I’ll be super honest with you, I don’t love meal planning. I know making balanced choices and not skipping meals encourages a healthy mood but I notice sometimes I fool myself into thinking I can just wing it.
Can you relate?
Choosing to wing it isn’t the best strategy if healthy stable moods is your goal.
How Insulin Affects Our Mood
Insulin levels spike when we eat refined and convenience foods or when we’ve skipped a meal and have gone too many hours without eating. The impact insulin has on our inflammation levels is no joke. Having high levels of insulin in the blood will make a typically anti-inflammatory Omega-6 essential fatty acid (EFA) switch to a pro-inflammatory compound. That’s right. That EFA is now working against you.
Low-grade levels of pro-inflammatory response are a common trait in people with depression and anxiety.
That’s not the look we were going for right?! Let’s get those insulin and inflammation levels down.
The Stress Component
Stress makes it difficult for our body to regulate a healthy inflammatory response. It can also cause our blood sugar levels to rise. The stress can even be as subtle as worrying about the future or being unforgiving of the past.
Now add into the mix skipped meals and poor food choices and you have a perfect scenario for feeling unlike your regular self.
See how our everyday choices, from our thoughts down to our food can either work for us or against us?
I’m committing to carving out a few extra minutes to batch cook or make a few simple dishes at the start of my week. Are you joining me?
Share with me in the comments below what you’d like to be held accountable to when it comes to nourishing yourself in a way that’s working for you.
