Shadow Patterns: The dark side of diets
Episode 5
Welcome back to our Samskara series. There’s nothing like a pandemic, lock down and isolation to make you reevaluate what’s important, amiright? So throughout this month Instead of getting all twisted up with goal setting & behavior change we’re Shifting perspective on habits. Instead of looking at behavior from outside we’re excavating the deep internal patterns of survival, tension and emotion that support and direct our habits and in today's episode we're looking at some of our habits & shadow patterns around nutrition and food.
I’ve coached and taught behavior change for 20 + years. It is possibly the most challenging part of wellness after teaching the RPE scale. It’s difficult because no one else can do it for you. And the Nike logo “just do it” is only motivating for about 30 seconds.
Most people confuse their patterns with habits and so they go after the wrong goal. And as a fit pro that’s what we’re taught to work with what we can see. To help clients get visible measurable results. The faster the better. Set SMART goals. Specific, measurable attainable, realistic and time bound. Anyone can do this. Anyone can do anything for a limited amount of time. That’s the problem with almost every diet and exercise plan on the planet. Follow the plan, do the things, get the results, and then what? What no one tells you is that unless you’re willing to uncover and shift the shadow patterns that created those habits in the first place it’s nearly impossible to keep those results long term. Our mental, emotional & physical patterns provide the infrastructure for our beliefs and drive our actions.
Maybe one of the most powerful, deeply entrenched patterns we have are our shadow patterns around food. Changing an eating habit, or any habit permanently is nearly impossible without also addressing the underlying patterns that support it.
I’ve said it before and you’ll hear me say this many times going forward. To me diet is a 4 letter word. I cringe when I hear a client tell me they need to diet or ask what diet is the best or ask why they can’t lose weight when they’re only consuming 1200 calories a day.
Now before you x out of this episode, I want you to know I will NOT preach at you about what you should be eating or not eating. I will present facts to you about nutrition. You’re all grown ass adults and are perfectly capable of feeding yourself and making informed choices. You’re also perfectly capable of enjoying the health consequences of those actions. But don’t think for one minute there aren’t any. You don’t wake up one morning with metabolic syndrome and prediabetes because you ate that one piece of cheesecake last night. But 85% of your health equation is what you eat. So if you aren’t enjoying the consequences of your current eating pattern then your plate might be a good place to start.
More than how much we weigh or how we look or what size we wear, how we nourish the body gives us access to affect how the body interprets safety or threat from your environment. Having a “gut feeling is a real thing. Your digestive system is integrated with your autonomic nervous system via the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is basically a superhighway of communication from your body to your primitive brain. Most of the lanes in that highway run from your gut up to the brain. Constantly checking in with status reports. (80% of the messages) are from your gut to your brain.
Now this is very important. It means that it’s literally your gut that tells you if you feel ok or not.
So when you’re under chronic stress, when you’re stuck in overdrive and high alert, the nervous system shuts down all non essential systems so it can help you survive the threat. One of those happens to be your digestive system.
Not only does that cut off communication between your body and brain, it also makes it very difficult for you to extract nutrients from your food, it disrupts the balance of the gut bacteria, suppressing our immune system function, lead to painful gut dysfunction and autoimmune disorders and disrupts our hormone balance. And not just any hormones either. The gut produces 90%Serotonin and 50% Dopamine. These play a huge role in our sense of well-being, think happiness and motivation. But it also plays a role in gut motility, mood, sleep and appetite as well as wound healing.
Now remember that our nervous system is responsible for keeping us alive. So it shuts down the gut because you don’t need an appetite at the same time as you’re running away from a lion. You don’t need a full stomach when you’re fighting for your life against a bear. That’s why elevated stress levels or any stressful situation might make you lose your appetite or lose your lunch.
It’s not supposed to last long though. Once the stress has passed then everything is supposed to come back on line. Chronic stress doesn’t allow that to happen. As we’ve discussed before there are no shades of grey when it comes to how your body interprets threat. It operates on an all or nothing design. So that threat may be active and present coming from outside of us or it could be coming from our own shadow patterns.
When it comes to eating patterns many of us have so much shame and guilt associated with and expressed in our relationship with food it’s almost impossible to tease them out. And when we are looking at the effects of stress on our body, gut & digestive system it can become kind of a chicken or the egg conversation. Does the stress trigger the shut down that triggers the gut dysfunction that triggered the depression & anxiety or did the depression & anxiety trigger the stress that triggered the gut dysfunction?
That is not as important a question as how can we disrupt that underlying pattern?
If we know that our gut communicates safety & well being or discomfort & threat with the unconscious brain along primitive pathways of the vagus nerve. Can we change or affect those messages in conscious and intentional ways?
The answer is yes. Through how and what we eat.
Everything we eat tells the gut what bacteria we need in order to absorb the nutrients we’re giving it. Through our food choices and eating patterns we create our own personal gut microbiome. That bacterial ecosystem then does it’s job to the best of its ability. We can in effect communicate with our body, send coded messages to that ecosystem and in turn through that ecosystem by what we are consuming.
But most people don’t understand this connection because we’re so caught up in the toxic combination of stress & diet culture. When we are eating the standard American diet or highly restrictive diet or even just the same things in the same way for too long we send mixed messages that can disrupt that ecosystem to the point that it becomes another source of danger to the nervous system.
How we eat is simply another survival pattern. Like any other it’s been developed over time to serve you in some way. The how and what of our eating pattern is often the side of the pattern that people try to change first. As in how often you eat, what you put on your plate. These are the easy obvious things, the things you can see. If you change them you’ll get results you can see. But if we want to effect the things we can’t see, our mood, sense of well being, maybe the resilience of our nervous system, then we need to look into the shadows.
Here are a few questions that I started asking myself to shine a light on some of the shadow patterns around my relationship to food. Put on your curiosity caps because some of these might be a little uncomfortable. Once we understand some of our physical, emotional and mental patterns around food then we can begin to move from that awareness to action. No judgement here...
Picture your 6 year old self sitting at the table for a meal. What were some of the messages you received about food?
Why are you eating now? Are you hungry? Bored? Sad? Overwhelmed? Angry? Lonely?
There’s nothing wrong with any of those feelings. You have every right to feel them. But not all of those feelings are your body telling you it needs fuel.
What is the sensation in your body when you are hungry?
Do you know what it feels like when your body is asking for food?
What is the sensation in your body when you are full?
How do you know when to stop? When is enough enough and not too much?
Can you savor your food?
Do you chew enough? Are you rushed? Do you taste what you eat?
Do you feel nourished or guilty after your meals?
Do you find yourself feeling “bad” or “good” about your choices? When you look in the mirror do you see a body that deserves to be cared for?
Now I know that some of those questions might feel like poking the bear. And you might feel things you’re not ready to feel right now. That’s ok.
But it’s not enough to simply become aware that we have these patterns. At some point if we’re going to grow or change in positive ways, there needs to be some kind of action that goes beyond judgement. The question is what action. Once we recognize a pattern that we know needs to change, how do we go about changing it in a successful way?
But can you pick one of those new bits of awareness that came up for you and then rather than cracking down and telling yourself “I’m not gonna do that anymore” think about 2 or three new, different or perhaps opposite thoughts or behaviors that you can have on hand to replace it with.
So for example if you discovered that when you were little a parent forced you to eat green beans all the time and you hate green beans and that’s why you hate all vegetables now. Listen this was me. I hated everything except corn and carrots.
Some of the thought patterns I was having around all food but especially vegetables:
I hate vegetables, they’re all gross.
I work hard and I deserve to eat whatever I want.
A calorie is a calorie, I can burn it off.
Forcing myself to eat Vegetables that I don’t like feels like punishment.
I’m a grown up, I don’t have to and no one can make me.
You’re not the boss of me…
Some of the thought patterns that I replaced them with.
I deserve to be pain free
I know my gut needs variety, it needs nutrients.
This body needs greens to be healthy.
I deserve to be healthy, pain free.
I can show my self love by what I put on my plate.
I deserve to be cared for and feel comfortable in my own skin.
Embracing those new thoughts lead to different actions around my food choices. Including experimenting with some different food cleanses, eating patterns to discover what felt good to my gut, my energy levels and that I felt like I could enjoy and sustain easily. I had to learn some new recipes and also be open to eating veggies in different ways. Like for breakfast. That’s where my Happy Belly Breakfast salads come from. If you want to try them head over to elementalkinetics.com/free-resources and you can sign up to try them for yourself!
It’s not always going to work. We’re all works in progress. You’re gonna feel resistance. Shadow patterns are powerful; they've kept you safe for a long time. You’ll hear all kinds of excuses to talk yourself out of change.
It’s ok to have those conversations with yourself. It’s part of reconnecting to self awareness. Of rebuilding a friendlier relationship within your body. Ideally with some time, curiosity and kindness towards yourself you can develop a more intuitive eating pattern based on trusting the sensations and messages you’re getting from your body. But at no time should any diet choice or eating plan ever cause you suffering. Whether that’s from restriction through starvation or shame & guilt from over indulgence. Our reactions to suffering of any kind are also shadow patterns.
It can take a long time to break out of those patterns. I used to feel like a failure whenever I broke down and binged on chocolate chips. But the reality is, sometimes for some reason (probably because of what I ate yesterday) I just crave chocolate. It’s not every day. But sometimes I do. So I can either give my body what it wants, savor it and put it away. Or I can deny myself and feel angry and resentful and take it out on everyone around me until I give in anyway and then punish myself later in my work out. Which one do you think turns down my stress response?
The key is to keep coming back to the kinder choices on our plate. We don’t have to fall into the all or nothing trap. Everything no matter how small makes a difference. You don’t have to change everything all at once. Simply shine a light into the shadows a little bit at a time and begin where you are. What you put on your plate can be an act of self love. In yoga we say that the hardest thing to change in any pose is the mind and that’s just as true here but Before you know it all those little shifts add up to big, permanent health changes. So today what can you do to take a step out of your shadow eating patterns and move from awareness to action?
Let me know in the comments!
I’m Ericka….
I coach warriors. Guiding outstanding individuals off the battlefield of trauma For lasting resilience to all sources of stress, tension and anxiety.
Book a call to explore ways to work through the body to re-establish safety in the body and reconnect with family, friends & most importantly ourselves. In a natural, realistic and balanced way