How to eat for resilience and mental health
The body is looking for survival nutrients while you are looking for comfort.
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Connecting the dots: The perfect diet for resilience and mental health
What can I eat that will lower stress?
I got this question once in a nutrition presentation. My answer at the time was “nothing legal” But what this person really wanted was what we all want when we’re uncomfortable in our own skin. A quick fix. Lower stress really just means better resilience from the inside out.
The truth is double edged. No, there's not one thing you can eat to lower stress. But yes there are lots of things. AND how you eat matters. Today we’ll look at how appetite and hunger are connected to the nervous system and stress response. And some ways you can eat that will calm you from the inside out.
The nervous system is constantly on the lookout for threats to your survival. That’s it’s job. That vigilance is what we know as stress and triggers behaviors that answer the NS call to change or balance our state. Everything you do either reassures the NS that you’re safe or reinforces the message of threat. Literally everything you do, that includes how you eat or don’t eat. That means what you put on your plate and how you consume it is another way that you can change the state of your nervous system.
Our relationship with food says a lot about our relationship with ourselves and the world around us and for coaches it can be an important clue about how we can best help clients. A basic understanding of this connection can help Fit pros and health coaches help their clients get the results they want.
First I want to step away from diet dogma around weight loss for today. We know that extra weight on the body makes every system in the body work harder. And there are many ways to force the body to let go of that weight. It’s been my experience that when people carry extra weight that they can’t seem to get rid of, whether it’s 5 pounds or 50 pounds, it’s because their body wants to keep it. There hasn’t been enough safety to convince the NS that it’s ok to let it go. Weight gain or weight loss resistance is evidence that the body is in a state of protection.
You can’t judge a book by its cover.
When I was at the height of my stress levels I had the worst eating habits and looked fit. Oh I had all kinds of excuses for it. Excessive exercise, a work schedule that didn’t allow for “normal’ meals, a belief that I could eat whatever I wanted because of my daily calorie burn, false premise that high cardio= high carb requirements that drove hypoglycemia, calorie is a calorie fallacy, and the craving for some kind of comfort in my body that was easily accessible from food. But the fact is chronic high stress levels don’t leave much room for well thought out healthy food choices.
Food is fuel.
The body via the NS sees food as not just fuel but survival. You have certain nutritional needs in order to function. You need water. You need certain essential amino acids from protein. You need micro and macro nutrients and minerals along with fiber. And you require calories for energy that you can get from protein, fat and carbohydrate in your food.
When your stomach is empty a hormone called grehlin is released. Grehlin stimulates the release of both cortisol and adrenaline to “encourage” you to go hunt up some food. This is an appetite related stress response. In the extreme you might know it as getting hangry. When you answer that request with hyper palatable food (high sugar, low nutrient food) It sets off the dopamine system which is more associated with motivation and drive than reward. So when that dopamine response gets thrown off for too long it kicks off cravings and addiction behavior around food. And because those hyper palatable foods have typically low or no nutrient density then it leaves the body unsatisfied. This in turn lights up even more vigilance in the nervous system and a cascade of those same stress hormones keep pushing you to eat more. The body is looking for survival nutrients while you are looking for comfort.
The Gut Brain Axis and how to leverage your diet to lower stress.
This is why nutrition is important when we talk about the stress response and how that shows up in mental health, specifically anxiety and depression. Let's take a look at the gut brain axis. You are bombarded by stress triggers every day. Some are good like exercise, a visit from family and vacation and others not so good. They might be physical, like an illness, injury or chronic pain. It might be emotional, anxiety or depression or psychological, work or personal conflicts or financial stress. Whatever your flavor of stress, it affects the conscious and unconscious choices you make every day, what you eat, drink, even what medications you take, anti-inflammatory or antibiotics. Everything you put in your mouth has to go through the gut and affect the bacterial ecosystem that lives and works there. Those trillions of bacteria do some heavy lifting for you, digesting, producing neurotransmitters and nutrients and send messages back to the brain about the state of wellbeing in the body. The brain then makes more life choices based on those feelings and so it goes.
Let’s look at that ecosystem a little deeper. The microbiome is your friend, you are born with the same microbiome that your mother had and then it changes, grows or shrinks over the course of your life. It’s made up of trillions of bacteria, not good bacteria or bad bacteria, just bacteria. They have some pretty important jobs.
They break down food. That’s right you aren’t actually digesting your dinner, those bacteria are. That means you aren’t actually feeding yourself; you’re feeding them. And in that process those bacteria produce nutrients, vitamins, neurotransmitters and hormones. They regulate the immune system. And communicate with the brain through the mighty vagus nerve. One of those neurotransmitters, serotonin, which is responsible for your sense of wellbeing and contentment. Feeling comfortable in your skin and where you are in life, 90% of it is produced in the gut. It’s the vagus nerve that carries it to the brain and to communicate that comfort and safety.
So what happens when you add stress to this perfectly balanced ecosystem?
Well when your primitive brain perceives threat, the sympathetic NS shuts down all systems that are unnecessary to your immediate survival. Like the digestive system. It’s way more important to increase the heart rate, increase blood flow and tension the muscles. It fires up adrenaline and cortisol to help you stay alert. There is nothing wrong with this system because as soon as you remove the threat or remove yourself from the threat everything will go back to normal and digestion and immune function, reproduction etc. will come back on line.
Except when there’s a tiger in every room
The problem comes when you are under chronic stress or the threat never goes away because it’s coming from a memory or something in the future. Sadly the one thing your NS can’t do is tell time. Those sensations show up as anxiety and depression that follow you from room to room creating this constant state of hypervigilance.
When that happens and the digestive system stays shut down for too long it can knock the microbiome out of balance. The gut microbiome is like 2 perfectly matched hockey teams. Each player on the team has a job to do and they are experts at it. But Let’s say one gets injured or gets put into the penalty box. Now one side is playing down. Someone else has to step in to take over to do 2 jobs, someone who can do it but that’s not their specialty. The team dynamic changes. Maybe the defense breaks down or the offense collapses. One team starts to overrun the other. In hockey things can get violent and desperate. Now take into consideration that the lining in your gut that separates what’s in the intestines from your bloodstream is only one epithelial cell thick and you can see how easy it would be for those players to cause some real damage.
That’s dysbiosis. Or leaky gut. That ecosystem is created by what you eat and what you are exposed to from the day you were born. And because the nervous system is always on the lookout for new threats it doesn’t have to look far to find another one. It’s the nervous system reacting to this attack on the gut that triggers layers of dysfunction in the body like allergies, anxiety and depression, insomnia, weight gain and insulin resistance and so many more.
And external and internal stress can intensify all of these health issues.
It’s never about only one thing. Stress by itself doesn’t cause dysbiosis but it is both a contributor to and a source of greater dysfunction.
Everything you eat affects the gut and the gut affects everything you do and feel. That’s why nutrition is important. Because everything you eat has to go through the gut, and you know that the way you eat can hurt or help your microbiome - your diet can also be a way to trigger or calm your nervous system too. So one way to affect the way you feel, physically, emotionally and mentally is to build a stronger gut microbiome.
Here’s some ways that you can build resilience through the gut and buffer your stress response from the inside out.
Maximize variety.
Add More fiber. Prebiotics and probiotics.
Less sugar and artificial sweeteners especially in your drinks. Ideally we should all eliminate all processed sugar. There’s no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Be sure to watch the Sugar addicts Anonymous for more details.
High quality protein
Less alcohol - or hey how about none. It's just more work for the liver.
Move more + get outside
There’s a lot on this list. You don’t have to change everything overnight. But maybe just pick one or 2 to start incorporating into your daily routine. Change happens in 28 days. That’s faster than a lot of antidepressants out there.
If I had to recommend one place to start I would suggest increasing the number of vegetables you eat. Maybe add one to every meal. Most Americans don’t get near enough fruits, veg & fiber in the day. It’s much easier to eat more of something than to give up something. And make sure you get enough water. I’m saying this here because I know I don’t. Go for tap water for the mineral content or find a good micro mineral supplement.
Listen, there are thousands of health coaches out there and I‘m not really telling you anything new here. But at some point we all need to take some radical responsibility for our own health. It’s not your doctor's responsibility. All they can do is prescribe drugs after we’ve done the damage. The fact is we have so much god given healing power in our own body. Just by making the commitment to yourself to change what you eat and drink can completely turn your health around. And the side effects of those changes can add years to your life. Lower blood pressure, reverse Type 2 diabetes, undo metabolic syndrome, reduce the risk of Alzhimers and dementia and lift the veil of the most common mental health issue today, anxiety and depression.
Remember what your purpose is here. Small shifts can have big results. Simply shifting your diet to whole food and cutting out the processed fast food can give you phenomenal results beyond just your stress response. By becoming more aware of the kinds of food you eat and how they affect you can add another tool to your resilience tool box and expand your buffer against stress.
That’s what the Work IN is all about. Thanks for joining me today! If you like what you heard be sure to like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode. And leaving a 5 star review helps others find The Work IN too.
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
Schedule a free consultation call to see if my brand of actionable accountability is right for you and your business.