#426 Why it’s so hard for us to change with Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC

This week on the Less Stressed Life, Eliza Kingsford joins me to talk about how your nervous system drives behavior and why lasting change only happens when your body feels safe.

We dive into the three main nervous system states (safe and connected, activated, and shutdown) and how they show up in your relationship with food, stress, and self-control. Eliza explains why willpower isn’t the problem and how to build capacity with daily “deposits” like rest, nourishment, and connection so your body can finally support change instead of resist it.

I was fired up about this one because it connects everything—physiology, behavior, and peace. You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of why you feel stuck and how to shift it.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Your nervous system drives every thought, feeling, and action
• Change feels unsafe to the brain—safety cues make new habits possible
• Food behaviors mirror nervous system states (frantic in activation, numbing in shutdown)
• Build capacity by balancing “deposits” like rest, nourishment, and connection with “withdrawals” like stress and overwork
• Flexibility and resilience in your nervous system create real, lasting change 

ABOUT GUEST:
Best-selling author, licensed therapist and former Corporate CEO, Eliza Kingsford is a nervous system expert and behavior change specialist. She is widely known for helping clients regain control and rewire their process so they can finally lose weight peacefully and keep it off permanently. She developed The Shift framework where clients learn a step-by-step blueprint for changing their lives.

Eliza is turning the weight loss industry on its head by combining neuroscience, behavior science and psychology to create lasting results for her clients.

WHERE TO FIND GUEST:
Website: https://www.elizakingsford.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizakingsford/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY OF LESS STRESSED LIFE:
🍽️ Over restriction is dead
🥑 Whole food is soul food and fed is best
🔄 Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
🤝 You don’t have to figure it out alone
❤️ Do your best and leave the rest

SPONSOR:
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: That's the power of the nervous system because until it gets its non-subjective, physiological needs met, it's just gonna keep shuffling resources around. Until it runs outta resources.

[00:00:13] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together. 

All right. Today on the Less Stress Life I have Eliza Kingsford, who is a nervous system expert and behavior change specialist. She's widely known for helping clients regain control and rewire their processes so they can finally lose weight peacefully and keep it off permanently. She developed the shift framework where clients learn a step by step blueprint from changing, for changing their lives.

And I missed this part at the beginning of her bio. She's a bestselling author, licensed therapist, and a former corporate CEO. Welcome to the show, Eliza. 

[00:01:30] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I looking forward to this conversation 

[00:01:33] Christa Biegler, RD: for a while now. Yeah, I met Eliza. At one conference, and then I saw her at another one a month later, and it was a great thing.

And so then we got to chatting about what she does and why she does it and all the things, and it's a wonderful, beautiful thing. And so I'm sure you'll find this very interesting. So first of all, open us up with your story. Whatever version feels like it is the most fitting because you came from, you were working for some big corporate entity and you were writing curriculum.

And you have a psychology background, but you work in the weight loss industry related to nervous system. So tell us how that all happened and how you got to be maybe even ahead of your time in this way. 

[00:02:13] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Yeah. That's interesting. It sparks a couple stories for me on that topic.

Remind me I'll come back to it. Yes, I started out pretty classically trained in psychology and I think what I mean by that is, when I was going through graduate school it was still pretty typical that the behavioral therapies were still the thing, cognitive behavioral therapy and all of the thoughts, feelings, behaviors, that paradigm was still really popular when I was going through graduate school.

So I was very classically trained in some of the behavioral therapies, which has served me well. I stand by and love my graduate school training. And. Alongside that, I had a, and still do, have a distinct passion for the interplay between people's weight, their bodies, how they feel about their bodies, how they feel about their weight and their eating behaviors and the way that, that sort of impacts other areas of their lives.

That was part of my story was, I went through my own struggles with feeling comfortable in my own skin and my own body. And so I was really fascinated with the interplay with how we feel in our bodies and how that plays out in our lives, what role that plays in our lives.

So when I finished graduate school, I did some postgraduate work in eating disorders at the university level in various eating disorder centers, and eventually was led to work with a company a big sort of corporate company who was running programs, clinical programs for people who were actually trying to lose weight.

In some respects, it's opposite sides of the same coin. People struggling with their bodies, but in one sense of the word, they're struggling with undereating and in the other sense of the word, they're struggling with overeating. Just to oversimplify it. And so I had seen both sides of this work and what was so fascinating to me at the time and drove the next evolution of my career was that while the.

Presentation of that struggle was different. So you had people struggling with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, and they were perhaps underweight. And then you had people who were struggling with overeating and they were perhaps considered overweight. While the presentation was different, when I was in the room with them, a lot of what they were saying, a lot of the threads were the same.

They were similar in nature of how they got there and what they were experiencing and how they were feeling. And this really led me down a path of, figuring out what leads to a complicated relationship with food and how does our internal environment play out in our food behavior and wellbeing.

[00:04:43] Christa Biegler, RD: I was gonna say, you're a girl after my own heart. Because what I heard there was pattern recognition, right? Which is, I just am very fascinated by how similar we can be, even when it seems like we're not similar, right? Like we may have a very different story, but we have things going on underneath the hood.

So I'm really curious, I didn't mean to cut you off, I'm just really curious on what are some of the things that you discovered leads to a complicated relationship with our bodies?

[00:05:07] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: We didn't plan this, but you couldn't have set it up more perfectly because that is the thing that I became passionate about as I dove deeper into this work, was there are patterns.

And recognizing these patterns led me to realize that my traditional clinical training was missing something. There was something missing because everything that we were taught about how thoughts create emotions and how emotions create behaviors and, that whole thought, feeling, behavior cycle were well valid and helpful.

It wasn't getting people to the level of, I'm gonna call it peace, fulfillment, healing that they were looking for. And it seemed as though sometimes focusing on that thought, feeling behavior pattern was almost entrenching them deeper into those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, no matter how aware they were and how hard they tried.

And so as I continued my work with people who were struggling with food and body image issues these patterns kept emerging. And the things that stuck out to me were, they were some of the hardest working people I'd ever met in my life. They were some of the most well-researched and well-read people I'd ever met in my life.

These people who were struggling at this point, I was working with people who were struggling with weight o overweight, considered in the overweight category. They wanted to change so badly. It wasn't a lack of desire or, it wasn't laziness like people think, they were trying really hard, A lot of mental load, mental effort was going into what they were trying to do, and they just kept hitting a wall.

And my brain obsessed with pattern recognition was going, this is not just one or two people here. What is going on? There's something else at work here. There seems to be something preventing them from being able to change. What could that possibly be? And I'll skip to the end. long fast forward, it was a journey of, years of certifications, a deeper training and, neuroscience, psycho neuroimmunology, nervous system work the biology of trauma, all these things which led to.

deeper training and understanding in the nervous system. I'll just oversimplify it by saying the nervous system and how the nervous system truly is the control panel. It's in control of everything we think, feel, say, and do. And as soon as I started implementing nervous system work with all of these clients using nervous system language, using nervous system techniques, and starting there, it was almost like they could bust through a brick wall that had been holding them back because they were starting in the wrong place.

There was of starting too far down the line. The origination happened in the physiology way up the line in the nervous system that was giving them cues and signals and signs. If we could learn how to read them and speak them, then they were able to work with them differently then. And that's an oversimplification of the process.

We can get into as much of the nitty gritty as you want. But you asked, what are some of the things that are the drivers for people on both sides of this coin? And I will tell you I'm knocking on wood here because who knows someday I might be wrong. But I, in 20 plus years of doing this, I have never met a single person who has struggled with their weight or body image that does not have a story of stress or trauma in their lives.

That it just, it has never happened yet where when they're struggling with their weight and whether that be underweight, overweight, doesn't matter. There is always a story of how food has become a way unknowingly most of the time unconsciously, to cope with the nervous system, response to stress and trauma that they're experiencing.

[00:08:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. That was the more specificity that I would need. Because you said, I never met a person who down with a story of stress and trauma. Isn't that all humans all, yeah. Yeah. Technically. So then it would make sense that you hadn't met a person. So the food is a way that we're coping with a nervous system response.

And so when we talk about it this way, this is how my brain starts to segment and think about it is and I suppose, you can take the driver's seat here, but generally when we're talking about the nervous system, we're talking about four primary exhibitions of the nervous system, correct? Or is it five?

[00:09:30] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: On a technicality, you've got our sort of three main states and then technically three blended states. But yes. the ways that we know it are three main. Expressions of our nervous system states and then some blended states that, you know move 

[00:09:46] Christa Biegler, RD: well, you will, you name those And describe do you see patterns with, depending on how that nervous system, if that particular state is dominant, do you see specific patterns in behaviors around food and whatnot related to that particular pattern?

[00:10:00] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Yes. Okay. So I'll try not to dive too deep into the scientific nomenclature to keep it more easy to digest, no pun intended. So our right the state , that our biology is always wanting to come back to, we'll call it our safe and connected state. So that's the state where we are able to be creative.

We're able to have relationships, we're able to be vulnerable, we're able to. Provide feedback, accept feedback we can accurately reflect on ourselves. We're in a safe and connected state where we're able to experience life without much resistance, let's call it oversimplification, but that's, state number one.

And then when our nervous system detects any type of threat, whether it's, we'll call it real or perceived or habitual, or learned from patterns in the past, any type of threat, then it starts to shift us into what people most commonly known as our fight or flight state, or how, I like to describe it as our activated state, where there's this energy that now is coming into the system to attend to the threat, but it's energy of movement, right?

There's a lot of energy in the system because we need to fight or flight, fight or flee. It's a protective response to get us moving. So if you think about. Encountering a snake on a trail, your pupils are gonna dilate, the blood is gonna move to your extremities all to get you to move, right?

You're going to, your armpits are gonna be sweaty and all of that is your body responding quickly to the environment and saying, Hey, we gotta get outta here. Move that state is our activated state. That's our sympathetic state and that state. I will say, to answer your question I think humanity is in a crisis of activation, let's call it.

I think a lot of people are operating from a state of activation where they are getting activated constantly in their environment and they're operating at this sort of high speed protective response a lot of the time. And when that happens, we almost get desensitized to it, or we think we do. We don't feel that we're in it.

That just becomes. Normal. That's just life, isn't it? Isn't life stressful? Doesn't everybody experience stress? Isn't this just the way it is? And I'll argue no, it's not just the way it is. And furthermore it, we shouldn't be operating that way because when we operate at that level of, we'll call it stress activation for too long, the body's next response is to move into shutdown.

If the nervous system is responding in this state of activation and it's not clearing it out, it's not making it better, we're not resolving the problem, then the next state, the nervous system goes to is, okay, too much energy is being spent trying to solve this and it's not fixing it, so I'm gonna shut it down.

And that third state is a state of. Immobilization More commonly, I like to describe it as shut down. Where the nervous system actually really will affect all of the resources in the body to conserve energy, to immobilize us, and to emotionally dissociate us from the experience that we're having in order to protect us to conserve whatever energy is left, it's gonna shut us down.

So we've got the safe and connected state, the activated state, the shutdown state. Yeah. 

[00:13:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. 

[00:13:36] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Okay. Yeah, so let's 

[00:13:37] Christa Biegler, RD: talk about what shows up when we see this. And maybe I should say it like this. There was a couple other questions I had something I became aware of a handful of years ago was I would say things like, oh, if I'm around food, I will eat it because I love food and so I'll just like snack if I'm around the buffet.

And then I started to realize this is unconscious eating. Yeah. Yeah. And as you're describing the states, and I love how you described them, I actually think they're so much more relatable the way you were describing them. 'cause they're not always really described quite like that. We've heard those words used interchangeably with some of them, but I just, I think they were very easier to understand.

I think that unfortunately sometimes the nervous system language can feel not very resonant. And I remember the first time I was introduced to it, so we all go different, three different journeys at different times. And a woman I work closest with. She's very excited about sharing all of the different expressions of this years ago and made this handout and I was like, this doesn't feel very resonant to me.

Yeah. At the time, right? I didn't even have the capacity for it at that time. So anyway, I bring this up because this could have been to me activated or shut down. Because as you're talking about those nervous system states, I can think about, in shutdown, like going to the pantry and like rummaging around.

'cause that there's a hunger signal, but it's like the shutdown was like skipping the lunch almost. Yeah. Yeah. And then binging later type thing. Yeah. So anyway what comes up with these expressions? 

[00:15:02] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: And you make such a good point, and it's actually one of my favorite exercises to do with clients is to actually, we gotta take it out of all this nervous system science language and put it into, but how do you experience it?

What does it feel like in your nervous system? To your point, is it rummaging through the pantry or is it completely numbing out with food and everything in between? And it's not just with food. I'll come back to your question. Food ends up being the response to a nervous system cue completely somewhere else.

And so if we can start to identify. How we experience each of these nervous system states. Then we can catch it up the line and go, oh, wait a second, me completely zoning out. When my boss was talking about that's actually a cue of the way that my nervous system is not taking in information anymore.

So I'm in shutdown and I realize that if I've been in shutdown for too long, then I'm going home to binge later tonight. So if I'm catching that up the line further, now I can address it. And this is, to, I'll answer your question backwards, which is a lot of people's struggle difficulties with food tend to alleviate on their own.

Once we address the nervous system triggers and cues that end up leading to overindulging the food or using food to cope with the nervous system so we don't have to try with food so much anymore, it becomes the impact of doing nervous system work. So to put it into more relatable terms, which I think is always the important thing to do.

I will say this varies, but commonly what I hear from people, 'cause I do ask them how do you eat when you're in each state so that they can start to make those connections, right? When and actually I'll use your perfect example of food at a, on the table, at a party. Okay? So food on a table at a party from the three different nervous system states.

This could be our little, I love it. Little view here, right? So if you are food at a party in a safe and connected state. You're able to recognize that what you're doing at the party is connecting with other people. And so your focus is on the connection with others, and you're able to discern what food looks good, feels good.

Ooh, I really like that. Oh, I like that. But not so much. And a few bites of this feels delicious, but when I get into five or six bites and I'm not really even tasting it anymore, and perhaps it's not in line with something that makes me feel healthy after I leave. So you're, you still have this awareness, this connection and awareness when we're in our safe and connected state.

And so you're standing around the buffet and you're able to stay present and discern what, what helps me feel. What do I like? What feels worth it? What is delicious and when am I done? When have I had enough? 

[00:18:03] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, it's the difference between filling your plate because you went by that pot versus choosing just what you actually want.

[00:18:10] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Being intentional rather than reactive. That's exactly it. So let's say you're at the party and you happen to be in your activated state. So this is the state of protection where you are, right? Your nervous system is activated into energy to protect you. And this is where eating can feel really frantic.

So now I am at the same table and I'm picking it. Everything, one of everything goes on my plate. It feels really frantic. It feels like there's. Fomo, right? If I don't have this, then I'm missing out. I better get this before they're gone. There's the fear of maybe the food running out.

It the hallmark can feel like it's frantic eating. It's eating because I made some deal with myself earlier that I'm only allowed to have one cookie, but now that I'm confronted with the cookies and I'm in an activated state, I'd better grab them and I better have bites of them before somebody takes them away from me.

This is not all, they're not conscious thoughts. It's just that feeling. It's the essence, the energy of feeling frantic around the food, almost like I'll never be able to get enough to fill up this. This feeling of frantic or anxiety in my stomach or wherever you're experiencing it. I hate to label it.

'cause some people don't experience it in their stomach, it's in their chest, or, racing heart, things like that. 

[00:19:32] Christa Biegler, RD: But yeah, you're eating quickly as well. 

[00:19:34] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Exactly. You're eating quickly. You don't really taste it. It's more about, oh my gosh, how many bites until it's gone? Versus am I actually enjoying the thing that I'm eating in the moment that those are signs and signals that we are in our activated state.

All right. Now we're at the table, same table, same buffet table, and we're in our shutdown state. Shutdown state. People commonly talk about this as eating for numbing, right? So it almost the food is. Is being ingested to fill up a bottomless pit, right? So the, it's not frantic, right?

We're not sh it's not necessarily shoveling, but it's almost like it's filling. It's to try and feel something or to avoid feeling something. Both of those are numbing types of behaviors. Can I try to evoke a feeling or can I try to avoid a feeling I'm dissociated from what I'm actually experiencing?

And the food is just almost like trying to shovel the dirt into a hole to fill up the hole, right?

[00:20:38] Christa Biegler, RD: I feel like it's how we would think about emotional eating in general, where it's oh, I need this or that or this treat, or the way I'm thinking about it literally because of experience to these things is, I think where we could get into trouble is, if you get something out, if you're eating from a package and you just continually eat from the package, like without really any regard for what, like fullness, hunger or whatever, or like stopping eating from the pa. Like it, I feel like eating out of the package, it's like characteristic of this in general, right?

We have this, to me, what the stereotype that comes to mind is getting a tub of ice cream out and just eating out of the ice cream. But I think it can be anything whether you're thinking it's chips and salsa or cheese and crackers, because I used to skip, I used to not plan a lunch and then go and, I think there's nothing physiology blended in there, right?

And the physiology is if you don't start your day eating enough, like of course you're gonna be hungry and then you're naturally, your body is naturally going into these responses, right? And so it's gonna look like some version of binging, right? Or numbing or one of those latter two responses just naturally.

'cause your body is under stress when it's not fed. And that's the complex problem with weight, isn't it? 

[00:21:53] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: And that's right. You're exactly, you're moving into another whole area, which makes it complex. Because, for example, like you said, if you skip breakfast, then your body might experience increased hunger cues and increased signals to eat.

You might experience lethargy and a lack of energy and things like that just because it's running out of the fuel to be able to function properly and run all the organs in your brain and things. So now as you are over-focused on food is that a emotional thing or is that a physiology, is that a nervous system thing?

And this is why I love talking about it from the nervous system because whether it's emotionally driven or it's pure hunger driven. The physiology is responding the same way I am in danger of running out of the energy I need to function correctly. So I'm going to send you the same cues and signals, whether it came from an emotion of feeling uncomfortable or whether it came from, I've run out of food and I actually just, I need to eat more.

Your physiology doesn't care about the difference between the two. And if we can learn the cues of the physiology. The reason that we got there doesn't necessarily matter. The whole point of it is to recognize that we're in a different physiological state and attend to it, right? So if I'm hungry, then can I eat in my safe and connected state?

'cause what did we say about our safe and connected state at the buffet table? It was eating with intention. It was aware of the food that it liked and disliked. There was discernment there. It was able to recognize hunger and fullness cues, right? So we're still attending to the physiology, but we're attending to it from our safe and Connected.

It's called the ventral vagal state, right? So we're in this safe and connected state. We're going to eat differently. And if we don't know that what our nervous system cues are and how to identify what state we're in, then we end up eating in response to the nervous system. And it ends up having this negative impact that, cascades into other areas of our lives.

[00:24:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I think why this conversation is really important is that there is of course an interplay between the nervous system and the physiology. And when we try to separate that, sometimes we miss out on some things. Understandably, for sure. From my profession, that's for sure.

Part of the issue, right? We're not always attending sometimes, and this happens, it doesn't, it's not weight loss, it's everything. It's oh, I'm trying to address a physical problem from only a physical angle. And I think you've gotta look at it from all of the angles, the external and the physical, as well as the emotional and energetic and nervous system approach.

And when you do, you start to win. And so it's the magic of starting to put that together. I wanna mention that you talk about. Yes, when you skip breakfast, you might be then like in this activated state or whatnot, right? Where you're having a physiological response. And then the cute part, especially with high achieving people is that they just keep working through lunch or whatnot.

And what they do is they just literally screw up their physiological metabolic cues in the first place. And so like after you haven't been fed for a while, sometimes your metabolism literally does not understand these hunger cues. We've lost our overall circadian rhythm and our hunger fullness.

And this is where this complex topic, it's interesting because it's not really just about stopping when you're full eating, when you're not right, because most people are not. A lot of people, and again, a lot of people are just, are not living in a saving connected state. And I'm not saying it like I'm better.

I feel like I've done so much healing even the last few years. I feel like initially I did physical healings and then I really got into the emotional healing. And at that point I became aware of oh. I'm just eating the food in front of me. Yeah. Which you can get away with sometimes for a while before where all these other things you hear.

Yes. Which is that things shift and it's is it really this aging body or is it actually just years of suppression of certain things, Uhhuh turning off of whatever. And it's like the body at the end of the day it's like the adrenals cannot keep up with this baloney. 

[00:26:02] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: I mean it's true.

And that's the thing is that that's what I was saying. I think society is suffering from this, chronic activation because we've been taught or led to believe that we can use our mind and our willpower and like we can cognitively override. Our physiology, our nervous system cues and

i'm just gonna make a blanket statement. We can't, it will eventually catch up to us. It's like riding the gas pedal and the brake pedal at the same time. You can do that in your car for a little while. The car's gonna wear out over time. And I think we've been sold this bill of goods that we can just keep pushing through and, power through and keep doing work for a while.

Work. And the thing is, it does work for a while, but the body is so taxed and so it's gonna meet you. You're going push through, and it's gonna go okay, we'll, we'll push through, we'll push through. But the, I think the thing to remember is that when we are in these push through states.

The body's always taking resources from somewhere. We do not have an unlimited amount of resources. So while you can push it to push through, it's gonna take resources from, I don't know, your immune system, your digestive system, your musculoskeletal system, your emotional system, your mental load somewhere.

It's gotta push those resources to you pushing through, so there's gonna be depletion somewhere else, which is why I'm so on board with what you were talking about. We cannot continue to operate in these silos. It's not just nutrition. It's not just psychology. It's not just the physical body. It's not just, it's all of it.

And truly every system is reacting in connection with the other system. If we just look at one piece and we don't look at how it's interplaying with the other pieces, it's almost like whack-a-mole. We're gonna address something over here, and then something's gonna pop over there.

That's the power of the nervous system because until it gets its non-subjective, non-subjective, physiological needs met, it's just gonna keep shuffling resources around. Until it runs outta resources. Yeah. And that's what we're doing at a, yeah. At a crazy rate. 

[00:28:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I'm only laughing at whack-a-mole 'cause I was working on some content creation this week and I kept using that term a lot because that's what people are doing usually when they arrive here.

Let's talk about why this is so hard for us to change. Yeah. Generally, and I honestly think maybe before we talk about why it's so hard for us to change, I think maybe we should start with some of those. Warning signs. I think we did a good job in general, but if you were gonna, if someone was wondering, Ooh, does my nervous system need help and attention, like what would be some potential resonating things that would tip them off to know?

I know we talked covered some when we went through those lenses, but let's just name a few.​

[00:29:05] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Okay. This might be unpopular, but what I am being called to say is, if you are not working, if you are not actively working with your nervous system, it is actively working you just for 100% of the people a hundred percent of the time.

That's just because nervous system is physiology. It's. You know your elbow is connected here and your shoulders can it's physiology. It's not a Do I have physiology? You do. And it's all designed the same way. Now, we experience it uniquely, you experience it different than I experience.

It's kinda like a fingerprint, but we all have one. They're all created the same way. And if you don't know how to work with it, it 100% is working you, you just don't know it, you're not aware of it, right? By way of example, if you have ever snapped at your kids, that's your nervous system. If you have ever experienced frustration when you're driving your car, nervous system, if you've ever been overwhelmed and felt like you need to take a nap, nervous system, if you, this is just life.

It's just a Monday, right? Everybody is impacted by their nervous system every day. The difference is that most people are not taught, to consider the role their nervous system is currently playing in their lives. And usually people only get to quote nervous system, work when they think something is wrong, or when their nervous system is shouting so loudly that now they have an autoimmune issue, a skin issue a physiology issue, a emotional issue, a something diagnosis, they right.

The only time people end up attending to it is when there's something wrong and the nervous system says, finally, I've been trying to tell you to pay attention to me. Now I had to give you this diagnosis or this diagnosis so that you'll attend to it, and then people will start doing that work.

So that might be an unpopular opinion, but I will say if you're not actively attending to it, it's. Attending to you. 

[00:31:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. If you're unconscious of it or aware of how it's presenting in general, then there's some opportunities there. Okay. So let's talk about the challenges of change. Why is it hard for us to change?

Why is knowing this information not really enough to do anything at the moment? 

So a while back, my college age daughter shared with me that she was tossing and turning and waking up several times per night after a period of stress. We started her on magnesium and her sleep immediately improved. I personally think magnesium should be your first thing to try if you're having trouble sleeping or staying asleep, especially tossing and turning, and it's a no brainer if you have any restless leg issues.

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Now you can use. Less stressed, 10 as many times as you want with every order at Jigsaw Health, which is honestly pretty unheard of with coupon codes. So enjoy the magnesium from jigsaw with my code less stressed, 10.

[00:33:16] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Yeah. Okay. So I think what is so interesting, so nervous system is ground zero, right? And the brain is part of the nervous system. But I separate it, not because it's a different thing but because the role it plays is one of the biggest challenges we face.

And so a, your nervous system is largely unconscious until we bring awareness to it and it's operating in the background. 100% of the time, all of the time, it doesn't ever take a break. And it's responding to your environment. And those responses get picked up and sent to the brain and the brain sends messages about, okay, this is unsafe.

Do this feels good, do this. And the brain constantly, all day long is going back and forth with the nervous system, listening to those messages, and the brain is sending you signals about what to do next. What's so interesting about the brain is that I think we believe that the brain is there for us to think to come up with ideas, to utilize, right?

We're these really smart humans?

The mind, yes, the mind has the ability to think and be creative and come up with the ideas, but the brain actually functions as a predictive organ. So the brain's main role in keeping you alive is going. What have I done in the past? Am I alive?

Cool. I should do that again. It's very primitive in that way. It wants to keep you exactly the same. It wants to have you do exactly what you did the day before because it's not, the brain itself is not evolved enough to go, huh? I don't know if that thing was good for you, Eliza. It wasn't the best utilization of your time.

So maybe try to do it differently. The brain doesn't do that. The brain just says, did you do that yesterday? Yep. Are you alive? Cool. Do that again. And that's what creates a huge roadblock when we're trying to change something. So for instance, if you said, you know what? I'm not feeling so great anymore. I'm going to cut out candy from my life.

I'm just gonna cut it out. So that's the mind saying, I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm not feeling so good. I'm gonna cut out candy. But the brain is going, you've eaten candy every single day. For the past 10 years, at this time of night, after you get, home from work and the kids are in bed, and now you have time by yourself, you eat candy.

That's what you do. Your mind says, I don't wanna do that anymore. So you decide on Monday, okay, I'm not gonna do it anymore. Yeah. I did it. I made it Monday night and I didn't have any candy. The brain goes, hold on a second. You don't have any candy tonight. That's weird. That's a deviation from the norm.

That's unexpected To the brain, that means danger, warning, what's going on? Why are we doing things differently? We do everything the same. So then Tuesday night comes and you go, I'm gonna not eat candy again. The brain kicks it up a little bit and goes. You sure? You sure you don't want the candy? 'cause that's what we always do.

And it's not sending you the message in that way, but it is kicking up your cues for that candy because it's all of a sudden recognizing that your homeostasis is off. You're gonna make changes. And I don't know what to expect out of those changes. So I'm gonna try and keep you the same.

And by Wednesday, those cues have really kicked up while your brain goes, are you sure? I don't know what we're doing here. Are you sure? We're not gonna do the same thing we've always done? And it really starts to fight you as you start to make changes. And this is one of the least talked about, but most powerful influences when we start to change, is that change itself is automatically registers as danger to the brain and nervous system.

And so there's this I'm gonna call it like a seesaw. There's this balance of can I safely usher my system along? While it actively tries to fight me from changing. And if we don't know that there's this fight going on in the background, then it just ends up feeling like this rollercoaster of a lack of willpower and, learned helplessness and I failed again and what's wrong with me?

And we have to reteach people that these are natural responses in the brain and body. There's nothing wrong with us, but we have to safely work with them instead of working against ourselves, which is what most people are doing when they try and change. 

[00:37:33] Christa Biegler, RD: It sounds very mentally exhausting. There's a lot of mental load there, which would become physical exhaustion too.

Sounds like a very common scenario. And I wonder if this is just part of identity, right? Where it's like the brain or you as a person, you're identifying the story. You're telling about eating candy every night for 10 years. It feels like an identity that you're trying to change, but you're fighting with your.

Current neural circuitry against the identity. Does that feel right? And how does identity play in? 

[00:38:03] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Yes. Identity. That is the thing that is being threatened from the nervous system, from the physiology perspective. If you identify as someone who eats candy every day, and then all of a sudden you decide you're not gonna be that person anymore, then your physiology doesn't know You're not quite the person that you're becoming yet. And you're deviating from the person that you were, that's a very dangerous place to be from a primitive perspective of the nervous system and the brain. And so it's exactly it. As you're starting to. Become somebody new. That identity change feels like ground that hasn't been walked on yet, right?

The territory is unknown territory. So that feels like danger to the nervous system because it will always default to danger unless it knows what's coming. And so this is why part of the process needs to be safely bringing ourself along. Yes. I'm skipping candy because I'm headed here.

This is a positive thing for me. This feels good for me. This feels safe for me. This is my safe and protected place that I'm going. And it's okay for us to struggle. It's okay to have this challenge. It's okay to say no. There's ways to learn how to do this safely, but instead, most people would just say, I'm cutting sugar that feels uncomfortable.

Struggle through it. Fights through it. Keep going. Have enough willpower. Your nervous system is always gonna overpower that if it cannot recalibrate to safety with what you're doing. You're gonna end up back in those patterns of behavior sooner or later. 

[00:39:39] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm thinking about this personally because I was talking to my own coach about this last week.

'cause I think the concept of like why we do things we don't wanna do or we say we don't wanna do, or why don't we do the thing we say we wanna do? I think it's human issues, right? Yeah. And so I was like, oh, I skipped my workout and I don't want to, and I wanna do this thing. And I was like annoyed and frustrated by skipping it.

And so her conversation with me was like around identity around, oh what does a person who doesn't skip their workout, what is their identity? And it's been really interesting to just think about it a lot because this has been a thing. This has been not shockingly, and I think this happens with weight stuff and food stuff or whatever your thing is like we all have that thing that's oh, I've been working on that forever.

And then. More roadblocks just keep coming up. Yeah. I'm like, what is the freaking issue? Do I really at a subconscious level not really want to work out? Probably like probably, I don't generally, I didn't think it was fun. I was like, man, I solved for that problem and that problem. It's short. I enjoy it.

All these things that I like thought was the problem before. And it's been interesting to just think about it as an identity of , one of the former identities I had around it was like, let me do the shortest amount of time possible, right? And get it done as quickly as possible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, oh, people who like to work out probably don't have that identity. They're just like, oh, it's a non-negotiable in the day for whatever. And I'm looking at it mostly neutrally, like with curiosity. I'm just like, oh. And as I think about you talking about identity, I'm trying to anchor my brain in it.

And it feels like going to a different town and walking to a different town, it's like, this town is this identity and over there in that town is that identity. And I'm like slowly walking over there. I can't just take a car over there real quick 'cause I'm gonna feel out of place. 

[00:41:23] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: That's exactly it.

Is that we think that we want to have the new thing. Right now, lemme just take me to the new town. I'll just be in the new town. But without recalibration, without, like you said, oh, I see the town, I have a clear picture of what the town might look like and I'm gonna safely walk myself over there.

That's a recalibration for the nervous system so that it knows, okay, like it's safe to go over here and here's the path. And I always with enough curiosity and enough continuing to question, which I know you're so good at, if we are desiring something different, but we are not following through with the thing that we.

Said might take us to that something different. There is a mismatch in identity. It's a threat to our current identity in some way. And so the nervous system is always trying to protect us and keep us safe by bringing us back to something. And so if we continue to get curious about, what is it?

And oftentimes I think especially someone who's so well versed in this and, does so much of your own work, that oftentimes it'll surprise us. Oh, I didn't realize that was the thing that I did want or didn't want, as we continue to dig and go and get curious about it,

which I always think is the right thing to do, is to get curious about it. 

[00:42:44] Christa Biegler, RD: And it's fun. It's always more fun to talk about concepts. If you can come up with a personal example, which I'd invite anyone listening to try to consider a personal example of this. And that's why I'm considering a personal example because it's like, what's the point of learning without implementation or integration, to an extent. And so that's always like the argument with a podcast in general, information overload is oh, okay. So one thing I changed this week was I actually just stopped beating myself up around it because that was the ugliest part was like, oh, I'm so frustrated that I didn't do what I said I was going to do, and then I feel like my whole day sucks.

And instead it was more of like an acceptance or a neutrality of oh, this is the window I chose to schedule this thing. If I choose to skip it, then I was a person who skipped it today. And you know what I did today? I got up at six and I did my journaling thing. I do, but because. I have an identity.

I like eight hours of sleep and I went to bed at whatever time, blah, blah blah. So seven hours. And I was like tired. And I said, I choose to skip this at this time and I'm getting dressed and getting on with my day and I haven't felt bad about it at all today, which is actually cool. And as I start to release the mental load, it doesn't feel heavy.

And it feels I think I'll probably get to it tonight. Like I actually I can put it on the schedule and I don't feel yucky about it. Like I think the yucky feeling was the issue around it. Like I was so angry that I continued to do the thing I didn't want to do, which is skipping the thing and not following through.

And there was a bit of an integrity mismatch. And I just share that because it's maybe that's someone else's story. I don't think we're all very different all the time. 

[00:44:22] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Someone else's story with something else. It's my story with the thing that is pertinent to me, it is all of our stories.

When you were talking about pattern recognition. The reason I get so geeked out about pattern recognition is because it's physiology. It's physiology. What you just described is your nervous system when you're introducing, when there's resistance for whatever reason. Whether it's resistance because you're not feeling well or resistance because your identity or resistance because of the beliefs you're telling yourself or re, it doesn't matter.

The resistance is the experience in your nervous system and you might experience it as well. I don't know how you would describe it. How would you describe what that resistance, how did you know there was resistance there? 

[00:45:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Resistance feels and I shows up multiple ways and usually that's the beauty of having someone accountable to go to every week to be like, damn, I didn't do my thing I was gonna do this week, because that's resistance. It's oh, I didn't do it because obviously I didn't want to. And so it's some version of resistance, right? It's oh, it feels like I, I didn't want to, 

[00:45:26] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: yeah. 

I didn't want to. Yeah. So in that case, it was showing up as I didn't want to, and, but 

[00:45:32] Christa Biegler, RD: now I'm frustrated and that feels worse, 

[00:45:34] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: right? So frustration. I didn't want to you probably, if you got really present with it and quiet, you'd probably feel some kind of way in your body. There'd be some physiology that's telling you that you don't want to, and it doesn't feel good, and it's frustrated.

Okay. Those, we could interchange those words with a dozen other words and call it sympathetic. There's a sympathetic response to the thought of doing the workout, whatever it is, right? And then as your. Intervention for that was Grace was to release the pressure was to say, this is my choice.

I choose this. I have agency now, right? I got my agency back. I choose to prioritize my sleep today. Putting yourself back into the safe and connected state and from the safe and connected state, now the workout feels accessible. The workout feels like, oh yeah, I probably do that later today. 

[00:46:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, 

[00:46:34] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: so my point to that being, it becomes, when we're talking about pattern recognition, the circumstances, the details, the words we use, the expression we each have, all of those are gonna be different.

But the progression of what happens in our nervous system. We have safe and connected, get some cue of something, the nervous system quick responds and goes, is that danger? Okay, now I'm in a protective state. The nervous system continues and goes, are you gonna be able to fix that in the protective state?

Yes. Okay, cool. Maybe we can go back to safety. No. Okay. We need to go to shutdown. And that is our interplay all day, every day with every circumstance, every conversation, every interaction we have with ourselves or someone else. And so that's why I get so geeked out about it is because the physiological pathway and pattern is the same.

Our job is to recognize, oh, here are all the different ways that my pattern shows up, so that I can acknowledge it or that I can recognize it as, oh, this is a nervous system response. And so my job right now is not to force myself to go figure out how to do the workout. That's just gonna make the nervous system response worse.

My job is actually to attend to my nervous system state and put it back as much as I can into the safe and connected state. How could I do that? Oh, one of the ways I could do that is to say I choose to prioritize my sleep. Right now that feels good to me. Okay, great. Now I'm back in my safe and connected state and now I can ask, would I like to work out later?

Oh yeah. Huh. Interesting. Yeah, I would, this is the, it's the same, fill in the blank, whatever it is that you're struggling with,

[00:48:15] Christa Biegler, RD: and I think there is, I think another slightly important insert to put there where I wasn't landing in frustration is because sometimes when I'm like, oh, I'm frustrated 'cause I didn't do, it's 'cause I missed the window before I had to do other things, is because I ended up.

Doing, putting someone else's needs before mine or buffering in some way. And buffering is simply delaying right now is pain for later, right? So if you open your social media, even if it's a learned behavior neural pathway because you picked up your phone and it was like something you open.

And I find I have to like literally break that by going out of yes, I have to like literally lock it, break it, et cetera. Like where I cannot open it to break that neural pathway. 'cause it becomes really automatic sometimes. It's been great to break that. But anyway, I think that one of the reasons I wasn't frustrated about this is just because I didn't go buffering, so I wasn't wasting and delaying that.

It was like, instead it was what you described where it was like, oh, I actually just chose the bigger priority at that moment of what I preferred at that moment. Instead of pushing through. And, it's okay for either one. It's like it's all in unraveling and I think that's. The interesting thing, especially as we get to the concept of weight gain in general, I think one of the underlying things is like we care about things that change how we look and feel, right?

So much. And as it becomes more visible to other people it starts to become more urgent to us. But our urgency is sometimes the threat is the continued threat to the nervous system overall. And so it's meeting ourself. And what I hear from you is you just went through that example was it's not really about, I hear people say oh, I should be trying to get into rest and digest.

And I think that we shit all over ourselves a lot. And so it's not really this not getting out of activation and shutdown, but it's like seeing and shifting That's right. Which is not surprising that I accidentally chose that word.

[00:50:10] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Exactly. And I think you bring up one of the most important points in nervous system work, and that is we can get, we can activate ourselves by being so worried about.

Getting ourselves back to a safe state. And that's not what the work is about. In fact, the work is about building resilience, flexibility in the nervous system. So the way that you described, being able to say, Hey, I choose to prioritize my sleep right now. And then your nervous system slid back into that.

Oh, that feels nice. That shows flexibility in the nervous system. And a lot of people who have been stuck in activation and shut down for too long, they have a very rigid nervous system. And once we get into that activation or overwhelm, we're stuck. We get flooded, it's hard to get out of it. And so rather than prioritizing, oh my gosh, nervous system safety in our connected state, we're actually prioritizing three things. Capacity, resilience, and flexibility. And so you just gave us a beautiful example of flexibility. One moment I'm resistant to going. And with a couple of different tweaks, I'm able to be back in my connected state, and now my experience of doing the workout has completely shifted.

Doing that, having that flexibility starts to build resilience. As you start to be more flexible in your nervous system, now you're recognizing, oh, perhaps I can handle bigger challenges, more challenges, because I have a flexible nervous system that creates more resilience. I'm a resilient person.

It's not about the circumstances that happen in my life, but it's about my ability to meet them, to be able to be, flexible and resilient in those circumstances. And that builds one of the, if not the most important goal in nervous system work is building capacity. And I think that word can sometimes be a little confusing.

So I'll try and oversimplify it by saying capacity is. Your ability to meet life's challenges, whatever comes your way with this sort of knowledge and awareness that, yeah, I'm gonna slip back and forth from, oh, that's really hard. I got this, and maybe some days it might be, you know what, I need to let myself go to shut down and bring it back.

Having capacity and a resilient nervous system includes all of the nervous system states with this confidence that you'll be able to move flexibly between them all. That's the way we are designed as human beings. We're designed to go into each state and then work our way out of them. We're not designed to only be here, we're designed to be in all of them.

And so we wanna build the capacity in the system to be able to flexibly move between the states. 

[00:53:00] Christa Biegler, RD: that's a beautiful place to end, but if we can have a couple minutes to talk about capacity for a minute longer. And the reason is because we've been talking about capacity in practice for a couple of years.

I haven't really had anyone come on and speak to capacity. But as I started to like unravel things around the nervous system, I am like, it doesn't really matter if you have no capacity in your life. If, and my analogy here is if your plate is completely full, you don't even be trying to add more crap to the plate or nervous system tools.

It all feels it's like the literal picture of overwhelm. And you talk, I mean you just mentioned you just define capacity as the ability to meet life's challenges, but can you like unwrap capacity a little bit more and where it comes up? Is it like step one before anything else? Is it, I feel like awareness to everything.

Is most important, but I think this concept of capacity is not underlined or highlighted enough. So I wanted to have the opportunity to do that before we wrapped up, 

[00:53:57] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: okay, yes, this will be a good challenge for me 'cause this will help me keep it in my, let's wrap it up in a bow and have it be usable.

Something that people can sink their teeth into right away. So my favorite analogy when I'm teaching capacity is to learn to think of your nervous system, like a bank account balance. And if I'll just stay in a financial bank account for a minute, we all have a financial bank account and that, the more money you have in your bank account, the less.

Problematic it feels to pay your bills or go to the grocery store or buy the thing that you want, right? So the more capacity, the more money you have in your bank account balance, the easier it is to spend the money every day. Okay? So we're gonna think about that like a bank account balance. Now, there's two things that impact your financial bank account balance, and that is deposits and withdrawals.

So deposits in your bank account, increase your capacity, withdrawals in your bank account decreases your capacity, right? So same thing with your nervous system bank account. You wanna think about deposits, increase your capacity in your nervous system, bank account and withdrawals demands on you.

Things that are difficult, things that take something from you are withdrawals. Now think this is where it all comes together. Think about what happens in a financial bank account as you continue to diminish the amount of money that's in there. Think about how it feels in your life as your bank account continues to dwindle as you're taking deposits out or as you're taking withdrawals outta the bank account.

Think about what happens emotionally as your bank account balance begins to edge towards overdraft. As the big Allen. As the balance becomes lower and lower and begins to edge towards overdraft, you start to become emotionally more activated. Every trip to the grocery store feels like a difficult trip.

Every bill that needs to be paid feels like a difficult bill. Everything that comes out of that bank account is more difficult to endure as you get closer to overdraft. All right. Now, if we look at that in terms of our nervous system bank account, our nervous system bank account actually operates much the same way.

Let's say you get a good night's sleep, you're prioritizing sleep. Let's say you get a good night's sleep and you wake up with a full bank account balance. Now, I would argue that a lot of people are not getting a good night's sleep, so they're already waking up with three quarters capacity. But let's say you have full capacity, everything that you do all day long takes some type of energy from you, something from you, right?

So you know that when you wake up, you're gonna be getting withdrawals all day long, packing your kids lunch, getting them ready for school. The email that you need to send to your boss, the fight that you just had with your spouse, the gas that you need to put in your car, even the positive things will take something from you because it requires energy.

So you gotta think about your nervous system as I've got withdrawals coming out each day. Now, if you don't have any deposits. If you don't put anything back into that system in the form of whatever deposits look like for you, for some people, and this is why I'll just pause and say, you are right, that awareness is the first step.

This is why I take everybody through their mapping exercise to identify their nervous system states. What are their deposits? What are their withdrawals? All of that is necessary first. And then we manage our nervous system bank account every day. What deposits are going in? Are you feeding yourself?

Are you moving your body? Are there things that feel like a deposit in your system? Even if it's just a hand over your heart and a few deep breaths. Are you giving your partner a hug in the morning? Little deposits, right? Are you managing your bank account Balance, your nervous system, bank account, balance of deposits and withdrawals.

'cause what's happening for most people is they'll wake up. It didn't get a good night's sleep. They're already at a lower nervous system. Bank account balance, then it's all day long. Social media business work go and it's withdrawal.

Maybe they've put in an hour for working out. But to your point, remember when you described that some of your workouts were, can I get this done in the least amount of time possible and I just gotta check it off my list? Withdrawal? Maybe that's not a deposit at that point because it becomes another stressor for you.

So what happens for people is we're teetering on the line of overdraft almost all of the time. When I'm talking about capacity for people, what I'm talking about is managing their nervous system bank account. And if you have more capacity in your bank account, then you can get the stressful email from your boss.

'cause. Oh yeah, that was a withdrawal, but I got this. And you can have the difficult conversation with your spouse because, oh yeah, that was annoying, but I got this. I have capacity in my system to be able to manage the things that life is throwing my way. If you are constantly operating at overdraft or teetering on overdraft, every single thing that comes into your life is going to have a negative impact on you.

And so when we're talking about capacity, we're talking about managing your deposits and your withdrawals on a daily basis, on an hourly basis. Honestly, and this becomes almost second nature for people when they learn to live this way. I call it state first living. We live from our nervous system state first, and the circumstance is second.

[00:59:36] Christa Biegler, RD: So good. I loved that so much. So living from your nervous system state first and your circumstances second, meaning, if you had a fight with X, Y, Z person or someone cut you off in traffic today, or if your kids were driving you crazy, those are all your circumstances. And so it's like being aware or knowledgeable of what that nervous system state is and how you look in those different states.

I love the bank analogy. So good. Eliza, I think that was a needed conversation to have here that we just have not had before, and I think it's running. The background for everybody. So I'm glad we, I'm glad we talked about it. 

[01:00:16] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: It's a lot. I know we covered a lot. Oh, it was 

[01:00:18] Christa Biegler, RD: so good. It was wonderful.

I think it was tangible as well. And I think I'll let you wrap up with the bow in one sentence here, which is, if someone, and I think you already gave a lot of these, so if someone's listening to this and they're like, Ooh, okay, , I heard from Eliza. Everyone needs to have attention to the nervous system.

Like, all things come from the nervous system. What empowering thought, belief, action stuff, whatever you want it to be. Would you tell that person and then work? Can people find you online? 

[01:00:46] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Yes. Okay. We went through a lot today, so I think it's really important to let everybody know. While it can sound complicated, our nervous systems are truly flexible and resilient no matter what the circumstances have been.

No matter where you've been before, I have seen every story imaginable, and you can shift and change this. It's possible to have a completely different experience of your nervous system, no matter how hard it's been or what habits you've been in the past that I've seen it every which way. So just know that it's always possible to change the neural wiring and teach your nervous system resilience.

Where can people find me? Eliza kingsford.com is the best place to find me and there's all kinds of free resources and things that you can dive into to learn more about this and start your journey with this type of work. 

[01:01:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on today and I'm so glad I ran into in multiple conferences and we'll continue to do and we accidentally got talking about, I don't know what it was at first, nervous system stuff. I'm glad I love life in this way. It's like very funny and serendipitous and it leads to people coming on the podcast. So I hope you all enjoy it as well. Thank you. 

[01:01:56] Eliza Kingsford, MA, LPC: Thank you for having me. So good.