What we put on our plate and digest will alter the balance of our calories. As you know, it’s quite simple – what we do not burn through activity, we will store as fat.
There are some of us that are naturally big and therefore, what is said below does not relate to you as your size is commanded by your genes, but for the rest of us, it’s a worrying subject.
If we remain stressed, this will activate our autonomic nervous system’s “sympathetic” state. In this state, we are prepared to “fight or flight”. By default, remaining in this state for long periods will continue to tell our body that we need more calories as there is a threat and we need energy to respond to this threat.
The fuel needed is carbohydrate, and this is the cause of comfort eating. When stressed, we crave high-calorie foods like bread, sugar and chocolate as we do not usually comfort-eat on salad!
We know too well the global results of stress – obesity – a growing problem in children also as they learn from their parents and society as a whole how to experience negative stress. It’s not necessarily poor diet or nutrition, but living in a stressed state has consequences both mentally and physically as these levels are the same – one is a finer gradation of the other. What our mind experiences, our body has to follow. We now know that obesity creates some many physical problems including Cancer.
Meditation will reduce our stress levels significantly and will allow us to move from the sympathetic to para-sympathetic states with greater ease. When we spend more time in the parasympathetic state (rest and digest) we preserve our energies, and therefore we do not need so many calories and will help maintain our homeostasis in better balance.