We are what we eat
Back in the days before yoga, I attended a wellbeing event where Carol Champion, a local nutritionist, held a talk on nutrition.
Up until that point my dietary choices were generally based on calorific and fat content and whether said food would make me fat, mainly because at that point I was still in the grips of an eating disorder. I was also experiencing periods of depression and PMS symptoms that caused distress for 14 days of each cycle.
I was inspired by Carol’s talk and booked an appointment with her to consider my dietary needs. It was Carol who first helped me to recognise that the symptoms I were experiencing went under the umbrella of PMS, and it was she who suggested a whole new approach to eating, which was life changing for me.
A all of a sudden I was being encouraged to eat for my health, and not for my weight. This notion had never crossed my mind – it was revelatory. I had been so hung up on my weight that I hadn’t thought for a minute that the food we eat and the drinks we drink not only impact our health but our state of mind, our energy levels and general wellbeing too.
What’s more, her approach actually worked. I was encouraged to eat foodstuff that I never usually allowed myself to eat, because it was either high in fat content (think humous and avocados) or taboo because I thought it would cause me to put on weight (rice, potatoes). Coupled with a selection of vitamins and mineral complexes to boost my deficient body, I was amazed how much better I felt as my energy levels increased, my moods stabilised, the PMS symptoms eased and amazingly, I actually lost weight.
Thus began my passion for nutrition and I read veraciously on the subject, undertaking various online courses in the process. Spending time in Byron Bay Australia, where I undertook my yoga teacher training course back in 2005, helped feed my interest. The wife of my yoga teacher on that course, holds a PhD in health and nutrition with a keen interest in the benefits of fasting and raw food, not least to support healing but as a way of living.
I dabbled in both, undertaking a 5-day juice fast and living on raw foods for a few months, but this austere approach triggered the eating disorder to the extent that my periods stopped and I was unable to sleep such was the intensity of the energy. It was this experience and the unbalancing effect it had on me, which led me to Ayurveda and the Ayurvedic approach to diet, which I have fairly much followed ever since, this in 2006.
Essentially we eat to live, but this is a concept that gets lost on many in our current fast food generation. It’s scary really the extent of the fast and processed foods available to us now, so that eating ‘food’ ‘made’ in a factory has become the norm for many.
It is worth remembering, therefore, that food is something which nourishes and sustains us. It can be helpful to think about the foods we eat to nourish and sustain ourselves and consider ways that we can restore good health, or enhance it through our choice in food.
It is also helpful to consider our perception of foods and especially the hyper-palatable junk foods and also our eating behaviours – how and why we eat? Plus the impact this has on the environment and planet generally.
Recently I requested that my Reiki attunement students bring a home-made vegetarian meal with them to the session. Many were thrown by this. Not least the fact the meal had to be vegetarian – why? - because generally meat has a heavier energy and we are trying to keep our energy light, see more before. But also because I was asking them to make it themselves. Previously students would often dash to the shop on the way to class and grab a factory made processed sandwich or a plethora of plastic-held vegetarian snacks, for the main part devoid in energy.
We have to remember that everything has energy to it. We are composed of energy. The trees are composed of energy. The plants are composed of energy. Our pets are composed of energy. Every living thing contains energy – which we might also call prana or life force.
Thus, ideally, our diet might benefit from incorporating more plant-based foods, more whole and fresh foods, which are, for the most part, filled with prana. Even better if those foods have been grown organically and with love, in mineral dense soil, and harvested with care to the local environment.
However nowadays, most foods are mass grown in deficient soil, devoid of love, and harvested with very little care – you only have to look at how the hedge rows are butchered by tractors in June and September here on Guernsey to imagine the devastation that occurs when mass harvesting enormous fields where time is money and little regard is therefore given to the habitat, which may have taken residence in said fields and surrounding areas.
And I haven’t even touched on the pesticides which are sprayed on crops and the impact these chemicals have on the human body, other animals and the environment at large. And I am not even going to go there in this blog about the vaccines and hormones injected into livestock or the way they are treated, prior to being slaughtered, then processed through factories and packaged in plastic before ending up on your plate.
Plus, I am still processing the horrific footage in David Attenburgh’s recent documentary, Oceans, in which he shows the devastation caused to the sea beds by the huge trawlers collecting fish and scallops, which are sold to the huge supermarkets. To say nothing of fish and prawn farming and some of the awful practices, let alone the fact these fish and crustaceans are swimming in water that you wouldn’t want to put your hand in, let alone consume.
I digress…
So focusing on home-cooked meals, allows not only more connection with food but might encourage us to consider what we are eating to nourish both ourselves and the planet. Even better if we can imbue our foodstuff with Reiki. But of course it takes time. And this was one of the issues for my Reiki students – having time to make their own lunch.
This surprised me somewhat, and caused me to recognise how much we prioritise our time and activities differently. I spend an enormous amount of time making meals from scratch. I love to bake home-made snacks and bread, and I even make my own nut butters and milks. None of it feel like a chore, and I prioritise it over other activities, because I want to eat well and I want my children to eat well too – I actually find it relaxing and calming.
It wasn’t just time, but money that was thrown into question. Someone argued that it costs a lot to eat well. I disagree, mainly because our family diet focuses on plant-based foods and vegetables, even organic, are not so expensive, especially if buying off the hedge here in Guernsey. And we try not to waste food. Plus I buy in bulk nuts, seeds, oats, oils, that kind of thing from healthysupplies.co.uk. It is all about prioritising what it is important, and also, changing some of our unhealthy habits.
It is worth noting that we develop taste preferences to the foods we habitually eat. Whether it is healthy or unhealthy foods, what we eat today we will likely crave tomorrow. We tend to love the foods we eat the most even if they are not very good for us. I find this fascinating, how we get attached to the foods that actually harm us.
Furthermore, a lot of people don’t like eating vegetables, yet we can train our body to love healthy foods. Generally, the only reason people don’t love vegetables is because they don’t eat them enough. We will eventually stop craving hyper-palatable and over-stimulating foods once we stop indulging in them for a long enough period of time.
Once our palate and brain chemistry adjusts to the flavours of whole and natural plant food, we will – in theory - get more pleasure out of life, because our ‘taste’ is influenced on all levels of being. We may find that we lose weight, free ourselves from addictive food cravings, reduce our need for medications and begin to feel better than we have ever felt previously – this was certainly my experience.
In Ayurveda we recommend that clients try and stick with any recommended diet regime for a moon cycle of 29 days, for them to really feel the benefit. After such time many discover that the food they didn’t think they could live without not only doesn’t taste as good as they remember, but can actually makes them physically sick.
It helps to be aware that all eating stimulates production of dopamine in the brain (dopamine is perhaps the most blissful, addictive and home-made chemical we possess). However the more calorie dense the food, the more dopamine is secreted. Salt, sugar, and fat combined with chemicals in processed foods, trick the brain in the same way as cocaine, and the brain flushes our bodies with higher levels than normal of dopamine. Once we find a way to trigger it, we may actually kill ourselves to get more – and quite literally too.
Sadly then, we can grow to love the things that kill us – in this case unhealthy food. Unhealthy eating styles and food addictions take control of our brains and this addiction to certain foods is often as deadly as other addictions.
Dopamine regulates motivation and feelings of pleasure. So regardless of the addiction, the brain reacts in the same way. Concentrated calories in refined foods, like fats and sugar, produce a surge of dopamine levels similar to the levels found in people who abuse illegal drugs. The brain is literally wired to ensure we repeat behaviours that make us feel good by associating them with the sweet release of dopamine and specific brain patterning. The brain records a pleasurable action as a beneficial pattern that needs to be remembered and repeated automatically.
There is such a thing as the dietary pleasure trap which distinguishes the difference between eating to live and living to eat, which goes something like this:
Phase 1 – The ‘normal’ pleasure zone. All animals on the planet have been designed to enjoy the food they have evolved to eat. We naturally have a taste for natural plant food after weaning. A normal dopamine-pleasure response lets us know we have found something in our environment that is biologically beneficial for us. Thus, in theory, eating whole, natural foods with low calorie density we have a normal pleasure response to the food we eat. Here we eat to live.
Phase 2 – when we introduce foods that are refined and calorie dense (hyper- palatable junk food) such as milk chocolate, pizza, burgers, ice cream, namely foods, which are highly concentrated in oil, salt, and sugar, and have a lot more calories per bite, there is an increase in dopamine production – the more dopamine the more pleasure and the more we like it - our body goes, “Wow! That's really good. That must be the right thing to do. We have to keep doing that”. Here we live to eat.
Sadly, we have created hyper-palatable junk foods that overwhelm the system in combinations that never existed in olden time. For example, sugar and fat don’t exist side by side in nature in high concentrations, let alone sugar and salt, fat and salt, fat, sugar and salt. They are not only overly rich (in our ancestral history meat would have been richest calorific dense food 880 calories now we have 2200 in a peanut or almond butter sandwich) and over abundant – in a natural setting rich foods were seasonally limited e.g. nuts/avocado. The higher the calorie density the more dopamine is stimulated in the brain – the more dopamine the more pleasure – the more we like it.
Phase 3 – After eating hyper-palatable foods regularly, the pleasure centres (pleasure, reward, motivation) adapt by down regulating the dopamine receptors such that high calorie density foods now leads to a ‘normal pleasure’ response. - called neuroadaptation, which is the hallmark of addiction. Thus, after the initial period of change, these hyper-palatable junk foods create the same amount of pleasure that whole natural foods did initially.
Unfortunately, this leaves us in a state of emptiness as a baseline where we have to keep consuming hyper-palatable foods to feel OK. Anything less than this results in physical and emotional discomfort. This is where many people operate from. When it is suggested that they give up these highly-palatable foods, there is fear and resistance as they think about all the foods that means and there can be terror – this is the dopamine downregulating talking, the part of the brain that says, “I won’t feel OK without these foods”.
We can end up stuck in a cycle of eating and feeding our addictions and letting the rest of our life suffer because we can’t be as good a parent, partner, worker, because the hyper-palatable food lowers our intelligence, creativity, productivity, happiness, caring for others and nature etc. They also reduce our ability to make good choices for our future. Now the brain needs lots of stimulation (refined foods) or lots of eating to maintain the dopamine levels, and anything less results in physical and emotional discomfort.
Phase 4 – Needless to say, when we revert back to eating whole-plant foods that have a lower dopamine response, we experience a subnormal pleasure response - think of trying to eat broccoli and carrots after eating pizza and ice cream. Our dopamine receptors have been down regulated and the healthy foods do not give us much pleasure – everything feels a bit depressing. People can experience withdrawals when they stop eating the highly-palatable foods. Just like any addict, they are not only eating the food to induce the positive effects (dopamine hit) but they continue to eat these foods to avoid the withdrawal effect – the classic addict. Furthermore, the new foods taste horrible to them but they don’t realise this will change.
Phase 5 – Called recovery stage. Whenever you put your system under deprivation it regains its sensitivity and healthy foods start to taste good again. Thus if we stick with the whole, natural foods for a short period of time (weeks to small number of months), the pleasure response will recalibrate (the receptors will up regulate and replenish) such that these low-calorie density foods fire the ‘normal pleasure response’ receptors again. In order to achieve this, we need to be comfortable being uncomfortable for a short period of time.
It helps to eat slowly and with awareness so that we can notice the fact that we are eating, chew well and taste of our food. Frequently we can deny ourselves the immense pleasure of actually tasting our food. For many, they may shovel away, bite after bite, until the food is gone or they are full because that is what we are conditioned to do. In many ways, eating has become almost like breathing - we do it without even thinking about it. We forget to pay attention to the art of eating, which adds to the vicious cycle of never feeling satisfied with both what we eat and how much.
Furthermore, we have been taught that moderation is OK and is the key to success. However, for the most part moderation doesn’t work. Recent statistics suggest that 70% of people are overweight or obese in the West and most people today are sick. When we engage in what is termed, ‘intermittent reinforcement’, we are reinforcing old patterns and habits, eating highly-palatable foods, then this stops the taste buds properly adjusting to a new diet and keep us craving hyper-palatable foods. In many ways we need to eliminate the lethal phrase, “this little bit won’t hurt”. And it is food addicts, especially mothers, who need to rationalise moderation.
So we come back to choice. And being increasingly conscious of why we are eating what we are eating and the foodstuff source. Furthermore, we can consider foods, not simply in terms of their vital energy and the effect they have on our energy field, but in the manner they affect our mind and our perception of reality and therefore our wellbeing and our consciousness.
Some of you will have come across the terms Sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic, which are categories of food in the Ayurvedic and indeed yogic tradition that describe their effect on the mind and body. For example:
Sattvic foods
These foods are pure, light, and nurturing, promoting peace and clarity. They are believed to have a calming and purifying effect on the mind and body.
Characteristics: Fresh, nourishing, light, with subtle flavors.
Benefits: Promote inner peace, mental clarity, good health, and well-being.
Examples: Fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, fresh dairy, ghee, and mild spices like cumin and ginger.
Rajasic Foods
These foods are stimulating and can energize the body and mind, but in excess, they may cause agitation and tension.
Characteristics: Pungent, salty, spicy, and stimulating.
Benefits: Can increase alertness and energy when consumed in moderation.
Examples: Coffee, tea, spicy foods, chilies, onions, garlic, fermented foods, and refined sugars.
Tamasic Foods
These foods are considered heavy, dulling, stale or decaying and detrimental to mental and physical health.
· Characteristics: Heavy to digest, stale, processed, overripe, or decaying.
Benefits: Can lead to sluggishness, confusion, anger, and a lack of vital energy.
Examples: Processed foods, ultra-processed foods, stale leftovers, alcohol, excessive meat, and refined grains.
I am hopeful that this article has been thought provoking, and you might begin to consider that you are indeed what you eat. There are some marvellous books which may help more, and here’s a list of a few of them:
The Medicinal Chef by Dale Pinnock
You Are What You Eat by Dr Gillian McKeith
The Good Stuff by Lucinda Miller
The Every Day Ayurveda Cookbook by Kate O’Donnell.
Fast Food Genocide by Joel Fuhrman
Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken
Natural Hygiene by Herbert Shelton
I feel that increasingly we need to elevate our perspective, to consider more consciously our choices in not only what we put into our body (whether it will increase our prana, whether it is grown/produced with love, whether it is sprayed in chemicals or not), but also the industries/businesses/practices that we support (do they treat their staff well, do they have respect for the planet, do they try to be sustainable), and the impact that this all has on the planet, as well as the rest of humanity, let alone our own karma.
In this way we really can be the change we wish to see in this world – not only promoting greater peace and harmony, but wellness, love and consciousness too.
Love Emma x
P.S. Here’s a SUPER easy bread recipe
