Body Energetix: Renew your Mind, Regulate your Emotions, Regenerate your Body

Using Attachment Theory to Find Emotional Roots of Dietary Choices

• Lauren Saracione • Episode 12

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Navigating the complex terrain of self-love and health, I share my personal narrative entwined with attachment theory's profound influences on diet and exercise. My early struggles with disorganized attachment unraveled in my eating habits, particularly when inflammation triggered a deep-seated fear of food. Throughout the episode, I unfold the layers of how adopting an anti-inflammatory diet and meticulous macro tracking led to an epiphany – our reactions to food are deeply entangled with the emotions rooted in our attachment styles. Join me in this discussion as I dissect how early caregiver interactions carve out our adult tendencies, shedding light on self-sabotage in the realm of health and fitness. Our conversation journeys through identifying these patterns and embracing our intrinsic worth to cultivate self-compassion, an essential step in nurturing our inner child.


This episode is also a crucial exploration of the somatic aspect of healing, highlighting how nervous system regulation through movement and self-care is pivotal in recalibrating our stress responses. As we delve into the significance of these practices, we also demystify how attachment theory manifests in the seemingly simple act of macro tracking. The insights shared are not just about overcoming hurdles in health but about integrating personal growth into every facet of our lives. I warmly invite you to our community call, where we continue to peel back the layers of these discussions and extend support on our shared path to healing. Join us as we confront the inner child's fears, work towards self-compassion, and ultimately create a healthier relationship with ourselves and our bodies.

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Welcome Body Energetix! I'm Lauren Saracione, 23-year fitness pro. I started my Hero's Journey of reconnecting with my Inner Child to heal my mind-body disorders 14 years ago. In my podcast, I share my 3-step system to renew your mind, regulate your emotions & regenerate your body.

Go to https://www.bodyenergetix.com to join my free community, where each week, we expand on the theme of the current episode so you can reconnect your mind-body to restore your physical health & create your desired aesthetic.

Body Energetix is the culmination of a lifetime of healing and over two decades of client experience. I have A LOT to share! Listen to episode 000 to navigate the Body Energetix System through podcast episode categories!
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Body Energetics evidence-based spirituality to get happy, healthy and hot. I'm your host, lauren Cericione, and I've been in fitness for over 22 years. I've also had three major healing events where I learned something new and deeper about the mind-body connection. It is my mission to help you get happy, healthy and hot. So, whether you're here for mindset work to get happy, emotional work to get healthy, or owning your desires and who you be to get hot, body Energetics is for you. Welcome to Body Energetics, episode number 12. This is an about episode where I'm going to share with you attachment theory and how it relates to diet, exercise, your body and, ultimately, the relationship that you have with yourself. So we're using attachment theory to create self-love. Now, before we get started, I want to make sure that you know that every month, on the third Saturday of the month, we're having a community call at one o'clock Pacific time. That way, we can have discussions about the topics on this show Definitely the evidence in the science, definitely about what it is to be awake in the age of Aquarius, and then definitely how you can apply attachment theory to diet, exercise and your body image. Dr John Bobly was putting together information about how adults were emotionally if they were social or if they were antisocial, and basing that on their attachment to their caregivers. We need to have a sense of attachment with our caregivers and we actually don't develop a sense of self separate from our mothers until we're beyond the age of three. As years went on, people started to apply attachment theory to romance and really looking at how we're choosing our romantic life partners is very similar to what we were brought up with and you can think of this as a response, a reaction we learned how we should be treated and then we found a beautiful partner, beautiful in their personality and in their loyalty, and we had a beautiful life and we had kids and we did all these things, or we chose people that were like our victimizing parents, where we got into situations where we were kind of reliving the same negative emotions that we had when we were kids. I am disorganized. Attachment I am working on it and I actually signed up with my friend Alex Scott she is a dating expert to help people date out of toxic relationships, especially if they've been raised by a narcissistic parent. And then I'm also going to a fond response workshop from a chiropractor, dr Nima. So I'm working on my stuff because I think I shared with this on an update episode.

Speaker 1:

I started dating in November of 2023, like seriously wanting to find somebody, and all hell broke loose in my body. I wasn't able to keep up with the things that I wanted to keep up with in January and I realized I need some support in this area. But in the other areas of my life, I've pretty much been able to create a sense of awareness to where I don't have my inner child insecure attachment alarms go off causing mayhem in my behaviors. So let's dive into this. The context of it, of how I came about. This is because I had to cut out so many of my favorite foods when I was having issues with inflammation, so I had to create a new way to look at food. I actually became very, very fearful of food and then that showed up last year in March of 2023. I created a real fear of food because of my inflammatory symptoms. They were super, super uncomfortable and when I was learning to eat for health, that part wasn't that bad because the symptoms were so awful that I had a very clear incentive to stick within that eating regimen, even though it was very restrictive.

Speaker 1:

Now, restrictive does not mean I lost weight. I didn't lose weight. I had a whole lot more fat than I have on my body now, but I was quote unquote healthy. It took me four months to master this anti-inflammatory food list to where I felt comfortable with it. Enough to then add on the strategy of macro tracking in a calorie deficit to get the aesthetic result that I was after, which so many of us know is about having a six pack when I was learning all the things that there is to learn about macros, which is a lot like planning your meals, spreading out your macros so that you don't end up with a whole bunch of carbs at the end of the day and zero fat, and then all you're stuck with is eating rice or a potato, cooking in bulk, measuring in bulk how do you actually make this something that's sustainable? Planning around a sporadic, spontaneous going out to eat for lunch, bringing a scale with you to the office? There's a lot of inconveniences that you have to get used to when you're using the strategy of macro tracking.

Speaker 1:

When I found myself being frustrated or sad or feeling deprived, I had this light bulb go off in my head. That said, there are a lot of people who use this strategy and have zero problem with it. The strategy is not the problem. The tracking my fitness pal is not the problem. The food scale is not the problem. None of this is the problem.

Speaker 1:

I realized that these emotions I was feeling about the food and about the strategy had nothing to do with the food and the strategy. They were emotions that were already in me. They were being activated by my point of focus. My point of focus of the strategy was there because I wanted the outcome of my dream body. My attachment in attachment theory was really my dream body. How I was feeling about the food and tracking and measuring and weighing was where I could put my insecure attachment style behaviors I could have as a disorganized attachment.

Speaker 1:

I could have been like this doesn't work for me, this is not aligned, there's a problem, and I could have gone avoidant with it and then stop doing it. I could have gone anxious and obsessively tracked. Now I will tell you I tracked pretty much to a T. I gave it 100 percent most days. There was some things I didn't track, but it was like I measured down to the gram, down to half an ounce. I measured. I could have been obsessive about it, though I could have, like in the past, when I measured incorrectly 10 years ago, cried because I measured dry rice instead of cooked rice, and that's a huge difference in volume. I could have cried my way through it and been anxiously doing all the things, being obsessive, compulsive about the process, and then put myself into a decision overload and then just binge every night. I could have done one of those two things based on the feeling I was having feeling sad, feeling deprived and feeling frustrated. But when I started to put together in that moment, these emotions slash energy, are already in me. I'm only aware of them because I'm focused on weighing my food right now and I'm irritated that this is an inconvenience. The only reason why I'm weighing it right now is so that I can have the outcome of the dream body ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. This is my attachment to the dream body. I can use my habits as a way to neutralize my energy, to process these emotions, and that was the mindset that I had from that day forward when it came to food, and I kept putting the attachment on the dream body right, because we set the goal and we're like I want to look a certain way, I want to have this outcome and we're attached to that and that attachment.

Speaker 1:

When we do not have self-confidence, when we do not have an adequate sense of self-worth, when we do not trust ourself, then all of our insecure attachment styles and reactions start to present themselves. Because whichever way we go, like if we are afraid of achieving that goal, because if we're afraid of achieving the goal, what we're really afraid of is becoming all the things that we were told we shouldn't be. We're actually afraid of the parts that we got rid of to fit in into some situation. And then if we go anxious style, we are afraid of what it says about us if we can't achieve that dream body. So that's why we get obsessive. So I really was focused on attachment theory in regards to the dream body, but then the deeper I've been studying anxiety, it made so much more sense On top of Dr John Sarno's work, which I just have been like swearing up and down about since I learned about it.

Speaker 1:

The anxious reaction that we have is from the fawn reaction. When we're traumatized and I definitely was a fawn where I said yes to things I didn't want to say yes to I changed myself to feel connected because one of the significant emotional events that happened with my dad in our first split when I was 11 years old. In my child brain it was what do you need to do to not let this happen again? What do you need to do to make sure that you made the right decision? Like all of those mindsets that I got at 11 years old at that split is my inner child alarm, trying to figure out how to avoid the bad feeling and how to avoid being bad. Because when we have a traumatizing event in our child body, the feeling, the feeling is in the body. We exit the sensation of the feeling, go into our brain and then try to figure out how to make sure this never happens again. And part of that is creating behaviors and operating systems to make sure that you never experienced that feeling again. And that's a fawn response.

Speaker 1:

And when I was listening to this podcast on anxiety rx with Dr Nima and they were talking about the fawn response, they described my body and my health issues to a frickin T and I was like, okay, now here's another layer for Dr John Sarno's work of the inner child primitive, of deep-seated anger, of having the mind-body split in the zero to three ages. I got like another compilation to it. So after I listened to this podcast and signed up with Dr Nima's workshop within days, I realized that the second layer of using attachment theory for our dream body is that who cares about the dream body? We are using the resistance that we have to our habit change as a place for us to connect with ourself. So that means that whatever habit it is that you're doing, even if it's not on a diet, if it's not tracking macros, if it's just getting yourself to exercise three days a week and you don't want to do it, and you make all these reasons of why not to? Or you do it and do it and you do it, and then you stop. Why'd you stop? Where are you afraid of? Are you afraid of becoming that person? Because if you become that person, that means you have to own the parts that you've done away with. And if you do it and do it and do it and do it, and there's no quote unquote result, what does that say about you? You suck.

Speaker 1:

And the attachment theory to be able to look at this as behaviors of emotion, as operating systems of an insecure attachment based on our attachment to our caregivers, then we can kind of let go of the pressure, especially in an industry of health and fitness, that we're bombarded with so much stuff that says that if we don't get results it's because we don't have good willpower or whatever, like we're up against so much in society and in the industry of the health and fitness space and when we can look at our shortcomings and how we sabotage ourselves as an outcome of a disconnection that happened to our mind, body system, as a reaction to a traumatizing experience we had with a caregiver or anything, then we're like oh, like now I can be a little bit of objective that there was a thing that happened. There was the mind, body split. My brain decided to figure out a way to not let the bad thing happen again or not let me be the bad thing and wherever I focused on in my life is where this insecure behavior would appear. I would sabotage by overdoing and be obsessive, or I would sabotage by ghosting. And then all of a sudden, we can really look at our behaviors and our sabotage as not something that says anything about our worth, about our value, about our significance, and really just outcomes of the human condition.

Speaker 1:

And then when you, when we do the work, when we do nervous system regulation. When we dance and we move our body or we do deep breathing or we do gratitude journal or we do tapping, or we take a nice salt bath and we take time to actually be with our self and in our body, then it's like the nervous system can start to recalibrate. And this is science. And when you are recalibrated with your nervous system, then when that inner child alarm goes off because they're afraid they're getting closer to the parts that they had to get rid of to fit in, to be loved, or they're afraid of what not accomplishing the goal says about them, when we're getting closer to those two things and that inner child is starting to freak out, we can actually feel the anxiety in our body. We can start to recognize that our mind is racing and be like whoa, okay, wait, I'm not PMSing.

Speaker 1:

So, ladies, check in with where you are in your cycle, what's going on in my life, and you just do a quick analysis what's my career like, what's my relationship like, what's my finances like, what's my bank account? Say right now that I just pay a bunch of bills, I just have to deal with the IRS. I just get into a fight with my partner, with my parent, with my child, because there is no way food is the thing that's doing it to you unless you're allergic and you're eating a bunch of shit that was made in a lab, that was made to make you sick on purpose. Like, unless you're allergic or unless it's not real, it's probably not the food, it's something else in your life. And because you have this desire to change your health and your aesthetic, and because that requires you to exercise and change what you're eating, that's where the sabotage is showing up.

Speaker 1:

So this allows you to take the pressure off so that you can really work on reconnecting with yourself, having self love, having the confidence, having the self worth, so that you can stay grounded when that inner child alarm comes up, deal with it. Like you're gonna have to deal with her, you're gonna have to recognize who she was in these moments when these things happened to her or she made things mean something about her, and really have compassion for her and gratitude and love and be like, oh my God, that was not your fault, you were a child and you've been working so hard since that happened. I'm so sorry, like I felt so much empathy for my 11 year old self which, on an unconscious level, before I was able to access that, that division that I had on that day when I separated from my dad, that unconsciously I've been judging myself from that moment on and I've been working myself from that moment on to prove that I'm good, to prove that I'm right, because when I was 18, I had a lot, and when I was 18, in my 20s, I had a lot of oh my God, did I choose the right household? And that was really scary in that that was in my 20s and that had a whole lot of other drama that came with it. But my point is is that use attachment theory to reconnect with yourself, heal your nervous system, really get objective with what is going on in your thoughts and feelings about the food and then expand to be like this isn't about the food, this is about my inner child freaking out. Then you're able to do things so much easier. That is what I have to share with you on this episode. I want to keep it really short because, again, this isn't about episode, so that later on, when I do episodes about eating or any type of habit change and we reference attachment theory, you can come back and listen to this one, so I don't have to go into so much detail and explain everything from top to bottom again. We can just be like anxious attachment and macro tracking and you'll be like that's for me, or avoidant or disorganized or whatever, and you'll know exactly that that episode is for you.

Speaker 1:

So if you'd like to join us on our community call, it's the third Saturday of every month at 1 PM Pacific Time. We are going to have a discussion about all the topics on the episode so that you can really dive into this stuff for your own healing journey. Bye, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you found it helpful, please head over and give us a five star rating and leave a review for how this was helpful for you. This is going to help me spread the word faster into more people who need this information to self heal.

Speaker 1:

Join us at facebookcom Slash group, slash body energetics, where we have discussions about the episodes. Go to bodyenergeticscom so that you can sign up for my newsletter to make sure that you never miss an episode, and that's the place that you're going to get invited to our Zoom discussion that we have every single month. Tag us on social media Body Energetics and we will reshare your tag and enter you into our monthly drawing to win our really cute water bottle or our really cool mug. Thank you so much.