What fuels your thoughts?
Our last blog dealt with the power of positive thinking and how that positivity can influence your overall health. Today we are taking a closer look at how food can influence how you think!
Ever heard of Nutritional Psychiatry? No! In fairness it was a new term for me, but it’s a very real area of medicine and growing in research and mainstream acceptance. Food is fuel, we all know this, but did you know that the food you eat can and does influence how you think, but also how you feel and in particular mental health.
Nutritional Psychiatry is an area that researches and investigates the importance of food and diet in treating mental health conditions. It encourages people who are suffering with psychological and or behavioural disorders to eat a freshly made diet rich in nutrients with plenty of vegetables, fruits, fish and whole grains. It is widely accepted that mental health is not just about feelings, but is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain and this area of medicine is focusing on using diet as treatment for those imbalances and also the nervous system. Nutritional psychiatry encourages people who are suffering with psychological and or behavioural disorders to fresh in order to minimise the risks associated with mental health disorders.
We all have “bad mental health days” whether you have a pre-existing mental health issue or not and some days are just better than others. This is life as it ebbs and flows. One bad day can seem to undo months worth of work on staying the course with good eating, but it is important to remember that one bad day does not make a lifetime of poor nutrition.
Here are a couple of tools to help ease the bad day blues:
Don’t food shop on a bad mental health day - move away from the supermarket! If you can’t avoid going to the shop for food when you are not on top form, consider doing an online order to avoid the temptation. As they say don’t go shopping on an empty stomach, so don’t shop when you are not feeling up to it. Go online, get that order in and let someone else troll the aisles for you. The extra cost may just be worth it and could help deal with the temptation of an impending “pig out”
If you find temptation to be too hard and just can’t say no, or just don’t feel like you have the time to invest, why not order a meal kit and have this delivered to your door. You can order days or weeks worth of food to keep you on track with better nutritional eating. I know people who have done this and it has worked wonders.
If you love cooking and being in the kitchen, why not invest in some new appliances. For a foodie to have a new toy in the kitchen is like Christmas for kids. I love it when I have something new to use. Being winter in Australia is a great time to utilise a slow cooker and maybe this sort of investment will help fill winter nights with nutritional powerhouse meals that will fuel your mind and body.
Keep that gut health under a watchful eye. Your gut is the most amazing part of your body. It feeds, filters, grows good bacteria and as we have written before the gut is widely regarded as the second brain so feeding your microbiome the best way you can make the ultimate investment in your mood, your brain and your body. Get those prebiotic fibres in, drink in that warming bone broth and add that collagen to your smoothies or baking and your gut flora will thank you.
Our brain is an organ that still is not completely understand, but researchers clearly know that what we eat can influence the performance of our grey matter for better or for worse. Psychologically I feel better when I eat well. We get one body, we get to choose every day what we fuel it with. I want my mental health to be as good as my physical health and so I focus on feeding every part of my body as best I can. Fuelling our days with nutritious powerhouse breakfasts, lunches and dinners is not only the answer to physical ailments, but mental ones as well.
Stay safe, positive and stay Gut Happy
The Gut Happy Girls
xxx