You can also read the transcript below:
Hey everyone, welcome to “Awakening Your Wild Heart,” a short video show that brings together healing relationships with food, embodied living, and spirituality to inspire and support you in coming home to yourself. I’m your host, Julia Hollenberg, an anti-diet dietitian, food and body therapist, yoga teacher, breathwork facilitator, and a woman on my own personal path to living in freedom, true power, and boundless love. Join me in this sacred space where we journey inward to awaken and nourish your wild heart.
“You are the one you’ve been looking for. Reclaim your body, your power, your life. Hey there. Today we are going to talk about the connection between food and mood. This content is especially for you if you experience stress, anxiety, or angst around eating or your relationship with food. If you have spent much time and energy feeling dissatisfied with your body and trying to change it, this content is for you.”
“If you have or had an eating disorder, this content is relevant to you as well. It’s important to understand that one of the main factors that can impact our mood in relation to food is not consuming enough. When our body and mind feel restricted due to insufficient calories or food, it can lead to symptoms such as anxiety and depression.”
The feeling of anxiety can often trigger the urge to eat, while depression can cause your body and mind to slow down, almost like going into power saver mode. These effects can occur on a larger scale when prolonged over weeks, months, or even years, but they can also happen in a single day. For example, not eating enough earlier in the day can increase anxiety and lead to fatigue or a depressive mood.
It’s crucial to ensure that you eat enough every day. If you’ve had issues with food in the past, you may have blind spots and a distorted perception of what is sufficient. Having support from a non-diet dietitian can be really helpful in making sure you’re eating enough and preventing anxiety and depression stemming from biological deprivation.
The second connection between food and mood is the way we talk to ourselves about the food we eat, our attitudes, beliefs, and self-talk around these foods. For example, let’s take bread. Eating bread might lead to thoughts about breaking our willpower.
I can’t believe I ate that. That food is bad, it’s toxic, and it’s going to make me gain weight. All that diet mentality, those judgments, those thoughts that come from this erroneous villainizing of certain foods. If you are chattering to yourself in your mind about how bad it is or how bad you are for eating a particular food, the heaviness, the guilt, the shame, and the negative feelings that come from that, oof, that’s enough to drag anyone down into the gutter.
The food we eat definitely affects our mood, but we often mistakenly blame the food itself. It’s important to take a closer look at our attitudes, beliefs, and self-talk about food. We need to examine where our judgments and food rules come from and determine if they are helpful and true. This is a big part of healing our relationship with food and unlearning the influences of diet culture.
It’s important to cultivate a compassionate relationship with yourself. When we struggle with our relationship to food and our bodies, our inner critic can become very loud and mean. This can bring us down and cause us to feel a lack of self-esteem, belonging, and isolation. We end up feeling bad about ourselves in so many ways.
“It’s a really big blow to our mood. Therefore, one of the most beneficial and nourishing things we can do for ourselves is to develop a kind way of treating ourselves, speaking to ourselves, being with ourselves, and caring for our bodies and minds with compassion and respect. This transformation is gradual, but with practice, over time, our harshness will evolve into kindness and grace.”
“Remember that one of the best gifts we can give ourselves is to have a positive impact on our mood, outlook on life, and sense of contentment and happiness. Another important factor to consider when discussing food and mood is gut health. This is a departure from examining our attitudes, but it’s related in some ways. It’s a tricky subject, especially for those with a difficult relationship with food and their body.”
The truth is that most of the neurotransmitters that impact our mood are produced in our gut. Therefore, it is important to take care of our gut health in order to support our mood. If you are experiencing uncomfortable digestive symptoms, it might be helpful to consult a healthcare provider, preferably one who follows the anti-diet health at every size approach. This provider would understand the complexities of the relationship between food, body, and gut health and how to address them.
Gut health is essential for a healthy mood. I want to emphasize the importance of feeding our gut the things it needs so that it can produce the neurotransmitters necessary for a healthy body and mind. This is a fundamental aspect of gentle nutrition, which takes an additive approach.
“What can I add to improve the functioning of any system in the body? This question really arises from a place of care and respect. You can find plenty of information on Google about what to eat to promote good gut health, and there’s some good information out there. However, if you’re working on healing your relationship with food and your body, it can be quite challenging to start incorporating that information.”
It’s important that suggestions for nourishing the gut don’t lead to fear, perfectionism, anxiety, or a restrictive mindset. Navigating this topic requires sensitivity, patience, and delicacy. Another aspect of gut health is taking care of our nervous system. I’ll briefly discuss this now.
“It’s a vast topic, but we can’t maintain a positive, balanced mood unless we take care of our nervous system and gut health. The state of our nervous system greatly affects our gut and overall gut health. It’s all interconnected. If focusing on specific foods for gut nourishment seems overwhelming, another way to support your gut is by caring for your nervous system. This could involve attending a restorative yoga class, ensuring you get enough rest, or taking some time for yourself without any external pressures.”
And there can be many, many, many other things. This is a vast topic, one of my favorite topics, but it is really important when we’re talking about nourishing the gut and supporting a positive and balanced mood. So I know this is really high-level, but hopefully, it’s getting your gears thinking about some of the really important aspects when it comes to food and mood. Alright, I will see you next time.
