Confessions of a Dietitian

Confessions of A Dietitian

“Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

You become what you think, and you are what you eat but did you know, you become how you breathe too? Like a domino effect, thoughts, activate a breathing pattern switching on hormones ignite feelings that impact your actions and therefore your results, both positive or negative.

In my book The Domino Diet: How to Heal You from the Inside Out  the Domino Diet Formula takes you beyond the symptom level to where it all starts, your thoughts.  ,

The Domino Diet Formula

Thoughts->Breath->Hormones->Feelings->Actions->Results

You are always thinking noticed or otherwise, which produces results, including while eating. Thoughts of guilt or shame vs. gratitude, dis-ease or ease can influence your healing, digestion and weight.  

GUILTY CONFESSIONS

I was 6-years old shopping with my mom. I noticed a stack of candied lipsticks and desperately wanted one but mom denied my request “forcing my hand” to whisk one into my purse.

Arriving home, I ran to my room. Grabbing the shiny tube, I gave it a twist and lathered my lips with the delicious pink candy.  The taste was sweet until I thought, Will God be mad?   

Desperately, I tossed the tube on the neighbor’s lawn and shouted, Look what I found!! Mom seen through my crime and marched me back to the store to confess my sins to the cashier and to the angry man in the sky, I called God.

This is my first memory of sinning with a “forbidden” food.

4-LETTER WORDS

I’m now 8, it’s Thanksgiving and I’m extra thankful—I get to sit at the adult table!

The adults gathered amongst smells of turkey, and I prepared for the traditional rounds of Thankyous but the only thing resembling Thanksgiving was the “gobbling” of food. Instead of gratitude, I heard 4-letter words like “Can’t, Have, Diet”

Grandma sheepishly grabbed some dessert vowing, “My diet starts Monday”. I was perplexed, dad talked about the “poor years” rationing food but here was a bounty with fear to eat it?

This is my first memory of “fear food” relationships.

FEELING FLAWED

Fast forward, while playing with my Barbies, I felt hungry enough walk to the kitchen and heard, “Karie, you gained weight!” I didn’t even notice I had a body let alone a flawed one.

This is my first memory of my “flawed” body and wanting to diet. I was only 10.

THE HEAL IN HEALTH

The true meaning of the word “diet”, from the Greek word Diata, means “a way of life” but they hardly seemed a desirable way of life to me, but curiosity sent me on a quest to understand them.

At 13, I was reading the Nutrition Almanac like it was Vogue magazine leading me to a career in alternative medicine. This cultivated my learning that led me into non-alternative medicine with a 30-year career as a registered dietitian. For me, the word heal in health stood out like bold print.

Everything was perfect until it ALL fell apart, along with my health. I went from a walking billboard for dietitians to a dietitian’s mess.

HORMONAL HELTER-SKELTER

“Man cannot hope to be well by thinking health if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps like a sick man.”

--Wallace Wattles

According to science, everything is energy and can be measured. Emotions (energy in motion) are no exception. Some studies suggest Shame and Guilt measure the lowest on the emotional spectrum at 20 and 30Hz while Love and Peace are at 500 and 600Hz.

My “mess” was caused by shame/guilt with a difficult divorce and chronic dis-ease thinking that morphed into a disease of my pituitary and thyroid glands. A “tug-of-war” in my mind, reciprocated with a “tug-of-war” of symptoms in my body--fatigue, hot flashes and weight gain!

FRAUD ALERT!

My knowledge in health, couldn’t compete with drowning in negative thoughts and symptoms. I thought, How can I be a dietitian? All I could see were gaps in my curriculum. I felt like a child between divorced parents of Alternative/Non-Alternative medicine—who don’t speak to each other and point out to their flaws.

I felt like a fraud as a dietitian and considered retiring until thankfully, I heard a whisper saying, “bridge the gap.” God was nudging me to turn “Adversity into my University”. 

BRIDGING THE GAP

Serendipitously, I became a Life Coach with Mary Morrissey, Co-founder of The Brave Thinking Institute. Mary healed from a life-threatening disease after a nurse came to her bedside to pray and teach on the power of thoughts to heal.

The power of the mind seemed downplayed in the medical field and yet, medications can only be approved after studies ruling out the power of the mind whereby subjects unknowingly are given the test medication or placebo (sugar pill). 

Understanding the power of thoughts helped me bridge the gap for Mind/Body/Spirit wellbeing.

But first...

WHAT IS A DIETITIAN?

Ok, so that's the definition of a dietitian.  After nearly 30 years as a dietitian, it became clearer to me that I was being prepared to combine my dietitian hat with my life coach hat.  I mean, the word diet is in the title of my career--diet-tian and I now wore the hate of a life coach studies too. The word diet means a way of life.  Like a puzzle, I believe God was nudging me towards the study of holistic wellness in life for me to understand the Heart and Science of diets. 

For years I talked about the what to eat, but rarely did I talk about the emotional part of emotional eating.  It may be true that no matter what we eat, the belief of what we are eating can have a strong impact.  In fact it will have an effect of how we absorb nutrients in all foods.  BECAUSE, how we eat, affects how we digest...

THE EATERS DIGEST

A Course in Miracles says there are 2 primary emotions, Fear and Love. At the root of food relationships, there is fear or love too.

For generations the day-to-day was to eat and not be eaten using the default Fight Flight Flee system. Hormones like cortisol increase the heart rate and slow digestion for muscles to stock with fuel. However, it’s also considered a fat storing hormone that back then was released in the flee. Today though, the “Fight Flight” with your spouse/teen comes without the flee leaving you with stocked muscles, hormone imbalance, digestive disorders, weight gain, heart disease, etc.

Thankfully, another system can switch on according to your breathing. Your brain reads for shallow/anxious breathing to switch on the Fight Flight (even watching the news). However, calm breathing suggests safety allowing the Rest, Digest and Create system switch instead. Superior digestion and nutrient absorption occurs courtesy of hormones like serotonin--helping you feel fuller and conquer “Portion Distortion”.    

CONQUERING FOOD BATTLES

Since the 80s I witnessed the battle of the Macros (Carbohydrates/Carbs, Protein, Fats). At that time, Carbs held the spotlight with “Carb-Up” powders and fructose (fruit sugar).

In the 90s, “Fat Fads” came with new oils, omegas, and butter vs. margarine debates. The Low-Fat, and Diet food era began with deceptive marketing and altering store layouts--milk moved to the back, making room for salty prepared deli meals and sugary snacks up front.

Simultaneously, diseases increased with over-nourishment of sugar, fat, salt and an undernourishment of fruits/vegetables from new fears of sugar. Then the 2000s came with “Where’s the Beef?” and high protein/low carb diets. “Indulge on bacon or bologna but don’t have fruit there’s too much sugar!??” What? These hypes negated the whole picture on benefits of fiber and nutrients in healthy carbs.

Ironically, the rave today is plant-based eating, but this isn’t new, it’s a vegan diet in disguise and primarily carbs (grains, fruits, and veggies!!). See the trend? Cycle through the macros versus understanding craving that cause “Portion Distortion and loving food like a Flexitarian.

CRACKING THE CRAVING CODE

With the battle of the Macros, few noticed the hidden army of Micros (Micronutrients: vitamins, fiber, antioxidants, etc.) in protein, fats, and carbs fighting for your immune health, healing and more. In fact, some cravings are due to nutrient deficiencies.

Trends sacrificing foods and guilt cycles are counterintuitive creating self-sabotage and increased cravings. Now many do not eat enough fruit/vegetables fearing fructose. Yet, the orange isn’t the problem while the 24oz of juice with low activity might be.

Why the overeating and fear of hunger? Are unhealed pressures masking true cravings?

“Addictions occur when you seek to fill an emptiness inside you with something outside of you.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

The word Sin, from a Greek archery term means “miss the mark.” My childhood lipstick “sin” created guilt that compounded with other events including my divorce.

I realized in raising my daughter when she “missed the mark”, I forgave her. This changed my view on “the angry man” as a forgiving God too and reframed my relationship. I noticed a calm breathing and relief compared to constrictive feelings from guilt and a connection to emotional eating.

In a study on cats x-rayed while eating, digestion was normal until a dog entered the room. With fear, their hearts raced, diaphragms constricted and most vomited. What happens when we eat under stress? Have we simply “missed the mark”?  Maybe it isn’t just what we do/don’t eat but also how we eat.

The word spirit, from the Latin word spiritus, means breath. Breathing in thoughts with the 4-Letter words, Love/Life/Diet before eating, like a prayer can align Mind/Body/Spirit. The very thing I craved that Thanksgiving Day. Nonetheless, it helped me as a “Dietitian on a Mission” to bring back the true meaning of the word diet as a way of life and put the Heal back in Health with the Domino Diet Formula.