This month’s blog post isn’t going to look at nutrition from a weight or fat loss perspective, instead we are going to look at the connection between food and wellbeing such as stress, depression and anxiety.
Picture your favourite child hood meal, how you feel when you eat it, and the happy memories that you perhaps associate with that meal. On the flip side picture a really bad relationship break up that you may have had and the type of food cravings you had because of it. We can all relate to hitting the wine and pizza on a Friday night after work, or the ice cream and cake when things are rough. Food helps comfort us and makes us feel better. What you may even notice is that you start to develop a habit for eating these types of foods in times of stress. Those types of ‘comfort’ foods make us feel good in the moment, but it does not help heal us. Food triggers emotional responses, whether it be positive or a negative. Interestingly, a lack of serotonin has been liked to people who suffer from anxiety and depression. In the past I was myself stuck in the vicious food cycle, I hated how I looked, I was stressed with work, I ate to comfort myself and feel happy, then I hated how I looked and the weight gain those foods were causing, and I know first-hand how difficult it is to break this cycle. Serotonin is essential to your body’s ability to make you feel good mentally and is responsible for your overall mood. When we exercise the body increases its serotonin levels, you may have noticed yourself a rise in your mood or an increased relaxed state after completing a workout? Food does not produce serotonin, but it can increase serotonin in the body due to a chemical called Tryptophan, which is found in certain foods. Tryptophan can be found in both whole foods and convenience foods. The digestive tract produces around 80-90% of your serotonin levels, therefore when we eat a very unhealthy high calorie meal our body uses most of its energy during the digestive phase to ‘clean’ its self, by doing so it can interrupt its ability to produce serotonin, causing dips in our moods and wellbeing. Unfortunately, our bodies find it very difficult to digest processed foods and sugars, and at some point our body will pay the price for over indulgence of these types of foods. Like alcohol consumption, a poor meal choice can set you back a couple of days. Let’s picture the scene, its mid-week, it’s been a stressful week at the office, and the last thing you want is to come home and cook dinner then deal with a mountain of dishes afterwards. You opt for a pizza home delivery. This type of meal is hard to digest and will use up a lot of energy. Most of the digestion work will be done when you’re sleeping and because your body has worked so hard through the night, your likely to be more tired the next day. Which can then lead to you making more poor food choices to try and get an energy boost to fuel you through the next working day – it’s a vicious circle! Wholefoods are food sources which are in their most natural state, they can be absorbed by our bodies very quickly and have a natural relationship with our bodies digestive system. Feeding our bodies more wholefoods allows our bodies to concentrate on all its other duties such as removing old waste, clearing up and improving the condition of our skin, assisting in the absorption of nutrients, improve our sleep patterns, increasing our bodies energy levels and not forgetting boosting our serotonin levels which dramatically increasing our moods and concentration levels. The change you need to make is selecting whole foods that contain tryptophan not the processed ones! Whole foods that contain tryptophan include eggs, salmon, turkey, seeds and nuts. You may also want to increase your intake of foods, which improve and speed up digestion? These include broccoli, apples, pears and fish oils. At Nemesis we get all our clients to follow the minimum 80/20 rule on a daily basis (80% of their daily diet should come from whole foods), it’s one of our core daily habits. In doing so our clients start to feel better with a dramatic boost to their wellbeing. Clients who embrace this rule daily always achieve the best results on plan to those who do not – and we do not just mean from a weight and fat loss perspective. Our clients feel more motivated, they start to perform better at work; they are able to handle situations of stress better through improved concentration levels and their performance in physical activities. It’s important to be clear that food alone will not cure stress, depression or anxiety, but it is possible to find some relief through improved eating habits to help boost your overall mood and sense of wellbeing.
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AuthorsSharon & Lainey are Online PT & Nutrition Advisors with a combined 18 years experience in the Health & Fitness Industry. Archives
August 2018
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