Food has therapeutic properties as well as it can have a negative impact on your health if we use it as a bad “replacement”. You are indeed what you eat and how you eat. The need of the hour is that we should consume food to get all its nutrients and then utilise it for energy.

In today’s world due to societal burdens, stress, fears, anxiety and depression, our mental abilities have been largely affected. Hence, our lifestyle changes play an important role in improving or negatively impacting our mental abilities. Our overall moods become so depressive, attitudes have changed and patience levels have been reduced. Have you noticed how easily we get irritated?

Moods and the human body

It’s interesting to know that our mood or pleasure has a strong relation with our metabolism. When your body is under tremendous stress, your body excretes crises hormones signaling it to store fat and burn muscle. When you are overloaded with chemicals, pesticides, and pollutants your body creates new fat cells to house these toxins. So you don’t get poisoned and sick. And when you consume food which lacks essential nutrients or contains artificial dyes, flavourings, and sweeteners, the body does its best to survive against these foreign substances by slowing down the metabolism and minimising the damage to the body’s system as a whole.

Metabolism

Stress triggers the metabolism and slows it down, the system senses an emergency and goes into fat-storage mode. Stress increases the cortisol (stress hormones) and minimises the thyroid hormones while pleasure has just the opposite effect. When you take pleasure in the food you eat, you actually work with nature to speed things up. And bonus, you won’t need to overeat.

Pleasure stimulates the metabolism by triggering the adrenals to produce endorphins (happy hormones). These endorphins are known as feel-good brain messengers – stimulate the brain to produce serotonin (a mood elevating brain hormone) that in turn stimulates the thyroid to produce the fat-burning hormone. It’s more of a chain reaction inside the human body.

Pleasure sets off a beautiful chain of events inside the body that lowers leptin levels (hunger hormone). When you enjoy what you eat, you get a double benefit, you are satisfied and full. The pleasure, joy, and excitement about your food translate into pleasure, joy and excitement in the choice you make about food and how you live life in general.

Here are some simple take home messages:

• Chill out and have some carbs! Carbs aren’t the devil. You just need to eat the right ones at the right time. Think WHOLE. Choose wisely.

• Water your body. Keep yourself well hydrated. Sounds easy but how many of us really hydrate properly.

Perk up with protein. Do you include a protein rich food at breakfast and lunch as well as dinner? You should!

• Oil your thinking. Include good fats (Salmon, trout, mackerel, herring, walnuts, flaxseed, canola oil, ALA) in your diet, keep portions in check. Neurons in the brain are made with essential fats that we must get from the diet.

• Spice up your life with variety. Don’t eat the same meal/ veggies/ fruit everyday all day. Eat the rainbow. Eat variety.

• Avoid western style diet rich in red meat, saturated fats, trans- fats and simple carbohydrates.

• Eat balance of protective, nutrient dense food. Foods include fresh fruits, vegetable, legumes, whole grain, lean meats, cold- water fish, eggs low fat dairy, soy products nuts and seeds.