Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, I'm Dr. Charisse Johnson, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner, and author. One of my primary specialties is supporting individuals who want to heal their relationship with their mind, their body, and food. Welcome to Mindset Matters. We have recently been in a conversation all about rumination. So just as a quick recap, rumination is that moment or moments where you are continuously thinking and focusing on thoughts. Thoughts that are often negative and somehow related to feelings of anxiety, fear, overwhelm, or just a general loss of control. When we're in this state of mind, those thoughts interrupt our day. They dysregulate us physically, they dysregulate us mentally, they dysregulate us emotionally, and they impact your relationships. So if you haven't listened to the prior podcast that talks about all of that and the impact of rumination on the brain, make sure you go back and check that out. Today. I want to specifically focus on rumination and the impact that it has on appetite. Appetite is one of those dynamics where it's not realistic to expect appetite to be the same every single day. And I want to say that because we often are in points of our lives where we are looking for this constant level of predictability, our energy is different, our hormones, regardless of what gender or even non identifying gender that you are, all of those things are constantly changing. Our stress level, the amount of sleep that we've had, our physical activity, our brain activity, our work level, all of those things are constantly changing. So it's not realistic to think that your appetite is always going to be in a static state. However, it is so crucial for us to have a really great understanding around when is my thought life impacting my appetite?
[00:02:18] And how can you maintain a level of awareness around that as well as understanding? It is your responsibility to come in and pull yourself out of the cycle so that you can nourish yourself through a place of ownership, through a place of honoring the things that you need versus feeling like food has become this impulsive relationship that you're using to temporarily help self soothe. Sounds like emotional eating, doesn't it? Now here are some various ways that rumination can impact appetite. Number one, of course it's going to impact your stress. And stress and appetite regulation are always going to go hand in hand. So if your stress level is increased, which often happens when you're ruminating on specific thoughts, stress heightens, anxiety heightens. That's going to disrupt your natural hormonal balance. And your hormones help regulate your appetite. So you have your ghrelin which is your hunger hormone, your leptin, which is your satiety or satisfaction hormone. You have cortisol, which is your stress hormone. There are multiple, but those are the three most basic that you're familiar with and that we'll talk about for this conversation. So when you're stressed, that can either suppress appetite in some individuals or it can lead to an increase in cravings for high calorie foods, high sugar foods. Those are just typically the things that our brain will crave when we're struggling. So rumination always increases stress.
[00:03:58] I know you didn't want to hear that, but it is the truth. Ruminating on life, situations of life, worries and concerns does not lead you down a path too calm.
[00:04:16] It exhausts you. So that place that you think, oh well, I finally get to a point where it's at rest isn't because you have come across some magic solve or you have thought through things in a manner that is productive. Typically you ruminate to the point where you hit a wall, where you burn out, where you're exhausted, or you've engaged in such a high level of emotional eating that you overwhelms your system. And then you're more focused on how bad you feel from perhaps the food and the drink and the substances that you've taken in, not necessarily that problem. And then it's this wild, chaotic ride to try to get yourself back to your general place of well being. Sound familiar? If it does, remember, this is a place of no shame. This is not a place of judgment. This is a place of education, insight, and encouragement. I want you to understand you have so much power to break the cycle of rumination and to walk away from the way that it impacts your appetite. Other ways that it can impact appetite is emotional eating. We talked about this a little bit right at the beginning of the start. When your stress levels increase because you're ruminating, you are more likely to eat as a way to cope with the negative feelings. And when I say eat, for all intent and purposes, I want us to look at eating from the full spectrum. You may eat less or you may eat more. News flash, you don't win an award for eating less when you're stressed. That is just as much of an issue and causes its own set of damage as it does if you are eating in excess of your body's needs. Neither are where we want you to be. All or nothing is not a win we want. We meaning all the people who are rooting for you in your life. All of us who work with and Support individuals who are navigating. What does it mean to heal and to be healthy in a way that is sustainable? We desire for you to find that middle ground where you are staying aware of what you're eating. What are the emotional undertones and motivations of why you're eating the way that you're eating. What are you noticing about your choices and how they are impacting you on a consistent basis? Outside of this platform, I'm on a mental health app called Cadre and one of the things that I do every single week with individuals is we go through a once a week opportunity to discuss if your plate could talk, what would it tell you? So we're looking at, here's what's happening in life, here's what we're noticing is on your plate in terms of how you're nourishing yourself and how the two are correlating. That is an intentional skill that is so necessary. But when rumination is a part of the equation, it comes in and it disrupts your ability to focus, to pay attention, to honor, to shift and to align with the things that you know you value. So rumination impacts your stress and your appetite regulation. It is more likely to increase your level of emotional eating. Number three. It is a distraction from your hunger cues. Now, I love the concept of hunger cues. I love the conversation. Usually when I even mention the word hunger cues, most people will immediately say, I don't have them.
[00:08:10] I've never had them.
[00:08:13] I don't know what they are or what they feel like. And I'm holding back right now because every part of me wants to go off into a conversation about hunger cues, but I will not. Here's what I can say. You're designed, we are all designed to have hunger cues. Hunger cues are, are present when we are consistent with how we eat. So when we have consistent sleep wake cycles, when we are eating adequate meals at adequate intervals and keeping our blood sugar in check and making sure that we are paying attention to the signs and the physical signs that we're hungry. Hunger cues are in place now for the focus of our conversation. When we are ruminating and our mind is going a million miles an hour, it leads us to be even further away from our physical symptoms. I want you to think about this. So the body is completely connected throughout your nervous system through neurotransmitters, cells and nerve endings that run throughout your entire body from top to bottom. But when we are in high, significant chronic places of stress, there can feel like this disconnect. So from the Neck down, we become disconnected, we become unaware. We don't want to feel because feeling can be threatening, it can be overwhelming. We're caught up in our mind, up in our head, thinking about things over and over, exhausting every single thing we can consider to try to solve a problem that one may not be ours to solve, or two, is it going to get better? Because you spend time overthinking, although you've been led to believe that that works for you somewhere in life. And when that disconnect happens, we lose target connection. We have an altered awareness when we're ruminating, so we become less attuned to our body's hunger and satiety signals. So our eating patterns become irregular, whether that's overeating or under eating. And you may also notice as an example, those are the moments where you're mindlessly eating. You're kind of just grazing through the day, and it takes some big, huge, strong physical sensation for you to even realize, oh, I've overeaten and my body's responding, or I've undereaten and now I'm shaky, I'm anxious, I feel like I'm about to pass out.
[00:11:02] Number four, there's an impact on our digestive health when we are ruminating mind to body. The digestive tract, the stomach, is often called your second brain. There's a direct correlation and connection. These parts of your body are constantly talking to each other. So if this is incessant and chaotic and you're overthinking, you're going to also feel that in your digestion.
[00:11:36] So chronic rumination affects digestion through the stress response that can potentially lead to gastrointestinal issues. And those gastrointestinal GI issues will further influence your appetite. That's often why IBS can be at play for you and then particularly flare when you're stressed, when you're overthinking, when you have all of these neurochemicals shooting off into your body, getting into your gut, disrupting the acidity in your gut, and then making it difficult for you to digest and process your food, creating acid reflux, bloating, stomach pain, lack of appetite, not feeling like you can ever be satisfied. The list goes on and on. But I want to say it again, just as I said in the first episode around rumination, rumination is a learned behavior. And anything that we have learned, we can unlearn. So again, say it with me. I can unlearn rumination as a skill. Newsflash. It's a skill, but not an adaptive skill. It is an unhealthy coping skill that does not work.
[00:13:01] I know. I wish I could hear you talking back to me because I know some of you are going, but Dr. Shareese, I've done it and it works. No, thinking through a problem is great. Being able to sit down and focus on a problem and come up with solutions is phenomenal. There's a time and a place and a structure to do that. Having thoughts constantly disrupt your mind and your focus is not an adaptive or healthy skill. It leads to all the things that we've been talking about. Number five, there's long term consequences. Physiologically, chronic rumination not only impacts things like digestion and your immune system, but it does impact weight changes over time. We eat rooted in a biological need, a psychological need, a social need, just to name a few. So if any of those are being disrupted by our chronic level of rumination and thought, then over time the combination of emotional eating, altered appetite signals and stress is going to contribute to constant fluctuations in your weight depending upon how you respond to those emotions. So if you've ever been in a situation where you feel frustrated that your weight is not stable, first understand there are so many various dynamics that impact weight. But our stress level and our thought life are two significant factors that are going to impact our choices and what we reach for. And over time, if that becomes a chronic state, it is going to impact our ability to have a level of homostasis in our weight. That is why we can't ever look at our relationship with food like a drill sergeant. That is why we can't ever view our relationship with food as something that is a matter of solely self discipline and self will. Because you can be self disciplined. And if there's enough stress in your life and you're trying to outthink the stress in your life, there's a problem. And that way of coping through overthinking, through ruminating is not the way. Here are a few general interventions. I'm going to do a part three that will have the entire time focused on interventions strategies to help break the cycle of rumination, which is by default going to help support your level of appetite, your physical health, your emotional health and your interpersonal health. But in general, I want to give you two. In this episode, mindfulness based stress reduction. Things such as meditation, breathing, things that help create calm and non judgment. Do you have a good understanding of mindfulness as a whole? A lot of us don't, but when we are really locked into mindfulness, there's a level of awareness non Judgmental awareness. There's a level of curiosity towards man, why am I showing up this way? Why am I responding this way to the stressors in my life? Why will my brain not stop and slow down? So anything that we can do to become more mindful, more self awareness, less judgmental and to bring the body down is going to be key. And then there's the dynamic of cognitive behavioral therapy, cbt, which is also a great approach that does need to be conducted through somebody who's a licensed professional therapist. But that is an excellent option. If you know that you are someone that has historically struggled with rumination and it is having a significant impact on your life.
[00:16:58] Give yourself permission to get some support. Know that it is not always a matter of you being able to stop it on your own. It doesn't make you better or worse because you can't. I do want you, for all intents and purpose, as an action step from this. I want you to pay attention. I want you to track.
[00:17:19] As you go through the next few weeks, notice what's the correlation? What's the connection between where your thoughts are, how repetitive they are, the undertone, the feelings and the emotions that they bring to the surface, and what do you notice about how you're choosing the food that you take in? That awareness is so key and so essential. When you can understand the interplay between rumination and appetite, it is critical. It'll help you figure out what are the interventions that you need and it can help you break out of the cycle of chaotic eating, of disordered eating, and move into a place of being a mindful and intuitive eater which we were all designed and created to be. That being said, I'm glad that you chose to come spend a little time with me. Hope you learned something that is useful and helpful not only in your life, but perhaps in the life of the people around you. Share this goodness with someone who might really need to hear these things, hear these tools, and then join me for the next episode where I will spend the entire time specifically talking about strategies and interventions to help break the cycle of rumination so you can take back your life and eat from a place of wellness. Have a good one.
