This week on Thrive, we are going to look at how nutrition can help us combat stress. Stress is such an ugly word. It makes us do ugly things like eat a whole tub of ice cream or a massive bag of chips. We don't want to eat those things but we can't help ourselves.
It's like stress drives us to self-destruct. Why?
Stress puts our body in "fight or flight" mode, increasing sugar levels in our blood so our body and muscles are able to cope with the situation at hand. When the stressful situation passes, our blood sugar levels decrease and our body returns to normal. The problem is that we are constantly exposed to stressful situations: we're catching the bus, getting to that meeting on time, arguing with our spouse, worrying about family, fighting against that job we hate to do. So our body is constantly yo-yoing between blood sugar highs and lows. When we are finally at home and it's the end of the day and we're able to relax, our body craves "the high", so it begs you for starch and sugar to get back to where it's been all day long. And like the addicts we are, we give in. It's almost impossible not to.
So how do we break our body's addiction? How do we mitigate those highs and lows? Because we can't go live in a monastery and chant mantras all day.
We need to starve the beast by focusing on foods that are going to help us do three things:
Sleep. Love. And Poop.
This week on Thrive, we're going to discover foods and recipes that will help us:
- sleep like a baby;
- show massive love to our adrenal glands & liver;
- and poop like champs.
In doing so -- we're going to kick the sh*t out of stress and show it who's boss.
Thrive Nutrition Practice launches Spring 2016.