Instagram story viewer> @timothyfrie> Posts

Timothy Frie

@timothyfrie

29.9K

followers

969

following

Nutritional neuroscientist + writer
@naneuronutrition 🧠 @centerforneuronutrition
I study why we eat the way we do
↓ For practitioners + work with me

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

I have avoided talking about overeating and weight on here for so long because they’re topics that seem to invite people who just want to release their unconscious material into the comments instead of engage in self-inquiry and critical thinking.

[I guess that could be said for almost anything on here these days, really.]

Now that I no longer feel an obligation to tend to other people’s emotional reactivity in the comments section, I’m talking more about weight and overeating on here.

They’re two topics that have been unavoidable in my life and work, and they’re topics that are central to the lives and work of many of the people (especially the nutrition, mental health, and wellness practitioners) who are on here with us.

If you’ve experienced trauma, are neurodivergent, have a complex relationship with food, are managing chronic health conditions, and would like support with overcoming overeating, we’d welcome some time to learn more about you at the National Center for Neuronutrition.

If you’re a practitioner who works with the people I described above, I invite you to explore the field of neuronutrition at @naneuronutrition. by @timothyfrie

3

16

a month ago

8 unpopular opinions I have as a nutritional neuroscientist and behavioral nutritionist who studies how trauma influences the way we eat.

If you’re someone who has experienced trauma, have chronic health conditions, have a complex relationship with food, have spent years bouncing from one diet, meal plan, and supplement protocol to the next, and want to stop cycling between overeating and undereating, quit shaming yourself about the way you eat, and start eating with more clarity, coherence, and ease, we’re here to support you at @centerforneuronutrition.

If you’re a mental health, nutrition, or wellness professional who works with a similar population, I invite you to explore the field of neuronutrition at @naneuronutrition. by @timothyfrie

3

34

2 months ago

Welcome to day 1 of Why You Eat the Way You Do AKA Neuronutrition School.

If you are someone who has spent years trying different diets and supplement plans, you feel overwhelmed with nutrition, you have experienced trauma, you have chronic health conditions, you’re neurodivergent, or you have a complex relationship with food—I made this for you.

And if you’re a nutrition, mental health, or wellness practitioner who supports the population of people I just described, I made this for you too.

When you understand how to change the way you eat—instead of just forcing yourself to follow rules about what you eat—nutrition can start to make sense again.

And along the way, you will start to make sense of your self again and you will start to make sense of your body again.

If that’s something that sounds helpful to you, I invite you to follow along and stick around for day 2. by @timothyfrie

3

12

3 months ago

By all means: do what you think is best for your child *and* be curious about why you believe what you’re doing is best.

If thinking about that brings up something for you, then that’s a clue. by @timothyfrie

3

13

5 days ago

A change in your perspective can lead to a change in the outcome. by @timothyfrie

3

17

5 days ago

You can look at brain space as the amount of energy and capacity your brain has to do what it needs to do.

Everything that you do and all of the information you process uses brain space—whether you’re consciously aware of it or not.

If you’re not aware of what uses your brain space, you might blame yourself for not having the capacity to do what you want and need to do.

Understanding brain space in the context of nutrition could improve your relationship with food. by @timothyfrie

3

11

6 days ago

My desire to understand people and my capacity to witness others for who they truly are has expanded synchronously with my desire to understand and my capacity to witness myself.

I can be devestating to face, witness and understand the extent of the pervasive nature of trauma on the brain and body—in your self and in others.

The consequences of the wounds that come from some of life’s most difficult events are often those we ignore, deny, and downplay the most.

It hurts too much if we… don’t.

Whether we choose to face it and embrace it or not, we will experience life accordingly.

Humans will, collectively, continue to experience the outcome of what we have created.

Right now, we are experiencing what it’s like to become exactly who we have become.

We are who we have become.

You are who you have become.

We’re all experiencing this becoming individually and collectively, and with such unparalleled magnitude, intensity, and chronicity.

There is more life available to you—to all of us—despite it all.

Our individual despair of the self is a consequence of the collective despair of the selves.

You do not need to remain what you became.

We cannot remain who we became. by @timothyfrie

3

9

10 days ago

One of the harder things I had to reconcile in my own relationship with food was that understanding why I did something didn’t absolve my experience of the consequences of doing that thing.

That distinction now influences a lot of how I think about nutritional behavior and teach neuronutrition.

I can have compassion for why I learned to use food in a particular way without pretending there are no consequences.

I can understand why ADHD makes eating consistently difficult and still care about tolerating the discomfort of doing what I need to do to care for my nutritional health.

I can understand why food makes me feel better and still decide I don’t want eating to be my only way of regulating my emotions.

And sometimes, I can decide that changing something isn’t worth the difficulty it would create right now.

That’s very different from dividing eating into “good” and “bad.”

Understanding gives us context.

Our bodies still have nutritional needs.

We still get to decide which consequences matter to us and what, if anything, we want to do differently.

Something can make sense and still be something you want to change. by @timothyfrie

3

1

a month ago

Some of what I understand about food now as a nutritional neuroscientist, I first experienced without having language for it.

There were ways I ate, foods I craved, and food loops I felt stuck in that made much more sense once I stopped assuming something had to be something wrong with me.

Long before we can explain why we eat, our brains are learning from what happens before, during, and after eating.

Food can become connected with comfort, relief, stimulation, connection, safety, or virtually any sensation, thought, or emotion.

Eventually, looking for food and eating can feel almost automatic.

And then we can learn something else: to feel ashamed of ourselves for doing it.

That’s when a learned way of regulating can become tangled up with a story about self-control, discipline, or what our eating supposedly says about us.

Understanding that changed the way I thought about my own eating, and eventually, the way I studied everyone else’s.

You can understand what food has been doing for you without judging yourself for it.

And from there, you have more ways to decide what you want to keep, what you want to change, and what else you might need. by @timothyfrie

3

6

a month ago

We’ve made overeating mean far too much about the person doing it.

We assume that because someone ate past fullness, they must lack self-control.

OOP! They did it again, so they must need more discipline.

They knew better, so they should have done better.

But those assumptions leave out something pretty important:

The brain.

Overeating can be the behavioral expression of a much larger sequence of brain functions involving hunger and fullness signals, reward, attention, executive functioning, emotion, stress response, learned experiences with food, and the environment you’re eating in.

When we reduce all of these things to a reflection of our self-control, overeating often becomes used as evidence that something is wrong with you.

Then comes the shame.

Then the stricter rules—the promise to “be good” tomorrow to attempt to regain a sense of control.

And eventually, you realize you’ve created yet another experience with food that seems to prove you were the problem all along.

This is a cycle of what I call a food loop: a learned pattern of brain activity.

You can eat more than you intended without spending the rest of the day shaming yourself about it.

You can notice fullness without using that felt sense as evidence that you can’t get it together.

You can become curious about why you overate instead of immediately trying to compensate for it.

You can make changes to the way you eat without needing to dislike yourself for making them.

And food can take up a lot less space in your head.

That’s why I’m less interested in asking why someone “can’t stop overeating.”

I want to understand what keeps making overeating make sense to their brain.

When the way you eat starts to make more sense, you have more options for changing how you eat than shame, undereating, and trying harder.

If you’re a practitioner who works with people who struggle with overeating, I invite you to learn more about nutritional neuroscience at @naneuronutrition.

If stress, trauma, neurodivergence, your mental health, or your past experiences with food and your body have made nutrition challenging to navigate, please reach out to us at the National by @timothyfrie

3

9

a month ago

Overeating absolutely is a thing.

It just doesn’t mean or look the same for everyone, in every context. by @timothyfrie

3

8

a month ago

Some of the ways you think about how you eat and your body were learned from the same places (and people) you learned to protect yourself from.

Perhaps you learned to eat when you needed comfort,
to ignore hunger when making a meal feels inconvenient,
to control your diet when the rest of your life felt uncontrollable,
to disconnect from your body when being in it felt unsafe,
or to follow someone else’s rules about what to do when trusting yourself felt impossible or wrong.

Perhaps you learned to believe things like:

“I have no self-control.”
“I’m just addicted to food.”
“I can’t trust myself with food.”
“I know what to do, but I just can’t do it.”

One if the reasons I transitioned away from traditional food-as-medicine and nutritional psychiatry approaches to nutrition and into neuronutrition and nutritional neuroscience is because we need to look deeper than the food on our plate.

Food behavior is a reflection of brain behavior.

The nervous system senses what is happening within and around us, integrates that information with our memory, emotions, expectations, and context, and organizes a response.

If you repeat a response enough times, it can become a food loop: a familiar way the nervous system solves a familiar problem.

As practitioners, we need to stop only asking, “How do we change this behavior?” and also ask, “What has this behavior been doing for this person?”

Breaking the cycle of food loops becomes easier to change when someone can recognize it without turning it into evidence to build a case against themselves.

When we learn to identify what’s happening within ourselves with curiosity and compassion, we can break the cycle of feeling shame about undereating and overeating.

Then, you can start focusing on what your# *actually* need *now,* rather than defaulting to what you once needed to protect yourself in the past. by @timothyfrie

3

7

a month ago