Expired Mindsets 🧠 w/ Dr.Charryse: “Improving The way You Approach Food”

Hello, beautiful people. How are you? Welcome to another episode of Expired mindsets with Doctor Charryse. That's me. I'm glad that you're here. For those of you who are joining for the very first time, I am a mental health, a licensed mental health clinician, a mindfulness practitioner and author. And we come together on Wednesdays and talk all about growth and personal development and how to experience both peace and harmony in your life if you're willing to put in a little work. So typically we start off by having you join, say good morning to someone and letting us know where you are in the world.

That is our way of connecting together in a very powerful and positive way and just being an encouragement to one another. I also want you to rate your week. So one to ten, you're going to find that I do this often. We often don't take time to stop and reflect, so please do so. Hello from South Carolina. Hello speak wonder. Hello, Andrea. Good morning Doctor Teresa and all who are coming in. It's good to see you. Hello, Jen. Hopefully everyone is finding it. Hello DC. Hey Chrissy. Hey Jonna. And if I pronounce your name wrong, put a little phonetic spelling in there and get me right.

Let me stop and rate my weekend. Hmm. I would say my week is a five right now. Little tough week. Hello South Jersey. I'm in the middle of grieving something, but that happens and I typically will wait my week twice a week, mid week. Hello North Carolina. And then towards the end of the week. And the great thing is I often find that if I do my work it improves. And so I want you to consider that part of why I have you rate your week is because I then want you to think, okay, if I'm at a seven, how can I get to an eight or nine?

If I'm at a nine, how can I stay there? Or do I want to try to get to a ten? Hello from Humet, North Florida. Either way, it's entirely up to you. What's up Georgia? Focus of today. As we are getting into fall, I really want to start shifting towards you having some great awareness and understanding. Thank you, Jen. And my heart goes out to you as you are grieving as well. Around the food that you eat is consistently important. Right. There's a strong mind gut connection. We absolutely are. What we eat in terms of micronutrients and how those micronutrients from our gut speak to the quality of our brain, which is going to speak to the quality of our choices, our serotonin, our mood, which is about 90% to 95% produced in the gut.

And what you eat will impact your mood and choices. That is important all year long. However, it becomes even more important as we head into the fall months for a few reasons. One, you're going to notice that we're entering a season of seasonal affect where there is going to be a mood shift and a change as the days get shorter, as the days get darker. And this is specifically important for those of you that are in the northeast or in the west coast who are already in areas that don't get a lot of light.

Seasonal affect can happen everywhere, but in particular, I always want to acknowledge that. So you're going to hear me talk a lot about that over the coming months. Seasonal affect typically begins in and around September, at the start of fall, but you may even start to see in August that some little changes start to happen. So all of a sudden, it's a little more difficult to get out of bed in the morning. All of a sudden you're gonna see like, oh, your energy's just a little bit lower or you're craving certain foods and drinks to try to lift yourself up to a certain capacity.

So in light of that, and in light of where we're heading, I wanna talk a little bit today about improving or reflecting depending upon where you are in your health journey, the way you approach food. Right. How do you eat in ways that support your immune system, that support your mental health, and that help you in terms of beating disease? Like we want to be considering how we're also eating foods that nourish us to the point that it helps to fortify our body and our immunity. So as I go through, please feel free to add your comments and add your questions as we tackle this topic.

So trusting your body's ability in order for you to eat, to beat disease, to help with immunity, to prepare your body for the seasonal shift ahead. That means that you want to have a level of trust in your body's ability to heal. If that's what you need to reset and if that is part of what you need or to maintain where you are, let me know where you see yourself. Are you in a current season right now with your body and the way that you're eating? That there is a level of healing that needs to take place.

And when I say healing, I mean you might be in a place where you have been in a bad place with your mood and your food and your body. And so you're looking to repair. So heal. Repair. Think of that as a synonymous. Are you in a place where you need a reset, you were doing well for a while, then you kind of fell off the rocker for a minute and now you just feel like if I could reset, then I would be good. Or are you in a situation where you're maintaining? You have been really focused on this area of your life and you are just consistently looking at how can you maintain the progress that you've made thus far.

It's important to know where you are because it takes a different attitude, it takes a different level of intention in each stage. But every single stage absolutely requires your effort. There is no doing well with nourishing ourselves, mind and body, without being intentional. So as I look through the chat, I'm seeing a lot of heal and a lot of reset working to repair and working to be consistent. So let's take a quick look at that. This is just a little mnemonic or kind of overview that I want to give you so that you can think of.

This is my plan, right? You've got a plan. You have to choose and you have to act. So that's the skill plan. Choose. Act for whatever area that you're in. That never changes. Even if you're maintaining some level of health, progress, or some level of loss, it will still require some level of plan, of choosing and acting. What I often see is that when we're struggling, what has happened is we're choosing and we're acting on choices, but we didn't plan. We're not thinking ahead to what we need and our choices and our actions can then become impulsive and that can be a problem.

So five things to consider when it comes to how do you implement plan, choose and act. Number one, you have to recognize, acknowledge life is not always going to be perfect. So if you're the kind of person that has consistently said to yourself, well, as soon as life slows down, once I get past this season, once work stops being so difficult, once my daughter gets this, once my child has that, once we're out of the woods here, then I will be able to focus on myself. That is one of the most harmful mindsets you can ever have when it comes to how you care for yourself.

Yes, Angela, take it on as a new mantra. Life is not always going to be perfect. There are going to be situations that challenge your desire to plan. Choose an act. There's going to be situations that even challenge your ability. You're not always going to be at home in the perfect place, able to make perfect choices. Sometimes you're going to find that you're in situations where you have to make the best choices based off of what you have. But if you have a plan for that, and, you know, here's where I want to stay.

I want to stay within this realm or within these boundaries that will make your planning your choices and your actions in better alignment or place them in better alignment. Number two, eat what you enjoy. Any time you are attempting to heal, to repair, to reset or maintain, and you are focused on, oh, here are all these things I don't like, but I know I'm going to do them or I know I should. That activates the pain center of the brain, which makes you more resistant to doing that. Now, granted, if you're the kind of person you're like, I don't like vegetables.

Yeah, I need you to eat some vegetables. So that might be a small area where you are pushing yourself a little bit. But ultimately my encouragement would be get a food list of seasonal vegetables that are important for the body during the fall and then identify from there. Oh, out of this list, here are the ones that I either feel neutral or positive about and make sure that you're placing those in your life. If you're constantly considering plans and food plans and food choices that don't honor your taste preferences, you will not be consistent in that regard because we have taste buds and we need to use them and we need to use them well and with variety.

Number three, make it personal. It's so important to make it personal, right? You want to make sure that you recognize there is no one size fits all approach to what needs to happen for your body. And you want to constantly be reflecting on what do you need, regardless of what anyone else needs. Number four, make it sustainable. Make sure that whatever you're doing, it is sensible that it is meant for you. And then number five, be adaptable. Situations need change over time. So make sure that minute by minute or daily that you are being very adaptable, but not so adaptable that you completely get off course.

Just adaptable enough that you recognize how important it is for you to be flexible with yourself in some way. So as you go throughout the rest of the week, I want you to consider how can you plan, choose and act? Where are you struggling? Is it in your planning? Is it in your choices and in your actions? And how do you move those into a place of harmony and alignment? Because regardless of having this knowledge, remember, knowledge is not power without application. All right, I hope you're well and I will talk to you soon.