PART 3
Weight loss as a healing process. It’s not separate from health, it’s connected to it. If healing is a process of letting go or releasing, then weight loss is one of most healing things we can do.
How can gratefulness can actually reset our metabolism, rebuild gut health, and rebalance our hormones? Let’s explore the science and scriptures for how gratefulness impacts metabolic health and weight loss!!
Gratefulness can be that catalyst that helps us release.
So, how does gratefulness reset our metabolism, rebuild gut health and rebalance hormones
And then more specifically how does gratefulness help us master emotional eating?
When our lives are built around gratefulness the powerful results of healing and weight loss that can be triggered. When we say “metabolic health” and the “metabolic approach” for reclaiming health and losing the weight long term, we’re talking about three key metabolic controls.
#1 – Cellular Energy & Metabolism – how our body uses food for fuel to create energy, blood sugar balance and increased metabolism to turn on fat burning mode
#2 – Gut Health & Detox – how our microbiome and detoxification processes release stressors like infections, excess hormones, heavy metals to build resilience physically and emotionally!
#3 – Hormone Balance & Stress – how do we rebalance our chemicals that influence every single metabolic process, and that have a direct impact on how we function and feel every day.
We help clients master these three metabolic controls through three phases of our Weight Loss Coaching program! Powerful long term results…not this orbiting management cycle of gaining and losing the weight, regaining it, and having to lose it again. Totally different approach to using lifestyle of nutrition, rest, exercise, stress, and supplemental therapies from a metabolic reset, rebuild and rebalance approach vs. calories in calories out.
The gratefulness connection to Cellular Energy & Metabolism:
- Improved sleep, decreased anxiety & depression: when our minds are filled with grateful thoughts, there is less room for anxious ones that keep us up at night. Research study in 2014 out of Indiana University found that people practicing gratitude can actually alter their brain function, especially in individuals with anxiety and depression. This study found evidence that gratitude can even induce structural changes in the very same parts of the brain that they found active in the experiment. Gratefulness rewires our brains to sleep better and feel refreshed and energetic.
- Emotional energy = physical energy: Gratefulness builds joy and joy brings strength. “The JOY of the Lord is our strength.”
The gratefulness connection to Gut Health & Detox:
- 80+% of our immune system is in our guts – gratefulness can strengthen our immune system by minimizing greed and the stressors that go along with it.
- Toxic emotions can trigger immune breakdown. Gratefulness can detoxify negative and toxic emotions that can directly impact our microbiome balance and our inflammatory responses.
The gratefulness connection to Hormone Balance & Stress:
- A mindfulness awareness study that looked at gratitude, changing those neural structures in the brain, making us feel happier, more content, feelings of gratefulness, and appreciating others, showed to trigger the hormones that help regulate the neurotransmitters of dopamine and serotonin – our anti depressant, anti anxiety chemicals. Happiness is produced from gratitude.
- The McGrady and colleagues, another study done in 2004, found that participants that were grateful showed a marked reduction in the level of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. When cortisol is reduced that can help balance insulin, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone! And build more resilience to stress and the emotional setbacks that it can cause by turning off the chronic stress response.
- Studies have also shown that gratefulness activates the hypothalamus gland and regulates body mechanics that are controlled by the hypothalamus (sleep is one of them – Stress response is another one) The hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenals – the of HPA Axis – your stress response – can either promote healing or inhibit our ability to lose weight.
Our metabolic controls are impacted with gratefulness!
Is emotional eating triggered by a spiritual stressor? Is that spiritual stressor one that can be released with gratefulness?
Emotions triggered by spiritual stress related to emotional eating:
Stay with me for a minute.
These are some of the main emotions that can cause us to use food as fillers.
#1 Boredom: We may be busy, but we’re mentally, emotionally, or restless
#2 Loneliness: We really want the social connection that we don’t have
#3 Rejection: We may eat for emotional comfort
#4 Discouragement: We eat to trigger happy hormones
#5 Frustration: We may eat to reward ourselves, or offset lack of control in another area of our lives
These emotions are the symptoms. Food is the symptom relief.
But the relief is temporary.
When our clients share they have struggled with emotional eating for years, we want to get to the root of that emotion.
At the root of the chronic negative emotion is actually a spiritual stressor.
Spiritual stressors produce fruit emotionally, mentally in our lives. They are the unseen powerhouses that can affect us physically if gone unchecked.
When food is a filler for reward, comfort, pleasure, distraction, control, those fillers that are related to those negative emotions, which are related to the spiritual stressors, gratefulness is one of the main healers.
Because typically food is used as a filler, it’s the empty calorie, high sugar, ultraprocessed foods with no nutrients.
But…
When we…
- Stock high quality, nutrient dense foods in our homes
- Implement gratefulness strategies in our lives
- Recognize and replace our spiritual stressors
- Have other coping mechanisms in place besides food
We can start to see the results of healing.
Inside our coaching program, especially in the group coaching weekly calls, we really hit the stressor side of the equation with mindset and practical strategies for mastering these spiritual stressors.
The spiritual stressors that gratefulness releases are envy, lust, and greed specifically, but there are six other spiritual stressors that also need anecdotes Take a root cause approach to inner healing by learning the tools God has outlined for us to master spiritual stressors with gratefulness, and enjoy the freedom, joy and strength that can also reclaim our health and help us release excess weight long-term!!
