Food, emotional eating and trauma (Part 2 - food protocols)

In the last decades society has been increasingly worried about food protocols and food purity. Taking care of our health and being concerned with what we put into our bodies is not in itself a bad thing. But like everything else balance is key.

For many of us this can become an exaggerated concern. Hijacking our days with anxiety about supplements, food protocols or starving ourselves with crazy fasts. This is just another angle to invite more stress into your system. Not to mention many of these practices will feed straight into unresolved trauma some of us already have around food.

For instance, fasting will initiate a natural fight/flight response in your nervous system. This is a perfect design, as our ancestors, hunter-gatherers, would need this sympathetic response in their systems to have enough energy and motivation to look for food.
Conversely, obsessing with fasting when there is already unresolved trauma and/or when you are already living in a state of chronic stress will send your body into more stress induced loop. Prolonging this fasting practices, on top of already being in chronic stress, might potentially contribute to sending your nervous system into a state of shutdown.

Fasting can also invite implicit memories of love deprivation or times of extreme stress (as nurturance and food can be coupled in our experience from very early memories - see part 1 for an explanation on this).

Does this mean we cannot fast for health or religious reason? No. It just means it is important to know your own system and personal reasons you are driven to act in certain unhelpful ways.

Have you noticed any negative effects of food protocols you have used in the past? I would love to hear more in the comments.

In part 3 I will be sharing a few pointers towards more balance in this area of life.