How To Use Food As a Somatic Co-regulator
When healing your relationship with food, it's often not really about food AND sometimes it is. When you're choosing particular foods that you find yourself binge eating, emotional eating, and overeating on, these foods are being chosen for a specific reason. Something has been connected with these foods that they will bring pleasure, relaxation, inner peace, and a sense of safety and grounding in your body. And this connection has been made because they DO (in the short term). Once the eating of that food is complete, the emotional dysregulation will often come back as the underlying reasons why it is there to begin with have not been addressed yet.
So when healing your relationship with food, often healing your relationship with your emotions, and feeling safe in your body, needs to be attended to. This can be a journey that takes time and, on this adventure, food can be consciously utilized as a co-regulator. Co-regulation occurs when in relationship with another human being. Their nervous system affects your nervous system. Have you ever noticed how you feel different in your body when someone speaks to you in a calm, compassionate way? Or have you noticed how you feel in your body when someone holds eye contact with you and holds your hand?
Our body's affect each other on a body to body level. Our body's talk to each other.
Food also talks to your body and can change how you feel in it. There was a time in your life when you were a baby where you knew how to self-regulate with food by listening to your hunger and fullness cues; eating when you felt the sensations of hunger and stopping when you felt the sensations of satiety. Eating became a way to trust yourself and your body. And as you grew older and experienced different individuals and situations that perhaps challenged that sense of trust, it may have become difficult to rely on that internal instinctual self-regulation you knew how to do when you were born.
When choosing a food to emotionally self-regulate, often the food that is chosen is very specific based on what has been emotionally connected to this food. These foods can feel dysregulating to your body in the long run. So when viewing food as a co-regulator we can explore what you're choosing to eat to coregulate and how you're eating your food.
When it comes to what you're eating...
We can explore what supports you in feeling safe and attuned to long term. These foods will often be things that stabilize your blood sugar levels, feed your beneficial gut bacteria, and are rich in nutrients and antioxidants. Many foods have these properties that you can explore and discover which of these kinds of foods resonates with your body by how you feel when you eat them. What you will be paying attention to is how you feel several hours after eating.
If you feel anxious, worried, dysregulated, on edge, even angry, your body is letting you know that what you ate did not support it in regulating itself. This is where intentionally choosing what you're eating with the purpose of supporting yourself in regulating by how a food makes you feel in your body long term can be where food can come as a co-regulator in supporting you in feeling the way you want to feel. Just as a loving parent, friend, or significant other's presence can guide your body into a relaxation response, so too can eating foods that align and assimilate with and in your body with ease.
When it comes to how you're eating...
I want you to think of the last meal or food that was made for you by someone who loved you or wanted to care for you. Lupton explains that "the emotional effect of food lies imbedded in memory, whether these are memories of the social circumstances in which food was consumed, or memories of the soothing and familiar ties to one’s class, ethnic, or religious group that particular food items can come to represent. In fact, food fulfills a comforting role even in highly distressing situations where food ceases to have any nutritional value."
One part of what feels so powerful about the foods you may choose when emotional eating is the memories you have around that food. We actually get to utilize these memories in a beneficial way. When choosing the foods you have discovered support your body in feeling calm, grounded, and regulated long term, imagine someone you love feeding you those foods. Your body doesn't know the difference between what you imagine is happening and what is really happening right now. You get to picture, in as much detail as possible, what it would feel like to be served this regulating food in a regulating way by someone who loves you.
Bonnie Badenoch says “emotional regulation flows naturally from being in the presence of someone we trust.” Increasing your trust in your relationship with your body and food will cultivate this flow of emotional regulation inside of you. Using food as a co-regulator, you get to create a relationship with food that supports you in navigating your day and your emotional body with more ease.
Exciting announcement!
The Satiated Podcast is opening up to interview wellness practitioners, coaches, and therapists also on a mission to support others in their relationship with their food and body to discover emotional and physical satiation for themselves. If you're interested in being on the Satiated Podcast, fill in this inquiry form.