New Year, New You - Nutrition

Talk 1 of 4 from the New Year, New You seriesHow does Food affect you? How can it help with stress? What best to eat and what best to avoid?Life is stressful and getting everything under control is a full-time job. Nutrition is a full-time job with meal prep, planning, cooking etc.A great company that makes things a little easier for people living in London is Bespokefitnessfuel (@bespoke.fitness.fuel). Check them out as they have great offers, deliver to your door, have locally sourced products and I cannot recommend them highly enough!Miss Nutritionist (@missnutritionist) gave us a bit more insight into how nutrition affects our stress levels and what we could change/take up to have a healthier and happier 2018.Much of everyone’s energy is about balancing the blood sugar levels and best you can do so by eating good slow releasing carbohydrates like potatoes, sweet potatoes, brown rice etc.Another great tip from the talk was what best to eat for a snack. So, what do you tend to have for a snack when the cravings set in?You crave sugar, so you probably have some chocolate bar, some fruit, right?!Why cravings set in so often is because we eat foods too high in sugar and it sends us on this roller coaster of sugar highs and lows.Best to prevent these spikes from happening is to eat protein with every meal and as a snack as it does not contain any sugar within itself and needs about 4 hours to break down so sustains you for longer.How much protein should one eat in a day then?You should eat about 1g of protein per Kg of body weight.Good sources of protein are meat, eggs, beans, soy etc.1 egg contains about 7g of protein100g chicken breast contain about 21g proteinThis is also why you should have it with every snack, so it helps maintain you and achieve your daily need for it.With a snack many of us will have a coffee. How many coffees does one have a day? Being Italian my blood is basically coffee so this one is a big one to look out for me...Why is it not good for us?Caffeine is very similar to sugar it gives our body these spikes of energy and makes it release insulin. Coffee also prevents the vitamin B and C absorption as well as the uptake of magnesium, zinc and iron.A cup of coffee contains about 12g of caffeine, a cup of tea about 6g and a cup of green tea about 1g.Anyone doing dry January?Great! Congrats for making through the first half of it already!Alcohol has a similar effect to sugar and caffeine that it causes these spikes in the blood sugar.As a general rule of thumb though spirits with soda (i.e. vodka soda, gin etc) are better than champagne and wineNow we heard about what snacks are best, why sugar, coffee and alcohol are not the best for the blood sugar levels. All three of them are connected to stress in a sense though.All goes back to the blood sugar level. In our brain we have an organ called the Hypothalamus and its job is to detect stress. It does this so every few seconds, so it is prepared just in case, now if a stress is detected it will tell the adrenal glands, which are on top of your kidneys, to release adrenaline and cortisol.Adrenaline makes you more alert and cortisol releases a sugar spike into the blood stream, so you are ready for a fight or flight response to the stress detected.Studies have shown that interestingly an emotional stress hits the adrenal glands 1,000 times stronger than a physical stress.Therefore although looking after your body is a great thing to do we need to make sure we look after our mind too. So, watch the coming up blogs. Next week I will summarise the exercise talk, the week after mindfulness and to round the series up with beauty and body confidence. To book tickets to the upcoming sessions go to our New Year, New You page.By Dr. Michael Leuzo