When you start looking at ways to reduce your stress levels, you probably focus on how much work you are doing, what your daily responsibilities are, and whether you practice good self-care. These are all especially important, but don’t forget about the simplest choices you make every day that could be impacting your stress.
A common one has to do with your diet, where some foods can increase stress on your body, while others help to reduce it. In fact, your diet has a much larger impact on your stress levels than you might expect, and your stress can determine what your food choices end up being. This is a vicious cycle that starts with focusing on proper nutrition to fuel your body.
Nutritional Deficiencies
The first thing that can happen if you have a poor diet is that you have nutritional deficiencies. These deficiencies can affect not just your physical health, but your emotional health as well.
For example, did you know that folate can affect your mood and lead to more depression? You get folate from foods like eggs, asparagus, spinach, and avocado.
Some other nutrients you need to help balance your mood and fight stress naturally are:
Omega 3 fatty acids – Healthy fats are still important! You can get your fatty acids from healthy sources of fats like salmon, tuna, walnuts, and olive oil.
Vitamin D – Do you know why you feel more energized and happier during sunny days? It is the vitamin D from the sun’s UV rays. IF you live somewhere that is cloudy and rainy a lot, or it is the winter where there isn’t much sun, you will need to supplement vitamin D through your food or supplements. You can get it from foods like fatty fish, eggs, dairy, and fortified cereal.
Fiber – For more fiber, eating more fruit, avocados, and whole grains is usually a good place to start.
Calcium – While many people get their calcium from dairy and yogurt, you might not be someone who can eat a lot of dairy. In this case, you can get it from foods like almonds, sesame seeds, tofu, and kale.
Iron – You also want to make sure you have enough iron. Iron can help with your mental health, as well as balancing your energy levels. Get iron from red meat, turkey, some nuts and seeds like pumpkin seeds and almonds, broccoli, and dark chocolate.
Protein – You get protein from many of these same foods, including meat, poultry and fish, beans, grains like quinoa, dairy, cheese, eggs, and nuts.
Feeding Emotions with Unhealthy Foods
Another link between stress and nutrition is that you can often “help” the stress and emotions with food. The problem here is that you probably go for the unhealthier foods. If your body is “craving” certain things like salty food or sweet food – look into what it may actually be asking for…potassium, vitamin c or chromium!
However, if you deal with chronic stress or use food often as a way to comfort yourself, it can become a problem. You might overeat, make poorer food choices, and even suffer malnutrition because you aren’t getting enough vitamins and minerals.
Unhealthy Habits from Stress
Having too much stress in your life can further encourage you to have other unhealthy habits. Not just having vitamin deficiencies and emotional eating, but generally overeating the wrong foods, not getting enough exercise and sleeping too much, drinking alcohol, smoking, etc. These can all turn quickly into something that is adding to your stress!
The Cycle Continues
This is a vicious cycle that is very heard to get out of. Once you start going to unhealthy habits to deal with your stress, you feel that temporarily it is helping, but it is hurting your mental health in the long-term. The best thing you can do is stop this cycle now, start eating better, and look for healthier ways to manage your stress.
Try to find healthier habits, such as visiting with friends, playing with your dog, or getting in a little more exercise with a walk in the park. It is okay to treat yourself! I never say this food or that food is “bad” I say this food is good, this food is better! If you feel deprived of the things you want or attach negative feelings to certain foods – it can in fact cause you more harm. You may want to rebel and make very poor choices if you feel super deprived. Or worse – you may give up on working towards healthier habits all together if you feel guilt or shame when you eat certain foods and figure it’s too late – you have already screwed up. So Keep a positive mind set, have fun, laugh, nourish yourself, get fresh air, sunlight and a little extra movement while making “better” food choices as often as you can and watch the stress melt away!
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