their heredity. For many women, this means changing long-standing ways of thinking or acting, and that can be difficult — but it’s far from impossible, and the benefits last a lifetime.
If you’re ready to have an enrolling conversation with your genes, there are several actions you can take to help fine-tune your set point:
Look for the core imbalances that may lie at the heart of your original weight gain. It’s important to identify these health issues and imbalances, because until they’re addressed, you will have a tough time resetting your metabolic dial.
Examine your emotional inheritance, particularly if you’re an emotional eater. Very few women in our culture go through life without ever experiencing a powerful, and often unhealthy, relationship with food. Understanding the feelings that trigger unhealthy eating habits can take you a long way toward changing those habits.
Look for enjoyable ways to fit exercise into your routine — even if it’s for only 20 minutes or so. During that 20 minutes, try “bursting” four to six times — ramping up the intensity for about a minute — to boost your metabolism without over-exercising. Your body is built to move, so begin gently if you need to, and work up from there.
Optimize your nutrition. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing effort — simple changes to your diet can reduce your toxic load and increase your nutrient intake. Taking a quality multivitamin–mineral and essential fatty acids will help fill common gaps. Emphasizing specific nutrients appropriate for your metabolic type will provide additional benefits in the long-term.
Prepare yourself for change. Many women struggle with their weight because the day-to-day priorities of work and caring for others interfere with the changes they want or need to make. Often women get discouraged when their initial efforts fail. Luckily, we can make a fresh start with each new day. Our article on making life changes can help you learn to prepare for changes to improve your health.
Laugh! Studies have shown again and again that a positive attitude and good sense of humor help many health conditions — and many of the imbalances that lead to weight gain have a strong stress component.
Start a healthy dialogue with your cells
It’s so important that women realize that we can communicate with our genes and get them to change their behavior — we talk to them all the time through our nutritional choices and the patterns of our emotions, whether we realize it or not. Where our metabolic set point and weight are concerned, we can start by having a conversation with our body — paying attention to our emotions, our nutrition, and our exercise.
by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP
Everyone goes through life with a certain amount of “baggage” — an inheritance that’s both physical and emotional in nature. When it comes to our physical inheritance (our genes), many women feel that there’s not much they can do to change matters. But “DNA” doesn’t spell “destiny” — and we do have the ability to influence how our genes respond to our environment.
The conversation between your genes and your environment is particularly encouraging when it comes to weight loss. Women who struggle with their weight often feel as though they are pre-programmed to be heavy. So let’s learn how the metabolic “set point” works — and how we can change it.
What is the “set point”?
The job of a healthy metabolism is to keep a woman’s body at a set point, which is a body-to-fat ratio within a 10- to 15-pound weight range that optimizes her chances of survival. Set points are individualized and stubborn — your body likes stability — and your metabolism defends your set point by slowing down or speeding up when your weight approaches the outer limits of your set point’s range.
When the idea of a set point was first introduced, scientists believed it was immutable and determined by genetics. If your parents were “wired” to be skinny people, then you would be, too — and likewise, if you came from heavy-set people, it would be your eventual destiny to become overweight no matter how hard you fought it.
But in the past few decades it has become clear that the set point isn’t predestined and unchanging. In fact, your set point is also governed by your environment, even from the time you are growing in utero.
Research shows that a disturbed intrauterine environment (for example, due to the mother’s stress levels, a high-carb diet, nutrient deprivation, and drugs) can negatively influence the metabolism of the developing fetus, raising the potential for serious adult conditions like insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, and more.
In other words, obesity does run in families, but it has as much or more to do with the mother’s health and weight during pregnancy than her genetics.
Obviously, you can’t do anything about what your mother did when she was pregnant with you, just like you can’t go back and exchange your genetic makeup. But what you can do — even if you have struggled with a high set point since before you were even born — is take steps that help your genes reset your metabolism. Such steps include lowering your stress burden, changing your diet, losing extra weight, and protecting your health long-term.
Has your lifestyle upset your set point?
In recent decades there has been an explosion in artificial foods and preservatives. The average American diet is also extremely high in sugar, refined grains, and bad fats. Our growing and harvesting methods strip our food of its nutrients, and pollutants, pesticides, and dangerous chemicals are all around us. We drive instead of walk, sit at desks instead of working outdoors, and the average food serving size has doubled. In short, we have lost a good quotient of our nutrition while dramatically increasing our toxic load and reducing our activity levels.
The modern American diet and lifestyle have sent the average set point soaring. We all hear it and see it on a daily basis: obesity is an epidemic. And not just in this country — over 300 million people worldwide were deemed “grossly overweight” in the year 2000, leading the World Health Organization to coin a new term: globesity. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
New research into the body-wide phenomenon of metabolic syndrome, or syndrome X, is proving that weight is a vastly more complex issue than measuring calories. Conventional ideas about weight loss are being supplanted by another school of thought — one that understands weight loss as a “universal” process and treats the body’s major functions, including neurochemistry, immune function, digestion, detoxification, musculoskeletal function, and hormonal balance, all at once.
Communicating with your genes: emotions, exercise, and food
In functional medicine, changes in health — good or bad — often reflect communication between your environment and the tissues, cells, and genes of your body. “Environment” in this sense means the physical world you live in; the food, air, and water that you take in as nourishment; and your emotional surroundings, past as well as present. Certain forms of communication can be healthy for one person but profoundly unhealthy for another, depending on our genetic blueprint. All this potential variation explains why some people can eat gluten or dairy and have no ill effects, for example, but others cannot, or why an acute illness or other stressor can precipitate all kinds of health problems where before there were none.
Yet while our genes may be tuned toward frequencies that promote ill health, including toxic weight gain, these communications can also be dialed down, or even turned off. The question my patients always ask me is, How?
Emotional buttons — switching genes on or off
We’ve always known intuitively that laughter is the best medicine, but before now we haven’t really grasped why. Some of the most interesting research being done today is showing how gene expression can be altered by emotions. Studies of laughter therapy in type 2 diabetics showed that as many as 23 different genes were altered as a byproduct of laughter. Not only that, but the activity of several blood enzymes and their precursors changed as well, in ways that were beneficial toward preventing a range of metabolic imbalances.
So one of the ways that we can send positive signals to our genes, cells, and proteins is by cultivating positive emotions. At the same time, addressing sources of negative emotions — particularly trauma from our past that is a continual source of sadness, guilt, shame, or anger — can reduce the flow of negative messages to our genes and cells. (For further guidance, read Dr. Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotions.)
Exercising regularly — and having fun
Exercise, too, has been shown to affect gene expression. When you start using your muscles more, genes within skeletal muscle cells respond by programming the production of different amounts of proteins and new muscle cells, along with changing metabolic processes. These changes are beneficial, for the most part, although it’s also possible to over-exercise — and when we do, that’s actually stressful for the body, and triggers cell damage.
I would also add that doing less intense exercise that you enjoy is probably more beneficial than too much high-intensity exercise that just isn’t fun, not only because you’re more likely to continue exercising regularly if you like what you’re doing, but because the boost you get from having fun adds to the benefit on all levels.
Food as information
Today there’s an entire field of research called nutrigenomics, or “nutritional genomics,” investigating the effects nutrients have upon genes in both disease and health. The information our genes receive from our food can be a powerful way to “convince” them to respond in ways that are healthy — and it’s not so much about how much we eat (although obviously, overeating isn’t going to help anyone) than about what we eat. Food that is rich in phytonutrients and low in added sugars and chemicals speaks differently to our genes and cells than processed foods. A healthy diet of whole, organic foods reminds our genes and cells of how a healthy body should respond and supports smooth functioning of the body’s systems.
A recipe for “re-setting” your set point
It’s a revelation to many women that they can influence their genes and aren’t doomed to being overweight because of their heredity. For many women, this means changing long-standing ways of thinking or acting, and that can be difficult — but it’s far from impossible, and the benefits last a lifetime.
If you’re ready to have an enrolling conversation with your genes, there are several actions you can take to help fine-tune your set point:
Look for the core imbalances that may lie at the heart of your original weight gain. It’s important to identify these health issues and imbalances, because until they’re addressed, you will have a tough time resetting your metabolic dial.
Examine your emotional inheritance, particularly if you’re an emotional eater. Very few women in our culture go through life without ever experiencing a powerful, and often unhealthy, relationship with food. Understanding the feelings that trigger unhealthy eating habits can take you a long way toward changing those habits.
Look for enjoyable ways to fit exercise into your routine — even if it’s for only 20 minutes or so. During that 20 minutes, try “bursting” four to six times — ramping up the intensity for about a minute — to boost your metabolism without over-exercising. Your body is built to move, so begin gently if you need to, and work up from there.
Optimize your nutrition. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing effort — simple changes to your diet can reduce your toxic load and increase your nutrient intake. Taking a quality multivitamin–mineral and essential fatty acids will help fill common gaps. Emphasizing specific nutrients appropriate for your metabolic type will provide additional benefits in the long-term.
Prepare yourself for change. Many women struggle with their weight because the day-to-day priorities of work and caring for others interfere with the changes they want or need to make. Often women get discouraged when their initial efforts fail. Luckily, we can make a fresh start with each new day. Our article on making life changes can help you learn to prepare for changes to improve your health.
Laugh! Studies have shown again and again that a positive attitude and good sense of humor help many health conditions — and many of the imbalances that lead to weight gain have a strong stress component.
Start a healthy dialogue with your cells
It’s so important that women realize that we can communicate with our genes and get them to change their behavior — we talk to them all the time through our nutritional choices and the patterns of our emotions, whether we realize it or not. Where our metabolic set point and weight are concerned, we can start by having a conversation with our body — paying attention to our emotions, our nutrition, and our exercise.
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