Your State Shapes How You Digest

By Judy Grupenhoff, MEd, NBC-HWC

Most of us think of eating as something that happens only in the stomach and intestines. Food goes in, nutrients get absorbed, energy comes out. Simple, right?

Not quite.

The truth is: how well you digest and metabolize your food depends on the state of your nervous system before you even take the first bite.

Two Modes, Two Meals

Your nervous system has two primary modes that matter for eating:

  • Sympathetic activation — often called fight-or-flight. This is the state your body shifts into when it perceives stress, pressure, or threat.

  • Parasympathetic activation — often called rest-and-digest. This is the state where your body feels safe enough to send energy toward digestion, repair, and absorption.

Here’s the key: you can be eating kale and quinoa, but if you’re in fight-or-flight mode, your body won’t digest, absorb, and metabolize that food the way it’s designed to. 

What Stress Does at the Table

When your sympathetic system is activated, your body prepares for action — not digestion. Blood is diverted away from the stomach and intestines and shunted to the big muscles of the arms and legs. Your heart rate rises. Breathing quickens. The last thing your body thinks it needs is to break down broccoli.

At the same time, stress hormones like cortisol signal your liver to release glucose into the bloodstream — quick fuel for running or fighting.

If stress is occasional, your body can handle these spikes. But when stress becomes frequent or chronic, blood glucose keeps rising, and insulin has to keep working to clear it from the blood. Over time, this ongoing cycle can push the system toward overload — making the body more prone to storing fat (especially around the middle) and, for some people, developing insulin resistance.

This is one reason chronic stress can make it harder to regulate weight, no matter what you eat.

Rest-and-Digest: The Healing Mode

The parasympathetic system does the opposite. When your body feels safe:

  • Digestive enzymes flow.
  • Stomach acid and bile are released to break down food.
  • Peristalsis (the wave-like movement that moves food through the gut) activates.
  • Nutrients get absorbed efficiently.

In this state, cortisol drops, blood sugar stabilizes, and insulin doesn’t need to keep working overtime. Your body can store and burn energy more effectively — without the stress-driven signals that push toward fat storage.

So What Can You Do?

You don’t have to overhaul your entire diet to support better digestion. You can start by shifting your state at the table. A few simple practices:

  1. Pause before you eat. Take three slow breaths, letting your body register safety.
  2. Notice your food. While doing slow deep breathing, take a minute to really notice and appreciate what is on your plate. 
  3. Notice your body. Drop your shoulders, soften your jaw, and feel your feet on the ground.
  4. Chew slowly. Not as a rule to follow, but as a way of being kind to your digestive system.

These small shifts move you toward parasympathetic activation — which means your food has a chance to do its real job: nourish you.

The Takeaway

Food isn’t just about what’s on the plate. It’s about the state you’re in when you bring it to your mouth.

When you approach eating from a place of stress, your body interprets that as danger — and digestion pays the price. When you approach eating from a place of safety, your nervous system helps you metabolize food with more ease, balance, and efficiency.

In other words: it’s not just what you eat. It’s how you eat, and the state you’re in while eating, that shapes the way your body uses food.

Want to learn more? Head over to the Learning Center. I have a short video course available that provides practical skills and audio recordings to support you in creating healthier nervous system habits.