Eat for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss

By Dr. Mercola

Many people have a problem with their relationship with food. Some overeat, others undereat, and many struggle with their weight despite doing everything right “on paper.” Marc David, addresses these and other issues in his book.

He’s also the head of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, which offers an eight-week long virtual retreat that teaches you how to nourish yourself in a whole new way. As for how he got into this field, he says:

“Sonoma State University allowed me to do an independent study for my master’s degree in Eating Psychology. I put an ad in a newspaper that said, ‘Graduate student looking to start Eating Psychology study group.’ That was the beginnings for me of learning on the job.

I had a group of 20 plus people — a handful of anorexics; a handful of some of the most obese people I’d ever seen; a beautiful model who had an eating disorder; and a handful of women in their 50s who looked fine to me but [spent their] life chronically dieting.resistant will start to lose weight finally. So that’s an observation. I believe that it has to do with, once again, the person’s kind of metabolic posture, the state that their nervous system is in. If you’re doing exercise you can’t stand, you’re probably going to be locked in sympathetic nervous system dominance,” he says.

Minding Your Posture While Eating

David has also found that when it comes to addressing overeating, binge eating, emotional eating, and endless dieting, your posture can play a role. Are you sitting up straight when eating, or are you slouched over your plate? People who slouch while eating tend to eat more quickly, but it also affects how you relate to your food. David xplains:

“We have a different relationship with food when we’re upright. First of all, there’s more of a sense of dignity. There’s a sense of authority. When I’m slouched, I’m more energetically collapsed. This posture has an emotional kind of texture to it and the texture tends to be one more of subservience, defeat, or I’m making myself small. [Sitting upright makes] people feel more empowered and more dignified about their own self, their own body, and their relationship with food.

Also, when sitting upright, it will make breathing easier. It will make the breath more full. The breathing pattern of relaxation is regular, rhythmic, and deeper. The breathing pattern of distress response is arrhythmic, shallow, and infrequent. If you’re hunched over, you will breathe more as if you’re in sympathetic nervous system dominance. You’re going to be breathing shallower. When you’re upright, when your chest is expanded, you can breathe more regular, rhythmic, and deep.

Just adopting the breathing pattern of parasympathetic nervous system dominance will put you in that place in less than two minutes easily, which will then put you in the optimum state of digestion and assimilation. It will put you in the optimum state of being aware of your own appetite. So, one simple shift in the body can be very profound.

Also, when we start to become more erect, what we’re doing is we are changing our personality. We are really stepping into our own personal growth program where we’re claiming a sense of empowerment. Yes, it is good, structurally. But it’s good for who we are as human beings inside as well.”

If You’re Stuck, Go Back to the Basics

The more I study and the more I learn, the more I realize how simple it is. Health and weight loss are not nearly as complicated as we’ve been led to believe. It comes down to understanding and applying some very basic principles, because your body was actually designed to stay healthy. It wants to be healthy. It does not want to be diseased or to rely on medications. Once you give your body what it needs, it will go into self-repair mode and heal quite efficiently.

Besides a healthy diet and physical activity that you enjoy, the ability to self-reflect and grow may also play a more important role than most people suspect.

“There’s a subset of people who, until they do work on their self, they don’t get the body to shift where it naturally needs to go. What I’m saying is, in my observation, there’s a connection, oftentimes, between personal growth and metabolic potential. I like to use the formula: personal power equals metabolic power. Meaning, as I become the person that I’m meant to be; as I do work on self; as I become better in my character, and as I look at what life is trying to teach me, how do I learn my lessons? How do I become a better person?

How do I fulfill my mission in the world? How do I deliver my gifts? As I do that, I’ve noticed that my body has the best chance to step into its metabolic potential. Do I need to eat all the right foods? Of course I do. But as I’m stepping into my personal potential, I naturally gravitate towards the information, the kinds of foods, or the kinds of practices that serve me. That, I think, is a missing piece in the conversation around weight, or even the conversation around health in general.”

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