Frequently Asked Questions
What is nervous system navigation?
It's becoming aware of your present nervous system state so, if needed, you may actively support your body to "shift"into a different, more desirable nervous system state. Learning how to identify which nervous system state we are in helps us to understand a lot about ourselves and it helps us make our way back to the settled, safe, connected, and creative Nervous system states that we are meant to exist in most of the time.
What does nervous system navigation have to do with disembodied eating?
When you have access to yourself, you have access to decision Making, physiological cues, a wider sense of wanting and not wanting and you can feel satisfaction and experience the feeling of done.
What is disembodied eating?
The experience of not feeling connected to your body while eating; • not being able to notice and/or utilize relevant information that your body is sending. The absence of decision making or planning regarding meals and eating. No access to previously decided upon goals; not being able to stop eating or to Sense or feel “done”.
How does find the shift™ support intuitive eating and other wellness journeys?
Do you love Intuitive eating But feel like something is missing? If these questions resonate with you, adding nervous system navigation to your Intuitive Eating journey could be very helpful and supportive.
Why am I still binging?
Principle #3 of Intuitive Eating is “make peace with food”. It states that, over time, giving yourself unconditional permission to eat all different types of food will lead you away from binging and those “last day before the diet” episodes of overeating. The premise is that if there are no more bad, off limits, cheat, holiday, or special occasion foods and that you are “allowed” to eat said foods whenever you want, experiences of needing to binge will disappear. Additionally, this principle supports the idea of food habituation. Meaning, if you have complete access to a certain type of food and you eat it regularly, whenever you want it, this food will lose its significance and you will ultimately be able to sense other physiological needs and desires and not just yearning for that “off-limit” food. However, if you continue to feel powerful urges to eat specific foods in a disembodied way even though you are on board with the Intuitive Eating principles you may be automatically slipping into a nervous system state where you cannot experience the feeling of done no matter how much permission you have given yourself to eat these foods. Even when one has given up the good/bad dichotomy of food and you have allowed yourself to eat all that you want of something, some folks can still become “fixated” on foods and experience something we call “becoming the want”.
Why do I struggle with “feeling done” even though I’ve really tried to focus on Satisfaction?
Intuitive Eating Principle #5 “Discover the Satisfaction Factor” states that diet culture rules and doctrine literally rob us of the opportunity for eating pleasure. Unfortunately, when we are wholly governed by attaining “smallness” ,“perfect” bodies and/or 100% “clean” eating, pleasure and satisfaction are nothing more then silly little details that can and should be overlooked for the “greater cause”. Principle #5 states that learning to deeply value and savor the real satisfaction that can be derived from eating a wide variety of foods, will support your ability to eat until satisfied and experience contentment. Therefore being able to experience a sense of completion. However, IF you are still not able to experience meaningful satisfaction that gently guides to a sense of completion, despite all of your IE efforts, you very well may be in a nervous system state that prevents access to the feeling of done.
Why is The feeling of 'Wanting' often overwhelming and fullness only matters when I am very physically uncomfortable?
“Feel Your Fullness” is Intuitive Eating principle #6, and it supports you in learning how to sense and honor your body’s fullness cues. The goal is to help you rediscover (or discover for the first time) the biological signals your body uses to indicate it's had enough nourishment. The idea is, to create harmony between your mind and your body’s natural signals of satiety so that overeating becomes a thing of the past. However, when you are having a disembodied eating experience you may be in a physiological state that renders fullness irrelevant. In fact, the powerful urge to have more (and more) may be the only experience you can feel. Folks who struggle with this may only be able to “honor” fullness when the discomfort of being so overly full is the only thing that can override the “want”. Sometimes we can “land” in nervous system states that are powerfully automated and when this happens we will need to SHIFT into a different state where we can access variations of fullness, satisfaction AND be able to sense that there are other experiences on the other side of done.
Why do I sometimes feel nothing when I binge?
Intuitive Eating Principle #7, “Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness” supports folks to move through big uncomfortable emotions by feeling them or finding mindful ways of coping instead of avoiding or “dealing” with the discomfort by eating mindlessly. This principle also aims to raise awareness that food deprivation, restriction, body shame, and rigidity can create feelings of helplessness and powerlessness which can trigger a desire to retreat into the comfort of untethered eating. But what if you don’t feel • anything • before and during a binge ? What if you can not sense a trigger or an event that created any big feelings or big thoughts? Chances are good your body’s neuroception (non-conscious awareness of it’s surroundings and circumstances) has triggered your nervous system to head into state where you may feel like a zombie or numb or completely detached from any emotions. Sometimes when we are having really big emotions or situations feel overwhelming our body’s may shift into protective states that don’t allow us to access mindfulness and healthier coping mechanisms.
The intuitive eating community is made up of wonderful humans, with excellent intentions, who teach great skills and who want the best for their clients. Find The Shift™ is a big fan of this work.
What makes find the shift™ different?
We believe that the disembodied behaviors and feelings you struggle with, the ones that you think are the actual problem - ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. We believe the “issue” lies in your nervous system.
We believe disembodied behaviors are actually signs and signals that your nervous system needs to be tended to. (See principle #1 for more on that.). So we are going to teach you how to TEAM UP WITH with these behaviors. Different? (We thought so.)
We are building a community and technology that is designed to harness co-regulation (an innate neurobiological process). It's not different to offer access to a community when you join an online program but what is different is that the community is not just a supplement to the process, it IS PART of the process. We NEED EACH OTHER if this is going to work. By harnessing the power of co-regulation we are giving ourselves a greater chance at breaking free from compulsive and disembodied eating.
Find The Shift was developed by a someone who gets it. I mean REALLY gets it. Michelle Cleary built FTS™ for her, first. Every single detail of this journey was designed with one question, "Would it work for me?"
You will feel seen.
Here in our private little corner of the internet, we embedded: cutting edge education, clear and comprehensive guidance, specific skill development, and powerful action steps, into a community that is thoughtfully designed to help you actually implement these skills, tools, and actions. So you can break free from disembodied eating.