Your diet is playing a MASSIVE role in your mental and emotional health right now…

Meaning, what you have or have not eaten today is directly impacting how you feel as you read this!

But before we dig into the nutrition details specifically, let’s briefly chat about the other 4 aspects that are impacting your emotional stability aside from your diet.

The first factor aside from diet is sleep.

Sleep is a massive input in terms of emotional regulation and the most straight forward example of this is in children…when they don’t sleep properly, they have a really hard time managing their emotions and so do we as adults. We adults tend to think that we’re pretty good at managing our emotions when we’re sleep deprived, but the truth is that we’re not, we’re actually very bad at it and one of the reasons that we think that we’re good at it is because we’re assessing our ability to manage our sleep status from an impaired place.

It’s essentially like a drunk person determining exactly how drunk they are, they tend not to be all that accurate and the drunker they are, the worse their assessment is meaning, the more sleep deprived that you are, the less accurate you can assess how poorly you’re actually functioning.

Sleep debt also becomes the ‘new normal’ for a lot of folks, for example…

If you’re sleeping great for a period of time and then for whatever reason your sleep takes a hit, you notice it in the beginning for say the first few days or maybe even a week, but then if that sleep impairment persists, that becomes your new normal…and you’ll often hear folks say things like…

‘I can get by with 5 or 6 hours’

and…

‘I can function after 5 or 6 hours and be fine.’

This has been studied quite extensively and the truth is that when folks think that they’re quote unquote ‘getting by,’ or ‘fine’ they’re actually performing far worse on things like memory tasks, reaction time, rational decision making…all sorts of super important life metrics.

Another really interesting thing that’s been studied is sleep debt among couples and it turns out that it doesn’t actually matter which individual that you deprive of sleep, they both report that the other is more distant, less involved and that they feel less connected. This is fascinating because it’s basically like you and your partner are operating on different wavelengths or you can think about it like playing different tunes…you’re simply out of sync and again, on paper it doesn’t matter if you’re the one that’s lacking sleep or it’s your partner, your relationship feels less fulfilling…interesting little aside there.

The second of the four aspects is drug and alcohol consumption and I really don’t think that I need to dive into much detail here because everyone is well aware of how drugs and alcohol are essentially like borrowing tomorrows happiness today and then when we add the fact that they typically lead to poorer food decisions, more time on the couch and impaired sleep quality, we’ve got the snowball effect at play here!

Drugs and alcohol reduce emotional stability…shocker right!?

The third thing is not enough movement. We’re a lot like dogs in regards to movement in the sense that we start barking and tearing up the metaphorical couch when we don’t take ourselves out for walks. Being cooped up in the house or in the office is not doing us any favours in regards to mental and emotional stability because we evolved spending a massive percentage of our time outdoors and moving a ton!

In regards to just how much movement, the digits that I’ve seen regarding hunter gatherer step counts fall right around 16 – 17,000 steps per day on average, which is about 8 miles or just shy of 13 km per day…we ALL used to be hunter gatherers until very recently in our evolutionary history and so hitting 10k steps daily is a little over half of our typical evolutionary requirement according to current hunter gatherer movement tendencies…10k doesn’t seem like too much to ask when ya look at what our physiology has evolved to expect.

The fourth aspect is life stressors and this is the one that we tend to have the least control over however, it’s not entirely out of our control, for example…

Sticking with a career choice that doesn’t fulfill you is massively stressful but it is a choice, whereas one of your loved ones passing away isn’t something that you have much of a say over. So when it comes to life stressors and emotional stability, the key is to control and manage the variables that you can and surrender to the ones that you can’t.

Sleep status, drug and alcohol intake, movement habits and nutrition are all completely controllable aspects and so let’s say that a family member of yours does pass away heaven forbid, if you’ve been sleeping well, minimizing drug and alcohol intake, moving lots and dialing in your nutrition, you’re going to be able to handle this tough time FAR more effectively and…

If you’re handling a family members passing more effectively, you’re far less likely to engage in detrimental coping mechanisms i.e. funky food, alcohol, drugs, you name it.

Okay, now let’s dig into the nutrition piece more specifically…

There are 2 key considerations when it comes to nutrition and emotional stability and the first one that we’re going to cover is blood sugar regulation…we’ve all felt hangry at some point or another and funny enough, mismanaged blood sugar is actually the leading cause of what you would call a ‘meltdown’ in children.

So as an aside, all of the nutrition info that we’re going to talk about not only applies to you as an adult, but also to your kids!

So…you get to a point where you’re feeling grumpy, irritable, short and ya basically want to gnaw your arm off because your body is yelling at you and telling you that your blood sugar is getting too low…

But what does that actually mean?

When we eat food, it’s broken down and released into the blood stream and our blood sugar goes up, then the pancreas releases something called insulin into the blood stream and brings your blood sugar back down because we don’t want elevated blood sugar for extended periods of time...that’ll lead to all sorts of issues, the most obvious one being diabetes.

Protein and fat have a smaller impact on blood sugar levels, meaning they typically don’t send your blood sugar as high as carbohydrates, carbs have a larger impact on your blood sugar levels. Having said that I want to be VERY clear, this doesn’t mean that carbs are bad, it just means that they tend to impact blood sugar levels to a larger degree than protein and fat in isolation.

Circling back to our hangry situation, essentially what’s going on when you are hangry is that your body senses that your blood sugar is getting too low and so you basically feel ravenous and the reason for that is because your body wants you to consume food rather quickly in order to bring your blood sugar levels back up to baseline.

Now when you get a point where you’re feeling hangry, you’re highly emotionally unstable right!? Like we mentioned you’re grumpy, anxious, unsettled, irritable, frustrated and so the question becomes what’s leading to funky blood sugar swings aka feeling hangry and the answer that you might be thinking is, ‘I waited too long to eat’…but, that’s not necessarily the case!

The answer is that you’ve been making the wrong food choices for you, for example…

As I’m writing this, I haven’t eaten in about 16 hours because I had dinner last night around 6 pm and it is now 10 am the following day. All I’ve had today is some black coffee and I’m not hangry in the slightest, my blood sugar is nice and stable, I’m mentally clear, I’m actually going to go for a workout soon without any food and I won’t be eating for another say 2-3 hours at least and I’ll feel totally fine.

Now I’m not saying that you need to go 16, 18, 20 hours a day without food, what I’m saying is that if you want to get off the hangry train, you’ll need to make food decisions that are keeping your blood sugar stable for longer periods of time so that you’re not riding the blood sugar roller coaster!

As an aside, stepping off the blood sugar roller coaster will also help you lose fat relatively effortlessly because as I’m sure you’ve experienced, when you get hangry you will eat anything and everything that’s in sight. You’ll also eat super quickly and you’ll favour convenient calorie dense heavily processed foods meaning, when you get hangry, you make lower quality food decisions and you eat far more than you would have had you had stable blood sugar levels…simply put, you consume more calories.

Also, if you’re in a position where you need to eat every 2-3 hours or else you get hangry-like symptoms, that’s a bad sign…if you can’t go on a walk or a hike without bags of trail mix and power bars…you need to get your nutrition sorted because that ain’t good!

We are designed to go for long periods of time without food and function really well, that’s quite literally why we accumulate body fat. We didn’t evolve in an environment where we ate 6 times a day and had snacks on hand 24/7…fortunately that’s not neccesary, we’re far more resilient than that!

So, how do we capitalize on this resilience, what are the right food choices?

Before we get to that, we need to address the second key consideration in terms of nutrition for emotional stability because it is a big factor in choosing the right foods for you specifically and that is, digestion. You guys hear me talk about digestion and its importance all the time and it really matters because…

If you think about having an upset stomach, things like acid reflux or GERD, diarrhea, constipation, all of these things impact your emotional stability to a large degree…it makes sense right!? No one is the calmest, coolest, most grounded version of themselves when their stomach is killing them, or their super bloated, or their running to the bathroom, or they haven’t gone to the bathroom in too long…digestion is the other key input.

Digestion is also the key factor at play in terms of leaky gut and I’m not going to delve into leaky gut in this article because I want to keep it shorter and to the point, but I’d highly recommend checking out the article I wrote called ‘Leaky Gut Explained’ if you haven’t already because it’ll provide even more context for ya around just how important digestion is.

Also, digestion actually impacts blood sugar levels directly because if you eat a food that you don’t tolerate all that well, that is a stressor and it can lead to gut damage (refer to the leaky gut article) so blood sugar regulation becomes tougher to manage via eating foods that don’t work for you as an individual.

So, let’s dig into the what to eat now and the answer is…

Single ingredient whole foods with one huge caveat, you must digest them well, for example…

Beans are single ingredient whole foods however, I don’t digest them very well and a lot of my clients don’t either. I also have clients who don’t do well with tomatoes because they cause acid reflux and/or indigestion. If a single ingredient whole food is causing an issue like this, skip it because yes it passes the first test i.e. it’s a single ingredient whole food but, it doesn’t pass the second test, which is digestion and digestion is very individually specific!

Some folks don’t do well with dairy, actually A LOT of my clients don’t do well with dairy consumption. Gluten is another common intolerance, soy, corn, certain veggies like the cruciferous options i.e. broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts…FODMAPS are an issue for a lot of people and the list goes on...

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because a food is classified as quote unquote ‘healthy,’ that it can’t be an issue for YOU. Nuts, beans and legumes cause issues for some of my clients, the nightshade family (potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes) can cause problems for certain folks.

So here’s the nutrition for emotional stability recipe…

Favour single ingredient whole foods and keep a super close eye on your digestion, so if a food bloats you, sends you to the bathroom right away, backs you up, causes acid reflux…essentially anything that doesn’t have you feel light, energetic and alert after eating it…isn’t your friend.

That also includes the quantity that you eat because as I’m sure you’ve experienced, eating too much total food will also lead to lethargy and just a feeling of ‘blah’ however, it’s far more difficult to eat too much when you’re eating single ingredient whole foods that you digest well because they’re so satiating and your body tolerates them super well!

On the other hand, it’s really easy to overeat foods like pizza, burgers, cookies, donuts, ice cream etc. and I don’t know anyone that has better digestion and blood sugar management via those funky foods choices vs. single ingredient whole foods.

In terms of macronutrients which are protein, carbs and fat…

Prioritize protein first and foremost meaning, make sure that you’re eating a solid serving of protein at every meal and then feel free to fill in the rest of your calories from carbs and fat according to your preferences.

You can also experiment with more carbs and less fat or more fat and less carbs and see how you feel, just be sure to keep your protein intake consistent because it’s the most important macronutrient for a whole bunch of reasons that we’ll likely dig into in a future article.

As far as meal timing goes, if you’re eating like 6, 8, 10 times per day right now including snacking, I’d recommend first eliminating or at least limiting anything that isn’t a single ingredient whole food and prioritizing protein!

This is going to keep you much more satiated, manage your blood sugar better and therefore you’re naturally going to start eating fewer times throughout the day. One of the coolest benefits of this approach is what I like to call food freedom…

Needing to carry snacks around all the time because you don’t know what your blood sugar is going to do or how you’re going to feel in an hour or two is definitely not food freedom.

Food freedom is being able to go periods of time without food and feel completely fine because your body is efficiently managing your blood sugar. This means that whether you happen to skip a meal or a snack at some point for whatever reason, you don’t crash and burn and start flipping out on your co-workers or partner…your mood remains stable, you’re emotionally stable.

So nutrition for emotional stability in a single sentence…

Eat single ingredient whole foods that you digest well, favour protein first and foremost, fill in your carbs and fats according to your preferences and work your way towards more and more food freedom in terms of meal frequency…boom!

This is exactly what I do with my fat loss clients and they report feeling more calm, grounded, mentally clear and emotionally stable on a consistent basis…this shit works, I promise!

And the thought that I want to leave you with is this…

A lot of folks believe that they are ‘just an anxious person’ or ‘a depressed person’ or a this and that type of person, however…if you believe that, my question to you would be…

Have you ever eaten single ingredient whole foods, walked 10k steps per day, slept 7-9 hours per night and not consumed drugs and alcohol for a week straight in your life? 7 days…

If the answer is no, how do you know for certain that it’s you that’s anxious or depressed vs. it simply being your chosen lifestyle that’s actually creating feelings of angst and/or depression?

Have you ever really given yourself the opportunity to truly feel calm, centered and grounded? Perhaps these feelings of angst and/or depression are not who you are, but rather just a by-product of the lifestyle that you’re choosing to live.