Who’s ready to nerd out 🤓 on some nutritional science? 🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️
To feel your best and have the energy you need to live your purpose, you want to choose foods and consume a macronutrient balance based on your “dominant” physiological tendencies.
You tend to be…
– either parasympathetic or sympathetic dominant (autonomic nervous system),
– either a slow or a fast oxidizer (oxidative system).
The autonomic nervous system is the master regulator of metabolism, and the oxidative system is responsible for intracellular energy conversion: turning food into energy at the sub-cellular level.
The Autonomic Nervous System
The autonomic nervous system controls all involuntary activities in the body like your heart beating, digestion, breathing, tissue repair and rebuilding, regulation of body temperature, and immune activity.
It is broken into two branches – sympathetic branch and parasympathetic branch.
⚡️The sympathetic branch is your fight or flight – this branch does things like dilate your pupils, increase your heart rate, raises blood sugar, turns off digestion, and suppresses immune.
⚡️The parasympathetic branch is your rest and digest – this branch does things like contract your pupils, lowers your heart rate, lowers blood sugar, increases digestive secretions and intestinal motility, heals and restores.
There are certain characteristics – tendencies – associated with each dominance.
There are myriad factors that also affect these tendencies – social programming, subconscious conditioning and mental models, past trauma, environmental factors – and others.
These are tendencies, not hard-and-fast rules.
When you’re eating the right foods for you, it will balance your dominant tendency.
⚡️Someone who is sympathetic dominant (fight/flight) digests slowly. To balance this dominance, this person should eat a higher proportion of foods that are easy to digest: carbohydrates.
⚡️Someone who is parasympathetic dominant (rest/digest) digests very quickly – and tends to have a big appetite. To balance this dominance, this person should eat foods that take longer to digest, like proteins and clean fats.
AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM - SYMPATHETIC DOMINANT
If you are sympathetic dominant (fight/flight), your physical tendencies may include:
- Indigestion
- Heartburn
- Insomnia
- Hypertension
- High blood pressure
- Infection
- Low appetite
- Angular facial structure
- Typically tall, thin appearance
Your behavioral tendencies may include:
- Excellent concentration and focus
- Highly intrinsically motivated
- Cool emotionally
- Irritable
- Hyperactive or having nervous energy
- Socially withdrawn
Does this sound like you?
If so, you may have more energy when you eat a higher proportion of carbohydrates. Aim to have 50% of your daily calories come from healthy carbohydrates, 30% from lean proteins, and 20% from clean fats every day.
AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM – PARASYMPATHETIC DOMINANT
If you are parasympathetic dominant (rest/digest), your physical tendencies may include:
- Diarrhea
- Allergies
- Low blood sugar
- Irregular heartbeat
- Chronic fatigue
- Cold sores
- Excessive appetite
- Round face and skull
- Shorter, wider build
Your behavioral tendencies include:
- Lethargy
- Procrastination
- Slow to anger
- Deliberate, cautious
- Warm emotionally
- Socially outgoing
Does this sound like you?
If so, you may have more energy when you eat a higher proportion of fats and proteins. Aim to have 30% of your daily calories come from healthy carbohydrates, 40% from proteins, and 30% from clean fats every day.
The Oxidative System
Your oxidative system turns food into energy.
Your autonomic system determines the speed of digestion; your oxidative system determines the speed of that digested-nutrient conversion into energy for the cell to use.
Sympathetic system: speed of digestion.
Oxidative system: speed of nutrient conversion into energy.
👉Sympathetic-dominant people – fight/flight – who digest slowly – tend to also convert those digested nutrients to energy slowly – slow oxidizer.
How do you balance a slow oxidizer? You give that person food that is quicker and easier to convert to energy: carbohydrates. This person should consume something close to a 50-30-20 carbohydrates-proteins-fats macronutrient ratio.
👉Parasympathetic dominant people – rest/digest – who digest quickly – tend to also convert those digested nutrients into energy quickly – fast oxidizer.
How do you balance a fast oxidizer? You give that person food that is harder and slower to convert into energy: proteins and clean fats. This person should consume something close to a 30-40-30 carbohydrates-proteins-fats macronutrient ratio.
But what happens when a sympathetic dominant person, who digests slowly, is a fast oxidizer, who converts energy quickly? Or the opposite? This person should consume the “standard” macronutrient ratio, which is 40-30-30 carbohydrates-proteins-fats.
To have your best energy, it is helpful to know what macronutrient balance is optimal for YOU!
