How One Diet Change Can Affect Your Whole Life
When that oh-so-familiar (and sometimes debilitating) anxious feeling rises up in your gut, you might reach for your go-to essential oils, get down on the floor for a calming yoga pose, or meet up with a friend for a heart-to-heart. But to prevent anxiety from happening altogether, celeb nutritionist, Kimberly Snyder recommends this one simple food tweak.
You don’t need me to drill home that we live in an increasingly stressful world. And yes, by now you’re probably familiar with the whole discussion about stress hormones. For many of us, our adrenals are constantly overtaxed, even though we don’t have to run from saber-toothed tigers anymore.
Yup, got it. But I would contend that it’s not so much the actual life situations themselves that build up anxiety so much as our reaction to them. Sure, traffic sucks, but we can either take a big breath and deal—or get worked up into a red-faced frenzy. When practiced regularly, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, as well as other centering techniques, can help us keep calm and quell our nervous fears.
So as I see it, it’s about cultivating a set of tools and strategies that put us in the best possible position to deal with life so anxiety doesn’t overwhelm us. Strategically choosing foods to eat—and not eat—can be very helpful in this regard. Foods have a profound effect on our moods, energy, and the general mindset.
There is one simple principle that, from a dietary standpoint, can help you reduce anxiety. It’s this: Eat more carbs and less protein. (Gasp!) Yes, I know. It’s counter to a lot of what you hear in snippets plucked from morning shows, at the gym, from your friends, and so on. But hear me out.
When it comes to the ratio of carbs to protein in your diet, a lot of the attention has to do with weight loss. This is not all it’s cracked up to be (but we’ll talk about that topic another day). The focus of today’s topic is using diet change to help lessen anxiety—so let’s talk about it from that perspective.
