Feel. Eat. Choose One.

One of the subjects that stopped me in my tracks while reading Dr. Douglas Graham’s 80/10/10 was Emotional Eating. Not so much the fact that often times we eat because we want to feel something different (numb, full, indulged, safe, comforted, happy, etc.) even when we’re not hungry, but rather the physiology behind this habit or crutch.

Dr. Graham writes “the digestion of food and the conduction of emotions each demand so much energy that they cannot be performed simultaneously.”

WOW!

So we can eat or we can feel. Most of the time we do a bit of both: not eat too much and not feel too little. However when we are distraught or manic, we turn in one of two directions: we either eat copious amounts of comfort food (generally high fat) to stop the ability to feel intensely, or we can not eat even if we try. While experiencing extreme emotions we turn to extreme eating practices, however this generally is not our everyday mode, yet emotions and eating take place to varying degrees daily which cumulatively affect us profoundly.

As we go and grow through life sorting out the pieces of our existential puzzle, oftentimes we want to get to a new place within ourselves but we are stuck. Eating a clean diet not only cleanses the physical cells and helps metabolic and dietary waste leave our bodies, but we also cleanse our emotional and spiritual bodies of waste.

I am reminded of a post I wrote back in November of 2008 titled Emotional McDonald’s and I reflect on how my dietary and emotional life has changed dramatically since then by “upping” my game with the way I eat. I eat to nourish my body but equally I eat cleanly in order to keep my mind and heart clear. I have sorted through so much emotional and spiritual congestion in the past few years and I know that my diet has played an integral and supportive part.

If you want to get unstuck from where you are and can’t figure out how to do it emotionally or spiritually, then start with your diet. Increase the amount of fresh, raw fruit and vegetables you consume, reduce the amount of animal products and watch your body, mind and spirit transform. It will amaze you! Eating fresh, raw fruit is as close to fasting as one can get while eating and staying satiated because the fruit sugars (fructose) are digested easily and absorbed by the body through the intestinal lining with minimal effort or demand.*

An apple a day (rather 2,3, or 4!) keeps the doctor….general physician and psychiatrist both…away! When eating from God’s Kitchen, you tap into a divine source that will support your authentic growth and take you to new heights within yourself.

“As we lighten our diets to vegetarian, vegan and eventually raw, we quite commonly become more aware of our emotional selves…As one lightens the digestive load by switching to raw foods, the body suddenly has more nerve energy to conduct emotions, and emotions suppressed over the years begin to emerge.” Dr. Douglas Graham

So great!

* “Before our cells can utilize any food for fuel, whether it contains primarily carbohydrate, protein, or fat, it must first be converted into simple sugars. Carbohydrates are by far the easiest to convert to useful sugars. Glucose (a simple sugar, like fructose) is the primary, preferred source of fuel for every tissue and cell of our bodies. In fact, some of our cells (the brain, red blood cells, and some nervous tissue, for example) depend almost exclusively on glucose as their fuel source…As a category, fruits are our least toxic food choice. They digest cleanly, leaving only water as residue, which is easily expelled from the body.” Dr. Douglas Graham 80/10/10