POWER OF NUTRITION

from SV Source Winter 2023

Nicedayfora R

By Julie Johnson, NTP

While we know the power of love is the ultimate healer, the power of nutrition is not far behind, and here is the reason why.

We need to have our brains nourished so that we can make good decisions about our lives. While it is hard to make good decisions while experiencing depression, stress, and grief, we have to ask ourselves, “How can I be the best version of me?”

Starting A Diet

Starting a new diet is usually easy… You enjoy the foods, and realize they aren’t half bad. Quality foods taste amazing. You are full of motivation, you exercise, and each day you feel a little better, lighter in body and spirit.

Then, one day, something happens. Maybe you get bad news or become stressed. And you feel yourself start to crack. To make yourself feel better, you reach for that cupcake, bowl of ice cream, or go on a bender (you choose your poison). And it makes you feel a little bit better, at least temporarily.

The next day, things aren’t quite as bad, but when the kids start kicking and screaming, or life essentially just “happens…” you crack again. And this time it didn’t take as much to crack. “It’s just one time, one little treat won’t hurt,” you tell yourself. But you end up telling yourself that every single day. We’re human, it’s okay to enjoy these pleasures on occasion. But if you find them consuming your diet – and you’d rather they did not – this article is for you.

Emotional Eating

There is emotional eating. Emotional drinking. Emotional self medicating.

Emotional blowouts between friends and family. And when we feel at the end of our rope, our vices (usually sugar related) feel like the only friend that can comfort us and escape from the pain temporarily.

I know a little bit about “drowning one’s pain” in unhealthy escapism. Whether it is a Snickers bar, or the best French wine. Sugar consumption is especially nasty, as the insulin spikes prevent weight loss and put your health at risk for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, and depression.

LIFE IS EMOTION.

All of us go through pain, loss, stress, and grief. How we react to our emotions is the difference between self destruction and self elevation.

Maybe a little nutritional education can help us make better decisions about what we put in our mouths.

Go back to a time when you felt your healthiest best – make that the goal. Let’s recreate that reality together with whole food choices from our local farmers, gardeners, and ranchers.

Our modern foods are designed to be addictive. Consuming “highly palatable” processed foods, or foods that are high in carbohydrates, fat, salt sugar, or artificial sweeteners, trigger the pleasure centers of the brain and release “feel good” chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin. It keeps you coming back for more. Unfortunately, food addiction is not about weight as much as it is about “using” a substance for distraction, for numbing feelings, for comfort, and for a mood change. It involves the same biological, psychological, and social factors as an alcohol or drug addiction.

If we are eating nutritionally dense foods (foods in their natural state), we do not need to eat as much as we do when consuming less nutritionally dense foods, because our brains will be nourished, telling the Ghrelin hormone responsible for our hunger to stop eating.

Sugar And Sugar Substitutes

When you walk into the grocery store and see the shelves stocked high with all those brightly colored packages – like Christmas every day – consider what is inside the box. These boxes are filled with four main ingredients. In no particular order – corn, wheat, rice and soy – all of which have been heavily processed with sugars (or worse, sugar substitutes) and chemicals. None of it would you actually want to put into your mouth, if a healthy brain and body is what you are after. A sugar substitute will signal the same insulin hormone as sugar, and considering more than half the United States is pre-diabetic or diabetic, these substitutes only further our collective digression.

To nourish our organs, glands, and brain that functions our executive thinking, we need three things: Fats, proteins and carbohydrates.

Of course we need to hydrate and rest, but let’s focus on nutrition.

Omega Fats

Omega fats are important for brain, joint, and blood viscosity, each cell in the body also needs cholesterol for cell wall strength. We get fat soluble vitamins such as vitamin A from organic egg yolks, butter, liver, grass-fed animals and cold water fish.

Proteins

Proteins are the building blocks for nearly everything in the body. Humans, like animals, need proteins daily. Choose organic sources of proteins, be they plant or animal. Mixing the two sources is best for the human body as they both offer different mineral and vitamin content.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates should come from vegetables, fruits, or whole grains. Choose organic, or know your gardener, and what sprays they use and how often they use them. It makes a difference in the nutritional value. The cleaner the product, the more goodness you get from it. The chemicals used on fruits, vegetables, and grains disrupt our hormones and gut lining. These chemicals are harmful to children’s digestive function, potentially leaving them with a future of health struggles.

Power Of Nutrition

Learn to cook with whole food. Sometimes it takes huge commitment and faith to retrain your taste buds to enjoy foods in their whole states. For instance, when we do the NourishMe Cleanses, people are amazed at the complex and explosive taste of the lowly organic apple. While it may take a couple of days/weeks (depending on your circumstances) for the power of nutrition to reboot your system…it is so worth it.

Get involved with your local resources and get educated about what is the right balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates for you.

Eat locally grown root vegetables this season such as; beets, carrots, garlic, onions, potatoes, parsnips, turnips.

Include local squashes in your diet as well, such as Butternut, Crookneck, Cucurbita, Delicata, Honeynut, and Pumpkin.

Also incredibly nutrient dense for one’s consumption are locally grown beans and legumes, such as Black beans, Red beans, White beans, Green lentils, Yellow lentils, and Fava beans. Local grains plus amaranth, millet and flax. The list is endless.

It is easier than you think to get involved with your local resources. NourishMe has a Farmer’s Market twelve months a year, every Tuesday bringing you so many wonderful choices. Besides our dine-in options, NourishMe also makes grab-and-go foods from all the products listed above.