My Top Food Thoughts to Help with Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Emotional Instability
April 02, 2022
The Top Foods I Recommend during times of Stress, Anxiety, Depression
If you’re anything like me, you know just a standard… normal human being… you’re likely to have experienced unprecedented levels of fear, frustration, stress, anxiety, and quite possibly even depression and indignation over the last several months to years.
And with the world we live in, leading brain scientists and holistic psychiatrists suggest that our modern culture is a wretched place to recover your mental health and find safe, secure, stability.
YES! In fact our modern culture is nearly explicitly designed to rile you up, to ignite your emotions, and run you ragged from the inside out.
Via methods of extreme use and exposure to addictive and exploitive technology, addictive media on all of our screens, addictive substances in our manufactured foods, alongside manufactured fear, dissent and hostility everywhere you look online via maleficently aligned algorithms exploiting our attentions.
Oh, and if you’ve been waking up to just how important your sleep is for your mental and emotional health…
YES!
Our natural biological sleep pattern is incredibly important for our health and stability, growth and maintenance to provide for our greatest human potential.
Naturally, we are not best aligned to sit sedentary for 10 hours a day and be expected to eat fast manufactured ultra-processed foods while our metabolic health suffers every step of the way.
No sunlight, no sunshine in our hearts and souls either.
YES, seasonal affective disorder is a real thing and it actually affects all of us, whether we get an official clinical diagnosis or not.
You don’t need any medical visit to tap into your inner wisdom and intuition my friend, but perhaps what you DO need a little bit more of is a solid friend, family, or support system to help point you in the right direction or be your reflective mirror to shine a light on our strengths and be able to watch our back to point out blind spots when we lose focus.
YES, every human being has the potential to tap into their inner wisdom, guiding light inside their soul and awaken their hearts to a world of healing that comes from inside of them and not from any additional diagnosis and prescription to fit you with a bill and pill to match with every ill (without ever addressing the real issues).
SO, as we think about mental health and nutrition… I could talk about this for hours… but I’m going to provide some foundational principles to think about and integrate into your life to support your mental health, which could easily grow far past just the discussion of nutrition… but we’ll stick to nutrition for now.
I’m not here TELLING you what to do, but just here to help, share and encourage and educate. If you have questions… PLZ ask! Ask away! I’d love to help!
I’m here in hopes to help be your best friend (and nothing like a yes man) and an honest soul here only here to help you strive to be your best, soothe your soul, and enrich your life with a deep sense of holistic health and strategic thinking to make sure we keep in mind all of our options and end up with net positives while reducing all potential side effects.
Let’s get to it!
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FAT
Fat – healthy fats more specifically – think simple, not complicated – olives, avocados, hemp hearts, fatty fish, healthy eggs, nuts and seeds (walnuts, pistachios especially)
Fats are satiating, calming, relaxing to the body and mind. But, they can often be lacking in satiety and fullness if we consume them with lots of sugar or lots of processing or extravagant flavors – think ice cream, chocolate, chips, etc. these are not satisfying. Most healthy fats are generally mild in flavor, they are not meant to be highly emotional or extravagant in flavor and experience.
I’m not saying you can’t flavor your foods, just be mindful and careful how you pair your foods together. Pairing fat with fiber and/or protein are always more calm for the brain than pairing fat with high glycemic foods that spike our blood sugar and elicit a *sparking* stimulatory experience.
You may also consider supplementing with a high-quality clean source of Omega-3s in your diet as well depending on your unique biological needs and regular dietary intake and metabolic potential.
SUGAR (- not +)
Sugar – let’s keep this one simple since I’ve written on this so much in the past – eliminate added sugars as much as possible – consume whole foods, appropriately portioned fruit and complex carbohydrates. Sugar is not the devil, no. You’ve heard me dive into this enough in the past that I’ll spare us from the despair here.
We simply don’t need added sugar, no matter what name it comes by and we don’t need artificial sweeteners or lots of added natural sweeteners either.
These all elicit a strong stimulatory response via the gut-brain connection, disrupt the healthy microbial balance inside the gut and can lead to downstream effects with disrupting emotions, mindset, prefrontal cortex for logic and reason, and much more.
CARBS aka Carbohydrates
Healthy Carbs – whole foods, lots of plants, lots of colors, minimal grains, maximally whole, minimally processed – think lots of colorful rainbow array of veggies! Eat them any way you like them! Ask me for personalized advice and recipes if you need some extra help :)
Lots of leafy greens - high in fiber and magnesium, and antioxidants needed to reduce stress and inflammation, moderating cortisol and blood sugar dysregulation. Beets, squash and gourds, pumpkin, non-starchy veg and beans are all great things to include here as well.
Colorful fruits in proper portions – citrus fruits are wonderful, as well as berries, loaded with antioxidants, phytochemicals, many vitamins, additional nutrients, and enzymatic properties to support metabolism.
PROTEIN
Protein – this area is a bit more complicated than I’d like it to be at this point because it really really does come down to a very individualized approach depending on immune responses, food allergies, food sensitivities, and more. But I’ll try to be brief and supportive on this nonetheless.
We need protein. WE absolutely need protein for survival and opportunity to thrive.
Within the last 2 years I have grown to be incredibly interested with the domains of protein and how misunderstood and complicated connecting the dots within my field of nutrition and mental health, as culture likes to glorify protein, its shoved into all of our processed “health” foods, protein powders and yet we simultaneously have vilified several common sources of protein in the American diet, like red various forms of red meat, pork, and chicken, etc.
It's important to note that we get protein from nearly all foods, but we don’t get the same level of highly bioavailable amino acids from all forms of foods – whether broccoli, carrots, spirulina, oats, grits, soy, dairy or bacon, eggs, and cheese or bread. General principles suggest including variety (as we often suggest with many other aspects of food recommendations) like combining beans and rice, eggs with a stir fry of veggies, etc.
Yet, like I said… it can get complicated.
Some people, and increasingly more people are becoming more sensitive to common protein sources, sparking immunological responses or even neurological conditions. I still remember working with one client who had a severe sensitivity to wheat and gluten which would provoke extreme thoughts of suicide and clinically diagnoseable schizophrenia. I’ve also written extensively in the past about the addictive potential for gluten and dairy cheese as well, noting the impacts of gluteomorphins and casomorphins.
So, getting back to actual suggestions… whole foods, minimally processed, proper portions, high-quality sourcing, properly cooked (e.g. thoroughly pressure cooked beans, rinsed and soaked grains, gently cooked meats, etc.). Safe sourced Fish and seafood, beans, nuts and seeds, whole eggs, soy (in many varieties, like scrambled tofu or organic soymilk), unsweetened dairy yogurt or kefir, some high quality red meat in your diet may be reasonable as well, though it may not be necessary for everyone.
Primary point to remember with protein though in my opinion from my years of learning from leading professionals in the field, reading and listening to physicians, scientists, researchers, dietitians, nutritionists and others is to optimize protein quality and protein intake time intervals, like specific and strategically designed times of your day where you know you’ll be consuming protein, to help promote protein metabolism stabilization – such as a common example, every 2-3 hours having 15-20g. Depending on the foods you choose, you’d decide what kinds of foods, food combinations and how much of those foods to reach that goal.
Again, individualized plans are always best while knowing yourself and your own individual needs for your health and longevity. Not to say you’ll always need a bit more help and support, but getting a health audit with your regular nutrition with a high qualified professional can definitely clear up confusion and anxiety you might feel challenged with.
BONUS Tips:
Overall, food for mental health includes big picture thinking principles: real foods, whole foods, minimally processed, consumed calmly, quietly, peacefully, relaxed, separated from screens, unnecessary noises, any stimulating devices or technology.
Remember, the more extravagant the experience, the more havoc the experience can be for the brain and lead to roller coaster of instability in emotions, mindset, blood sugar, sleep cycles and more.
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