Ordered Eating:
The Only Real Way to Balance Weight for Good
We know plenty about disordered eating. We know that eating too much, or only eating one type of food, or not eating enough to maintain health is disordered.
But what is ordered eating? If we can eat in a way that disorders, or negatively impacts our health, can ordered eating do the opposite?
Yes. The body knows what to do with food. The truth is that we store excess fat when we give our bodies a reason to do so when we send the signals that we might need that fat in the future.
Fat, as far as our brains and bodies see it, is our most precious resource. It can be burned for fuel to keep us warm. Or used as energy to power our bodies. It can be turned into bone cells, nerve cells, and immune cells. It can rush to a site of injury in order to crowd out infection and start the healing process. In short, fat is our war chest. And it's our savings account, the place where we store what we will need to rebuild after a trauma, starvation, famine, or other tragedy ends.
When we send our brain signals that we may be facing famine, starvation, exile, or trauma, our brains start storing fat. Those signals are deep stress, isolation, lack of nutrients, starvation, and exhaustion.
When we address these signals, that is, when we are rested, nourished, connected, and not stressed, our bodies will burn fat more readily, and not be so eager to store fat. Our appetites regulate, our metabolisms allow us to burn fat, and we only really think about food during meal times.
The truth is that deep stress, especially in the form of starvation, isolation, trauma, fear, or exhaustion has an effect on the three main forces that control our body weight: Our metabolisms, our appetite, and our sense of motivation and reward around food.
Dieting, or, as our brains call it, starvation, changes how our bodies process food. Our metabolisms adapt, so we need less and less food. Our bodies learn to function on less, and learn to store more because it thinks we are suffering a famine.
Exhaustion, over-exercise, lack of sleep, etc. cause our appetites to increase. Our brains can release compounds, such as neuropeptide Y, that make us cold, tired, lazy, and very, very hungry. When we have NPY floating around in our bloodstreams, our appetites become a force that no one can withstand. We become so hungry we have to eat, and our brains can often trick us into thinking we ate less than we actually did.
Social isolation, social stress, trauma, deprivation, and exhaustion can also make it so that food becomes our primary motivator. Food becomes the thing we find most rewarding, and the reward around high-calorie foods becomes exaggerated for us when we have experienced deep stress. We can lose our motivation towards things we once found enjoyable, and become very motivated to consume sugary or highly palatable foods.
These three forces work together. Many of us who have struggled with our weight for years have issues with all three: our metabolisms are slow, our appetites are ramped up, and our sense of motivation and reward around food has become exaggerated.
How do we turn this around? We do it by addressing the stress, exhaustion, and other factors that signal to our brains that it might be a good idea to store fat. When we address these issues, our eating becomes ordered: We go to the table hungry at meal times, eat nourishing foods, and leave the table feeling satisfied, without thinking about food much until the next meal approaches.
My book, The Short Guide to Ordered Eating, teaches you, step by step, how to address eating habits from all three angles so that you can once and for all allow your body to balance your weight.
For a free preview of the book, click here:
https://a.co/d/eBbq1WG
![The Short Guide to Ordered Eating : A Simple Program for Weight Loss by [Tina Grasso ]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41Dpjr0V5QL.jpg)
