#240: Are Your Thoughts Making You Sick? The Mind-Body Connection You Can’t Ignore

Are you looking to elevate your health to the next level? In the Fast to Faith Community, we use fasting, faith, and functional medicine so that you lose weight and achieve your highest health. Hi, my name is Dr. Tabatha Barber. I'm a triple board-certified functional medicine physician. I help women look and feel 10 years younger by integrating fasting, faith, and functional medicine. Download the Fast to Faith app in the Apple Store or the Google Play Store and start your free 7-day trial. You're going to get recipes, meal plans, and my proven 2-10-20-30 method of eating for weight loss. And the Fast to Faith Sisterhood, which is a nurturing, supportive community of women who share challenges, progress, and celebrate successes together. The Fast to Faith app has everything you need to lose weight while deepening your faith. Thrive with the intermittent fasting lifestyle on this episode of Fast to Faith. So that is why so many millions of people stay stuck, because the thoughts that they're thinking and the beliefs that they're having are keeping them there. If you are saying to yourself, I'm never going to feel better. I'm never going to get well. I'm never going to have energy. I'm never going to lose weight. You are right, you won't, because you will fulfill that prophecy. That is how it works. So you have to start speaking completely different beliefs over yourself. You have to shift what your mind is telling your brain and your body. Hormone optimization, gut health, faith, fasting, nutrition, beauty secrets, longevity, weight loss, So much more. Welcome to Fast to Faith. Are you ready to look and feel 10 years younger? Let's get started. Do you feel like you're in a battle against your body and you're losing? I know that I did for so long. I actually hated my body. I would just be so mad at it all the time because it wouldn't do what I needed it to do. I wanted it to live and function sleep deprived. I wanted it to thrive when I was feeding it garbage. I wanted it to feel good when I was causing all of this inflammation and pain by how I was living and the choices I was making. But I couldn't see that. Sometimes you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. I couldn't see that my choices were causing this. And even worse, I didn't realize that the way I was talking to my body and about my body and my life was actually keeping me stuck. It was damaging because everything you think, believe, and feel affects the physiology going on in the trillions of cells that make up your tissues, your organs, your systems, In your body. Like, that is how it works. So we need to talk about that today, the mind-body connection, because it turns out you have way more control over how you feel and how you function than conventional medicine will have you believe. You don't need a white coat to heal you. You don't need a doctor. It was ingrained in me that as a surgeon and a physician, I was the healer. I was the only one that could make patients better. And that's honestly not the truth. The truth is we have divine intelligence in our cells at the cellular level, the trillions of cells that are all working together to make up your organs and your systems and your body. They're all listening to your brain. They're listening to your thoughts. They're listening to your feelings, and they're listening to the beliefs That drive everything that you have going on, all of your choices. It's actual physiology that when you have a thought driven by a belief and it's creating a feeling or a memory, it creates chemicals in your brain, and then it—the brain tells the body to create more chemicals, and the chemicals are either. inflammatory and destructive, or they're restorative and they're healing. So that is really powerful. And there is so much research going on in this field. It is the real deal. I promise you, people and scientists and physicians are studying this. They are doing brain imaging. They're doing blood work to test all of these chemicals. While patients are meditating and they're focusing either on negative things or they're praying and meditating and getting into a deep state of healing in their brain. And then they're testing all of this stuff. And what is being shown is incredible. Like they are producing healing chemicals when they are in a state of prayer and meditation and they're changing the way that their brain is functioning and they're driving out disease, they're healing cancer, they're doing all the things. It's so powerful. But I want to explain something to you. Okay. So your body is operating according to the input that it's receiving. Your brain is just another organ like your liver, like your kidneys, and it operates According to what your mind is telling it to do and the information it's receiving from your body and from the outside world. And your mind is just like a computer program. It's taking that input and then it's giving an output based on previous coding and data that it was told to use. So. And you've probably heard me say this before, that your body's always trying to be in balance. It's trying to be in homeostasis. So your brain will continually tell the cells in your body to be congruent with your thoughts. So for example, if your thoughts are focused on negative things like, I feel tired, I'm in pain, it will produce chemicals and reactions in your cells to validate those thoughts and feelings. It will keep you in that vicious cycle of discomfort and inflammation. But the opposite is true. And that is so powerful that if you start thinking positive things like, I feel joy, I move effortlessly, I am loved, my body functions well, then your brain wants to be in congruency with those thoughts and beliefs or ideas. And so it starts producing healing chemicals And messengers to go out into the cells of the body and do that. So this is known as confirmation bias. Our brain is biased toward seeking confirmation of our existing beliefs and getting the body to be congruent with that. So that is why so many millions of people stay stuck, because the thoughts that they're thinking and the beliefs that they're having are keeping them there. If you are saying to yourself, I'm never going to feel better. I'm never going to get well. I'm never going to have energy. I'm never going to lose weight. You are right. You won't because you will fulfill that prophecy. That is how it works. So you have to start speaking completely different beliefs over yourself. You have to shift what your mind is telling your brain and your body. That is the only way to change. And the Bible is clear on this. It is a command in Romans 12:2, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And it goes on to say, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. This part is really important because so many of us really get caught up in the life and the idea and the belief that we have to make life happen and we have to produce. And that is where our value is, and that we just need to keep striving for things and obtaining things. And the truth of it is, That causes a lot of discontentment and inability to have peace and joy and happiness because you are really just focused on your will for your life. Like, I want this, I want this to happen. And God wants you to look to him and fulfill his will for your life. He had a plan for you before you were even here. And if you can lean in and say, What is your will for me, God? Why did you create me? Why did you give me certain gifts and talents? Why do you have me on this health journey? Why am I going through these struggles, these trials, these tribulations? And lean into his will for you. That is where the transformation really lies. And it's a good, pleasing, and perfect will. He is trying to give you contentment and peace and joy. Like all of that is yours for the taking. If you will get in congruency with God, get in alignment with him and say your will, not mine. I promise you so much of the struggle that you face every day and the, the pain and the discomfort. It's all because you are fighting against your body and you're fighting against God's will for you. You're. You're fighting against the plan, your purpose. So I know this is getting a little deep, but I have felt it so profoundly multiple times in my life because just when I think, you know, I've invited God into the journey, I kick him out again. I forget about him. I try and do things on my own, especially when it comes to my health, when I'm trying to get myself better. I'm like, oh, I got this. I know how to do this. I'm the doctor. I can figure it out. And then I forget to go to God and ask God. And that really gets me in a lot of trouble. You know, I, when I was an OB-GYN, I had such bad back pain. I couldn't walk away from the OR table after I finished surgery. I got stuck in deliveries in the middle of the night and I couldn't get off of the edge of the bed because my back was in so much pain and distress. And I finally got to the point where I had back surgery, and I really thought it was going to fix me. I had gone through physical therapy and all the things, and I took six weeks off. I was a great patient. I did everything I was supposed to do. I was going to physical therapy after that, and when I went back to work, my third night on call, I was doing a delivery. And I reinjured myself and I couldn't move. And I was on my back for a week straight. God literally had to put me on my back looking up toward him to reconnect with him and hear what he was trying to tell me for so long. He was trying to tell me, you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. You're trying to do it all. You're trying to take care of all these patients, your children. You're trying to keep your marriage together. You're not supposed to do it this way, and so I'm going to intervene, and you you got to take a timeout. And that timeout was so frustrating because the surgeon was like, "Oh, it's okay. We'll just have another back surgery. We'll put rods and screws in your back. You might herniate above and below, so you might need more surgeries." That's the thing about back surgery. They're like glazed potato chips. Can't have just one. I was like, time out. I'm done. No more. I'm not having multiple back surgeries at 40 years old. There has to be another way. And God was trying to show me that it was all what was happening in my mind, all of the stress and the overwhelm and the out of control trying to do it my way myself. Was manifesting physically. Your body and how it is looking and feeling and functioning is a manifestation of what's happening in your mind. I had to renew my mind. I had to shift my mind. I had to see and deal with a lot of lies that were going on in my mind and shift limiting beliefs and break strongholds. And change all of that computer programming that had been there since I was a little girl. The programming that I had to prove that I was good enough to be a doctor. I had to prove that I was equal to the you know doctors who had you know straight A's and like went to these Ivy League schools and. They had all these accomplishments and here I was, a high school dropout, teen mom on Medicaid and food stamps. Like I had to prove my worth to be where they were and to be making the salary they were. And God was like, none of that's true. None of that's actually true. You are worthy because you are my daughter and I have a really important plan for your life. And you don't have to prove it to anybody. And that took me a long time to figure out. It took me a long time to realize that my body always had my best interest at heart, and I was abusing it and neglecting it. And the way that I was feeling and showing up in life, it was actually my fault. So I needed to love my body. I needed to radically shift how I was treating my body and start listening to it and regain my intuition that I had lost. As you know, when I went into medical school, they really brainwashed me. I'm just going to be honest. And we see that young girls are trained to no longer be in tune with their body. Let's cover up everything the body is saying. Symptoms are messages that your body is talking to you. It's telling you, I like this. I don't like that. This is happening. You need to do this differently. But we don't listen. We cover it up. We medicate it. We surgerize it. We do all the things. We ignore it. We get mad at it. There has to be a return to intuition and loving our bodies and loving ourselves. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you can't even love yourself, how are you going to love your neighbor, right? So I would invite you to take 5 minutes today and just start to notice, what do you think about your body? Do you like your body? Do you think your body is working for you or against you? Do you think your body's ugly? Do you think your body's weak or strong? What do you think? What do you believe about your body? And you might be surprised when you really start to unpack that. And that just might be why you're stuck. So if this at all resonates with you, you're in the right place. I've got you. Like, you can overcome this. You can renew your mind. You can shift all of that. You can break limiting beliefs and strongholds. I truly just believed that chronic pain was my lot in life and chronic bowel issues because I had gut issues since childhood. So I just— this is it. I'm never going to have regular bowels. I'm never going to feel good when I eat. I'm never going to have consistent energy. I'm just never going to be happy. And that's what I believed. And it's such a lie. They're all lies. That is not how God designed you. That is not what God has for you. So please stick with me. Let me know if this resonated with you and share this with a girlfriend that you know is struggling. She is trying to do life on her own and you know, She just needs a little bit of Jesus. She needs to know that her worth comes from the fact that she is alive. Like, she's chosen. She's a daughter of the Most High. And if you believe and accept Jesus as your Savior, like, that's literally all you need. And then we'll work from there. Let's open some scripture and see what God says is the truth about you and how that you should function and how you should have life. And, you know, read John 10:10. It says the enemy came to steal, destroy, kill, but Jesus came to give you life, life to the fullest, like a happy, joy-filled life of abundance and, and peace. Like, he didn't come here to give you a miserable get-by life. That is not what the Bible Promises. So live into that promise. Trust it. Seek it out. Know that it's yours for the taking. If you would just, like, invite God into this journey with you, you guys can really do some amazing things together. So I love you. I have a feeling you needed to hear this this week because that's what God put on my heart. So I am here for you. Let me know what else you need. But Have an amazing week.