There’s a lot of truth in the old saying “you are what you eat”. Scientific evidence has proven that a healthy diet not only improves your physical wellness, but your emotional wellness too. With a few tweaks here and there, your diet can help to boost your mood and overall wellbeing.
Firstly, you may be allergic or intolerant to something without even knowing it and this can have a great effect on your mood. Gluten, for example, is a common allergy and intolerance, and if you eat wheat products the gluten can leave you feeling sluggish or even depressed. Children with ADHD or autism are often recommended to make dietary changes – going gluten-free being one of them – which also indicates that there’s a strong link between food, mood and behaviours.
Your mood can also change with fluctuations in your blood sugar. When your blood sugar is high, you can become highly irritable, while your low blood sugar can cause you to experience feelings of anxiety, depression and lethargy. Mental health issues can also be mimicked or even arise from deficiencies in various vitamins, minerals and omega-3 fatty acids. For example, low levels of vitamin D can bring about mood swings, depression and fatigue. Simply adding supplements can improve your mood if you have any deficiencies.
In order to explore how food may be affecting your moods, try keeping a food diary for at least two weeks. Recording everything you eat and drink and your moods before and after may reveal a pattern, which a nutritionist or experienced health care provider can help with in ensuring you make the necessary changes. Diets should be individualised, and so you need to make sure that the changes you make are appropriate and healthy for you.
Unless you have a specific food intolerance or allergy, make your eating habit changes gradually. Using the all-or-nothing approach to cutting out certain foods typically leads to failure, so start slowly and make changes over time. Little by little, substitute bad foods with good ones, experimenting with different grains, fruits, and vegetables. Look online for exciting new recipes and foods you’d never thought you’d try. Who knows? It may be love at first bite.
Comments are closed.