It is time to start paying attention to what you eat, not for the regular reasons of “choosing healthy options” or “to loose weight.” It is time to think and plan what you eat for whole-body wellness. What we eat can have drastic effects on how we feel, with particularly strong impact on our mental health. Don’t miss the simplicity of changing what you eat to help you feel better every day!
Here are some simple notes on nutrition and food that can help you have a clearer mind, a higher spirit, less emotional upheaval, and less physical discomfort:
- Water: Drinking enough water helps rid the toxins from your body and helps you stay hydrated. (A quick formula: Body Weight ÷ 2 = ______ounces/day) Everyone needs a different amount for their body.
- Protein: Protein helps give us healthy hormones. Choosing grass-fed, pasture-raised meat and animal products ensures we are getting only the meat in our bodies instead of added chemicals and hormones.
- Fats: How many people think fat is bad? This is far from the truth. Fat gives us long-sustaining energy. Fat is required in order for our bodies to absorb certain vitamins. Vitamin deficiencies can have side effects such as mental health issues, so fat is important.
- Good sources of fat: animal fat (nitrate and sugar free), coconut, avocado, and sesame oils, ghee, and grass-fed butter.
- Carbohydrates: This is fuel for the brain, giving our bodies a quick source of energy.
- Try a carbohydrate before exercising for a full boost of energy. Sources are: sweet potato, butternut squash, or spaghetti squash.
- Stay away from refined carbohydrates (white sugar, fruit juice, corn syrup). Look for unrefined carbohydrates in your diet (raw honey, fresh fruit, maple syrup, legumes, whole grains – soaked and fermented, dried beans, brown rice, vegetables.
- Vitamins: Vitamins help our bodies resist disease and help metabolism. Try your best to get your vitamins from natural food versus supplements.
- NOTE: When you get a full blood panel through your doctor, ask them to test for Vitamin Deficiencies. Some deficiencies can appear as mental health symptoms.
- Minerals: Minerals are not naturally produced by our bodies so we need to be incorporating them into our diet. They are essential for everyday body functions. They help us build strong bones, blood, skin, hair, nerve function, muscle, and metabolic processes. Minerals help turn the food we eat into energy.
- Examples of minerals: iron, potassium, calcium, and magnesium.
Those are some basics. Make sure you are incorporating all of these nutritional categories into your daily diet. If you are currently dealing with or being treated for depression, anxiety, or any other mood disorder, it may be time to see your Doctor for a Full Blood Panel as well as meet with a Nutritionist to see how food can help reduce your symptoms. Ultimately, food affects our neurotransmitters and eating some foods or staying away from others can help our mental health!
Recommended Nutritionist: Tara Nuncio
For more information on the effects of food, digestion, nutrition, and overall health go to www.draxe.com
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