99 | Eat Fruits and Vegetables to Naturally Reduce Anxiety

If you are struggling with anxiety and depression you have heard what you need to focus on. Self care, more good sleep, time in nature, exercise. But did you know that your food may be to blame as well? Many who are dealing with anxiety have fallen into SAD (the Standard American Diet). Our current diets are filled with processed food that are high in saturated fat and sodium and low in nutritional value. This diet has been proven to increase anxiety and depression. Did you know that if you are low in B vitamins such as folic acid and B12 you are more at risk for anxiety and depression?

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Welcome to raising healthy humans, a podcast created for busy moms where you can easily find info on health and wellness for your family. Join Courtney, a health coach movement and posture specialist and founder form fit and active and supportive community where she helps busy moms move more here on raising healthy humans podcast. She shares personal life experiences, training, knowledge and conversations with other health and wellness experts so you can raise healthy humans. If you are one who struggles with anxiety and depression, you have heard what you need to focus on. Many times you'll hear meditation self care, get a good night's sleep, spends more time in nature, exercise daily. But did you know that the food that you eat may be to blame as well. Many of you who are dealing with anxiety have fallen into the SAD diet, the standard American diet. These diets are filled with processed foods that are high in saturated fat and sodium, which is not the good sodium, it's the cheap sodium and low in nutritional value, or have no nutritional value, and therefore they're putting it back in. This diet has been proven to increase anxiety and depression. Therefore, to help reduce your anxiety, it might be as simple as what you're putting in your body. There are certain foods that will decrease cortisol production, and others that will increase it. Cortisol is there to help regulate your sleep, increase blood sugar, reduce inflammation, manage how your body uses protein, fat and carbs, and helps to control blood pressure. So cortisol is a good thing. Too much cortisol is a bad thing. It does quite the opposite. Once you have too much cortisol. Many of us due to all the stressors in our life, have gotten to where the greenall glands are producing too much cortisol, we are being overstimulated. And this is creating an adverse effect too much cortisol becomes a bad thing. It increases inflammation, it increases blood pressure, it decreases blood sugar, all of these things start to occur. So what we need to start doing is pay attention to what we do in a day, that could be creating stress. And I don't want you to get triggered by anything that I say. Because what I'm trying to, what I want you to notice is how many of these things you're doing in a day, it doesn't mean that any one of them is bad. It's that when we stack all of these things on top of one another, it becomes too much for our body to handle, it creates too much stress, a little stress is good, is real good for our body. Too much stress is too much and becomes bad for our body. So think about your day and I want you to you know, make a mental check of how many of these you deal with during the day. Do you fast practice intermittent fasting of more than about 12 to 13 hours I would say is okay, if you do more than 13 hours, so 14 and above. This is going to be a stressor on the body. Do you practice high intensity exercises? Think spin your circuit training like where you're doing cardio weights in a high intensity interval to Bottas things like that, again, a little bit is good. Too much of it too much. So if you're practicing intermittent fasting, you're also practicing high intensity exercise. Maybe you have long cardio days. Do you eat healthy for the most part? How often are you on social media? Are you happy or unhappy at work? Obviously unhappy at work is going to create a stressor. Are you happy or unhappy in your marriage? If you're unhappy in your marriage that's going to create a stressor Are all of these things start to add up? How often do you have, where you're going from one thing to the next, moving quickly throughout the day, from I go straight from work, I go straight to pick up my kids, I rush home, I get food on the table, I rush back out to get them to their activity. That is a stressor, because there's no time to move gently, so to speak, from one activity to the next with time and space. So how many of these, if you're like, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. I'm gonna guess you're on the verge of adrenal fatigue. And your cortisol is through the roof and your anxiety is as well. So what can we start to do before you start taking all of those things that I just mentioned off the list, because for most of it, for many of us, the way we are now in life, it is a fast paced life. And it's going to be really hard for me to tell you that, you know, you're unhappy in your marriage, you're unhappy at work, change it. Right? The it's not that easy. So what can we start to do? Yes, maybe you want to take a few of those, those things off the plate, maybe you don't want to intermittent fast as long. Maybe you don't want to do quite so many high intensity classes. Maybe you want to take it down. You know, that's up to you. But I'm going to give you something that every single one of you can do today. And yes, I'm talking to you. What can you do right now today? To help decrease cortisol production, you're going to work on the foods that you're eating. Because what you are eating is affecting your anxiety, what you are eating could be creating a stress response in the body. So what what can we eat and what should we stay away from. So what I'm going to recommend, and this not only has to do with anxiety, this has to do with so much more than just anxiety. But start your day with rich sources of tryptophan, like eggs, Turkey, tofu, beans, nuts, seeds, cheese, and milk. All of these things are also you probably noticed higher in protein, they will help to provide satiety until your next meal, try to get more omega threes in your diet by eating fatty fish, such as salmon, at least once a week. And if you had listened to the conversation I had with Senousy I do apologize. My cat is getting into trouble right now. But she also speaks about cod. And there was one other things she spoke about. But you can go back and listen to that I'll leave a link in the show notes for you. Another thing that you can do if you are not one to eat on a daily basis, or you know a couple of times a week, you might want to supplement with omegas because I think they I believe they recommend two to three times a week you should be eating fish. So if you can get one time a week, and then you supplement with an Omega supplement, that's perfect. If you are unsure about Omega supplements reach out to me, you can message me however find me somewhere and you can message me, I'm happy to talk to you about ones that I recommend that are not fish based omegas. They are more algae based and sea based. So you don't deal with those fish burps Okay, eat protein and healthy fat at each meal to help stabilize blood sugar. And if you know that you're going to have a pasta meal. For whatever reason, it doesn't mean don't do it, learn how to create less of a blood sugar release, you know allowing the blood sugar to stay remain stable. So going for a walk is one right after fifth out a 15 minute walk after is going to help stabilize the blood sugar. And there's some other things that you can do as well eat vegetables first. Anxiety is actually correlated with reduced fruit and vegetable intake. So the more we can take care of our body from the inside out, the healthier we're going to be. Research suggests that the more antioxidants we have in our body, the less anxiety we will have. So you want to make sure that you're not only eating more fruits and vegetables, but also make sure that you're varying the color of the fruits and vegetables. So it's not just that I'm going to eat spinach and broccoli every single day in some strawberries. No, we need to vary not only the fruits and vegetables, but also the colors as well. And you can go back to the podcast I did on gut health where I Talk about the microbiome and the bacteria. And that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to create really healthy gut flora with all different types of fruits and vegetables and seeds, because that's what helps the diversity of that gut is going to help with all of this. So green, all of your green fruits and vegetables, mostly vegetables contain vitamin A and B, iron and magnesium. And then your orange and yellow will be containing vitamin C, potassium and calcium. Your body requires B vitamins, vitamin C, iron, and magnesium to help give you energy, regulate your hormones and help with cell development. And with this, your body also makes its own medicine, and 70% of your immune system is in your gut. your microbiome is part of your internal pharmacy and helps to create and regulate serotonin, which is your happy hormone, dopamine, which is your pleasure hormone, GABA, which is your calming hormone, and butyrate. And this is the super fuel for the brain. It is made from the fiber you eat. So we want to make sure we're getting a lot of fiber in there, which you get from your fruits and your vegetables as long as you're eating it and not drinking it. So for those of you who choose, you're pulling all of that fiber out unless you're putting that fiber back into like muffins and cookers and things. So just pay attention to that understand that you need the fiber as well. 95% of our serotonin receptors are found in the gut. And these receptors are key to stabilizing mood and brain function. So if you want to fix your brain, you gotta fix your gut. And then also make sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day as mild dehydration can cause irritability, and restlessness. What are we going to avoid things you're going to want to avoid while dealing with anxiety are Dida, sugar, alcohol and caffeine. eating sugary foods on an empty stomach causes it to be more quickly absorbed, which can create glucose spikes, and dips that may contribute to anxiety. So make sure to eat well balanced meals and snacks. If you're going to eat the sugary food, make sure that you have some protein and fat with it, that's going to help stabilize your blood sugar. Also, working more than 500 milligrams of caffeine a day can increase anxiety. So you need to make sure to pay attention to your caffeine intake. And understand that caffeine can remain in the body from three to seven hours depending on how you metabolize it. So some of you will be fast metabolizers of caffeine, and your body can go through it in three hours, that's fine. But those of you who if you have some coffee around one and you're still wide awake at 11 o'clock at night, you're probably a slow metabolizer and you probably shouldn't be drinking that cup at one o'clock in the afternoon. Also know that Alcohol is a depressant and can affect your sleep cycle, which is going to wreak havoc on your hormones and stressful stress levels and can increase anxiety. And so many times I hear people say Oh, when I drink a glass of wine, why fall straight to sleep asleep? Great. No, you don't. You may sleep good that first night although I would tend to argue with that. Because your REM cycle your deep REM cycle, may it you may not sleep deeply, like you think. But the other thing is is takes what is it three to four days for your for you to get back on a regular sleep cycle pattern. So it could be affecting you two to three days after. And you may not realize it so yes, you might get a good night's sleep that day. But then oh look at Monday night after I had a night out Friday night. Monday night I got a terrible night's sleep that may have to do with the Friday night going out and drinking. Anxiety can be scary and debilitating at times. Therefore it is important. We work on fixing some of these things that are creating stress, increasing blood sugar and increasing cortisol production. We want to practice self care, get a good night's sleep, eat healthier foods. Try working through some of the things I mentioned. And then join us over in the moms raising healthy humans community where I'll be Sharing weekly tips and information, I'm actually going to start going live in there on a weekly basis to help you all hone in on changing that habit. My goal for you is to not try to fix everything at once, focus on one thing. Just because I talk about a lot of different things, doesn't mean you have to try to implement everything. Focus on one thing each month, meant to it for a whole month. Before moving on to the next thing. If you need my help, reach out, I have three ways for you to join us. You can join the community well, there's actually four. There's a free community, you can join our moms raising healthy humans community where you get workouts and meal plans, you can do our fitness program where you can work out live with me online. And then you can work one on one with me and we can get more personal. And we do health coaching with that as well. I hope you all have a wonderful day. Focus in on what you're eating today. Let's make healthier choices. Let's eat more whole foods, meat, eat more protein. And let's work on stabilizing our blood sugar so that we don't deal with these cortisol over production of cortisol, which is going to increase our anxiety. Have a great day. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen to our podcast. We hope you found this information valuable and can incorporate it into your family's life. Make sure to check out our show notes for all the important links available. Come join us on Facebook and moms raising healthy humans community page. Also please check out our wide range of memberships, family monthly focus ideas, challenges, live events and on demand and live workouts, meal plans and so much more head to form fit online.com And as always keep moving