Following on from ‘Messages from the Body to the Mind about Food’, here are more revealing ‘body-knows’ stories and how the funny but wise messages continue …
Eating Chilli – Bucket loads!
In 2010, whilst living in a country rental property, I became very ill from a couple of rat-borne diseases, which resulted in lots of ambulance trips, powerful antibiotics, heart and kidney damage, and time admiring the walls of many Emergency Departments. The doctor gave me three possible actions for dealing with extreme debilitating nausea from the antibiotics:
1) Do nothing and suffer
2) Take anti-nausea drugs and put up with more side effects, or
3) Eat all day
Great choices! My doctor and I came to the same decision together that the least harm would come from eating all day. It worked to stop the nausea, but combined with the lack of exercise due to illness, I put on about 9 kg of fat. As my health improved though, this extra weight did not want to shift.
Then in April 2014, whilst at a Universal Medicine Retreat, suddenly my body said: “Give me chilli – LOTS of chilli, please!” I’d always loved chilli but only in tiny amounts as I’m very sensitive to small amounts of things. Suddenly I was eating chilli – ‘bucket loads’ in fact – without ill effects and my body was utterly joyful about it. My eating (lots of) chilli went on for a few weeks, then the off-switch message from my body engaged, and although afterwards I felt to regularly consume more chilli than I had before, it just wasn’t in ‘bucket loads’!
Halving My Meal Portion Sizes …
The other message from my body when I got home from the Universal Medicine retreat was, “Eat half what you normally eat”. I don’t eat much normally and the less time I spend in the kitchen the happier I am, so I can get on with ‘more important’ things. Aside from that I just generally don’t eat a lot or in large portions. So halving what I already eat? Outrageous!
I ignored this message from my body and went ahead and ate my normal-sized small meal of safe, simple, nutrient-rich foods.
Oh the discomfort!! – awake almost all night with a painful, distended stomach! So I decided I would listen to my body and when I halved my meal portion sizes I felt much more comfortable. Not only that, my body brought my weight back to what it knew was healthy for it, without my dieting or imposing some target on it. For me, the meal portion size message is particularly to be obeyed in the evening. If I go to bed having eaten even a bit too much, the results are disastrous!
My Vinegar Pain Message …
Pain has often been the signal for me to drop various other foods too. It is an interesting message from the body and personally, I don’t like switching it off with painkillers if at all possible.
To me, that’s like turning off my smoke alarm and ignoring the fire in the roof.
Pain for me is there in the first instance to tell me that something is wrong and that I need to find out what’s going on and then take action.
I manage for as long as I can without painkillers whilst finding out what the pain is about and then, if it’s still intense and or ongoing, I do relieve it with medication.
Recently I got another message from my body which involved pain and vinegar … I used to love vinegar, I mean really LOVE it – especially salt and vinegar chips, my grandma’s amazing pickled onions, my Russian father-in-law’s awesome dill pickles, tangy mayo, salad dressings with balsamic, etc. Then one day I noticed that if I ate vinegar I was in pain in my stomach shortly after. Every time. And it got worse. Being a ‘science head’, I checked that the problem was actually the vinegar, and yes it was.
I liked to have balsamic vinegar in my salad dressings and I knew that all the other ingredients in the salad were ‘safe’ foods for me – just plain veggies. Only the vinegar was in question, as it seemed to be the common factor when I experienced pain upon eating. Made without vinegar – no pain; made with vinegar – pain; made without vinegar – no pain. I did a few trials both ways with otherwise the same ingredients to be sure. My body knew! No more vinegar for me!
The Sugar Meter …
The next ‘body knows’ story is a classic too. Years and years ago, I noticed that if I’d eaten something with a huge amount of sugar in it, meaning sucrose from sugar cane, a few days later I would get a tiny ulcer on my tongue. Whoopy doo … well no, not trivial – the pain from that tiny ulcer was unbelievable and went on for 3 days. So in the past when contemplating some yummy sugar-laden enticement, like golden syrup dumplings, or a block of chocolate, etc., I would be faced with a choice: a few minutes of sensual pleasure followed by 3 days of oral agony, or say no to the treat. I usually listened to the message from the body and said no.
But as the years have gone by the ‘sugar meter’ on my tongue has become more and more sensitive. At first it was only extreme amounts of sucrose that shot the dial and the pain up into the ‘red’. Then smaller amounts did it and the ulcer formed a bit quicker. From taking a few days, it was now forming within a day of a big sugar hit. It really stopped me eating those sugary delights.
This process went on, until the ulcer would form within minutes of eating even a small amount of sucrose.
As a biologist I marvelled at how quickly a piece of intact, healthy tongue tissue could rear up into an enduring, red, painful welt in response to a little bit of one chemical.
But the body’s reaction to sugar didn’t stop there. As my sensitivity has increased, I have also found that there are certain unprocessed raw foods in my diet that my body reacts to and that I can no longer eat. Sometimes I get a slight ulcer from eating things that apparently have no sugar in them. Evidently my sugar meter is also a lie detector, revealing sugar in foods when it is not even listed on the packaging!
The Body Truly Knows …
The more I listen to my body the more I am developing the ability to be open to what it has to say so that I can pick up all the messages, no matter what odd form they may take. I now know to not ignore or override the messages from the body, however they come. First I listen, then I hear, then I choose to do what I’m being shown! It’s true – the body knows!
By Dianne Trussell, BSc Honours; 16 years in Biological & Medical Research & Teaching
Further Reading:
On the Topic of Food and Diet
Making Healthy Food Choices: Stop Connect Feel
The Truth About That Apple and Me
792 Comments
I think it’s great how you don’t get hooked on always doing something the same way – as in changing how you eat or do things according to how your body feels or what you’re sensing rather than having a set rigid diet…
Sometimes I can eat a meal and I know it has hit the spot, it feels really lovely eating it and I feel really lovely after it – as opposed to some meals where I know deep down what I am eating is not what my body requires and therefore the after effect is definaitly not so hot.
I love the way you are so observant and responsive to your body- that is inspiring.
“Evidently my sugar meter is also a lie detector, revealing sugar in foods when it is not even listed on the packaging!” I love that, our body is a lie detector especially for the lies we tell ourselves too. We say we can eat that little bit of something but our body will always share what is true and what is not.
This is a great sharing – how your body just knows what it needs. What a joy it is to actually listen to our bodies and honour what they ask us. It just makes sense to listen and respond. Whenever I do, I am confirmed by how i feel.
We can’t go wrong when we listen to what our body wants – it knows far more then our mind ever will.
It is very inspiring to read how science can be so personal.
And all around the world people’s bodies are speaking louder and louder and louder… Eventually all of these voices will combine together into an unavoidable declaration that says enough, you have to listen to the human body… it knows exactly what to do, and how to heal
I am loving the fact I am listening more and more to by body, at the moment my body is asking that I to do more exercise which I am and I must say I am hugely feeling the benefits of this. Life can be super simple when we listen and honour our inner wise voice.
So true Dianne about how our body knows what it needs way more than the desires coming from our heads. I have always had an instantaneous reaction to eating vinegar that entailed me getting sharp painful cramps in my stomach, but I used to ignore this when eating vinegar with french fries and things like pickles. Also, I noticed that when I would eat fruit like banana or mango I would get an awful headache right away and this has now evolved into getting headaches from even fruits like berries (which I used to eat tons of at a time). What this shows me is that as I have said yes to feeling the natural stillness and essence inside of me on a more regular basis, my body has shown me that eating anything with sugar in it takes me away from feeling that stillness.
Yes our bodies are very wise and when we listen they speak very clearly. For the record my body also loves chilli.
We live with our body 24/7 and when we start to listen it really sets us on a true path as long as we do not listen to our mind that usually wants to over-ride what our body is tell us.
Just because we live with a gag over our bodies metaphorical mouth, we think it has nothing to say. But as soon as we just loosen up it’s revealed that it’s constantly speaking to us about all sorts of things that it feels aren’t right. Just because we turn the volume down we like to think everything is ok – it is not.
It is so true Dianne that the more we listen to and honor the messages from our body the greater our awareness is of what choices truly support us to live with the utmost vitality, well-being and joy, all of which we are naturally born to live.
Our body does know and with such a glorious exposition of the depth of our bodies’ awareness, we cannot help but celebrate such entertaining writing and also our amazing bodies 🙂
Our sensitivity is a great tool. By virtue of our living way we need only attune ourselves back to it and out of the blur of numbness we have adopted in its place. Great examples Dianne!
I love reading how clear your body communicates to you and how you listen – I’m not so great on the listening and get it big time when I’m in pain especially when I am menstruating. That’s when my body says, hey you’ve been super hard on yourself and this is where that hardness gets felt. I was up with a lot of physical pain that when I went deeper I could feel it was the pain of overriding what I feel during the month and not honouring the sacredness of being a woman.
“Pain for me is there in the first instance to tell me that something is wrong and that I need to find out what’s going on and then take action.” I’m in pain now and once you do nominate why you are feeling the pain, the emotion and mental thoughts lift. It’s worth gold to feel the pain and be honest about what the pain stems from. It’s a given you will know because the choice Is in your body.
Recently I came to understand the power that I have given my taste buds over my lifetime. I lost the sense of taste for two weeks and in that time, I really saw how much I had been eating for taste and not truly for the nourishment of my body – although over the last 15 years that has been a much higher consideration. The first couple of days I kept trying to find something that I could taste but then accepting the futility of that exercise finally acknowledged that I was being presented a huge lesson but that it was up to me to learn it or not. I choose to do so and spent the next 10-12 days focussing solely on the nourishment and not the taste and by the time it began to slowly return it was definitely of much less importance that it had been. A wonderful lesson from my body that was really appreciated.
I wasn’t well recently and my body asked for more chilly than normal and cucumber, it was incredibly supportive during this time, then my body asked for less as I recovered and it balanced out and I now eat my usual amount. It’s true Dianne, the body knows.. if we listen.
This is really cool, I love the way you always experiment and study your body so much. It is something I can feel that I need to do more of.
What stands out in this piece is the sensitivity that you are applying to each part of your diet, so you will modify the amount and the frequency of each food in response to your body’s messages.
It’s so true. The body knows. And sometimes we think we can get away with eating things we know are harmful, but ultimately the body will show us in one way or another.
Always as you have shared Rebecca, our body will deliver the truth as long as we are open to listen.
Even when we don’t listen our body will still deliver the truth!