Can your emotions affect what you eat?

We all know the feeling of being depressed and standing with the refrigerator door open hoping to find the food that will numb our feelings for a while. It’s a response that many people have to a variety of emotions that are uncomfortable or that we don’t want to deal with.

Unfortunately, this reaction to emotions leads to a cycle that will ultimately make you more depressed than when you started. Eating a large pizza may feel good while you’re at it, but all those carbs may offer a temporary fix.

When starting a new diet, it’s easy to get excited and motivated, but after a couple of days, you’re invariably faced with a stressful situation. Once stressed and overwhelmed, he reaches for comfort foods to do just that: comfort him. Meanwhile, the excess sugar from carbohydrates is converted to sugar, which leads to an increase in insulin. This leads to increased levels of “bad” hormones and inflammation in the body. Before you know it, you want more of the wrong foods to feel better for a couple of hours and the cycle starts all over again.

The only true way to get food to improve your emotional state is to avoid processed foods, sugar, and basically eat more of the good stuff. Complex carbohydrates like whole grains, vegetables, and fruits prevent the body from entering the destructive cycle mentioned above. Complex carbohydrates are the gift that keeps on giving. Since the body breaks down these carbs much more slowly than sugar, you receive a slow, steady release of sugar that won’t overwhelm your system or wreak havoc on your brain chemistry.

By increasing your intake of healthy lean protein found in fish, chicken, eggs, and cheese, important B vitamins are available for energy. Also eat more green leafy vegetables to get the necessary nutrients and minerals. It can be difficult at first to break the cycle, but once you do and experience the welcome effects, the motivation will be there to keep you going.

Controlling your emotions is like any other habit: you just have to practice. When you feel overwhelmed by any emotion, exercise can help you process the information and simply give you some time to think. By combining exercise with a healthy diet and dietary supplements, your emotions can become easier to manage. Any time you are deficient in any of the essential vitamins or minerals, you will feel the effects, but you may not recognize the connection.

It cannot be emphasized enough the dangerous game we play when we allow hormone cycling and insulin surges to disrupt our normal brain chemistry. These uncontrolled hormones can eventually lead to disease and other ill health effects. Did you know that an apple in the morning can wake you up and keep you awake longer than coffee?

Simple changes to your lifestyle to begin with can show you big improvements, so making the changes is worth it. If you suffer from moderate to severe depression, it is more than likely that you have some vitamin and mineral deficiencies and you should contact your health care provider for help.

It is important to remember that we are not always fully aware of what and why we are eating something, so keeping a food diary can play an important role in changing our lifestyle. Writing down what you ate, when, and how you felt at the time can reveal patterns you weren’t even aware of.

This does not mean that you can never have a treat, but everything must be in balance and a treat is just that. It’s not a reward, it’s not a Band-Aid, just a gift. Look at everything you eat with a purpose and ask yourself, “What am I putting in and what am I going to get out of it?” As an old Chinese doctor said, “our blood is made at the end of our forks.” I think he was wise before his time.