By Aubrey Turner, certified Functional Nutritionist
The energetics of eating- the how of eating, not the what of eating! This is my jam and I’m so excited to share it with you!
I’ve spoken here twice before about our 2 different nervous system responses: fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest and I’d love to do a quick recap for you as this is the basis for the energetics of eating.
Fight-or-Flight
The body’s automatic response to stress; by “automatic response” I mean our body innately goes into this response at any sign of stress because to the body all stress equates to a life or death situation.
When in flight-or-fight, with the only focus being survival, certain functions are paused including digestion.
While fight-or-flight has kept us alive throughout the centuries, staying in this innate response has surprising detrimental effects to our health.
Rest-and-Digest
Rest and digest is a state of reset and recovery for the body, mind, hormones, and digestion; however, we do not automatically enter rest-and-digest, we must actively bring ourselves into this response state.
Unfortunately however, it's not always easy, possible, or realistic to just stop being in fight-or-flight; as important and beneficial as entering rest-and-digest is, me time, rest time, and sleep (all of which will help active this restful response) just won’t happen every day or as much as we need it to!