There’s something sacred about eating. Or at least, there used to be.

Before macros and meal prep, before protein bars in cars between meetings, food was connection. Slowness. A full-body experience. And even if that sounds soft for a fitness blog, hang tight. Because how you feel while you eat affects everything about what your body does with the food.

It turns out, eating with people who make you tense might be doing more harm than you think.

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Digestion Doesn’t Start in Your Stomach

It starts with your nervous system.

The human body has two main modes:
Sympathetic, aka "fight or flight" — alert, stressed, bracing.
And parasympathetic, aka "rest and digest" — relaxed, calm, receptive.

Guess which one turns on proper digestion?

In parasympathetic mode, your body treats food as nourishment. It releases saliva and digestive enzymes (Cleveland Clinic, n.d.). Stomach acid increases. Blood shifts toward the digestive organs. Muscles in the gut contract rhythmically to move food along. Nutrients get absorbed efficiently. This is how your body turns food into fuel, muscle, energy, and recovery. 

But in sympathetic mode, even if you're just subtly anxious, irritated, or masking discomfort, your biology shifts. Cortisol rises. Blood is pulled away from your digestive tract toward your muscles and brain (just in case you need to fight or flee). Stomach acid production drops. Enzymes decrease. Gut motility slows or becomes erratic so absorption gets sloppy. When gut motility is disrupted, food may move too slowly or unevenly through the digestive tract, leading to incomplete breakdown, fermentation in the wrong places, and inefficient nutrient uptake (Nguyen et al., 2011). You might feel bloated, wired, or weirdly hungry again shortly after.

This isn’t just about big stress, it’s also about low-level social tension:
Trying to seem polite when you’re seething. Sitting with someone who talks over you. Eating in a space where you don’t feel emotionally safe or seen. Your body notices. It keeps score. And it holds back on digestion, because it’s not convinced it’s safe to relax. So that perfect, balanced, high-protein meal? If you eat it while you’re emotionally bracing yourself, your body might not break it down or use it effectively. What you feel while eating directly affects what your body does with your food (Selhub, 2015).

That delay has consequences, bloating, sluggishness, nutrient malabsorption, even low-level inflammation over time. Not to mention how it feeds into emotional eating, or stress snacking an hour later when you’re back on your own.

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Food Isn’t Just Fuel. It’s Information.

The body interprets and responds to food based not only on its nutritional content, but also on your physiological state at the time of eating (Watts, 2022). Are you safe? Are you calm? Is your system prepared to repair, grow, and thrive? Or are you tense, shallow in breath, jaw clenched, mind preoccupied while the fork moves on autopilot?

The distinction between an anabolic (growth-oriented) and catabolic (breakdown-oriented) state is not determined solely by training intensity or protein intake. It is equally influenced by the balance of the nervous system. When meals are consistently consumed in a sympathetic, stress-dominant state, the body receives conflicting signals, undermining even the most carefully planned nutrition strategies.

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The Bottom Line

Who you share your meals with can have a measurable impact on your physical progress, not in a superficial “positive energy” sense, but through concrete neurological and metabolic pathways.

Sharing meals with individuals who foster a sense of ease, safety, and presence can support optimal digestive function. Alternatively, choosing to eat alone, in calm, mindful stillness, can offer the same benefits by allowing the body to fully shift into a parasympathetic, or “rest and digest” state.

Take a moment before your first bite. Breathe deeply. Remove distractions. 

Create the conditions for your body to receive nourishment, not just consume it. Digestion does not begin in the gut alone. It begins in the nervous system, triggered by how safe, calm, and grounded you feel.  And that is shaped, in no small part, by the company you keep.

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References:

Cleveland Clinic. (n.d.). Parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS). Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved March 27, 2025, from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23266-parasympathetic-nervous-system-psns

Nguyen, N. Q., Besanko, L. K., Burgstad, C. M., Burnett, J., Stanley, B., Butler, R., Holloway, R. H., & Fraser, R. J. (2011). Relationship between altered small intestinal motility and absorption after abdominal aortic aneurysm repair. Intensive Care Medicine, 37(4), 610–618. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-010-2094-z 

Selhub, E. (2015, November 16). Nutritional psychiatry: Your brain on food. Harvard Health Blog. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-your-brain-on-food-201511168626

Watts, A. G., Kanoski, S. E., Sanchez-Watts, G., & Langhans, W. (2022). The physiological control of eating: Signals, neurons, and networks. Physiological Reviews, 102(2), 379–512. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00028.2020